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The primary research used in this literature review was a personal interview conducted with Mr. Ricci, M.D. over email. Mr. Ricci has just under 17 years of nuclear power experience that started with training in 2003, and currently works as a Senior Operations Instructor at the James A. Fitzpatrick nuclear power plant in New York state. Fifteen questions were asked over the email interview ranging from personal experience to safety measures set in place in the event a core meltdown occurs.
How does a Nuclear Power Plant Operate to Produce Electricity?
Nuclear power plants operate on the principle of nuclear fission. Nuclear fission is caused by having a neutron, gamma ray, or charged particle collide with a unraium-235 nucleus, causing the uranium atom to become unstable and split apart (Patrick et al., 2014). The splitting of the uranium atom with the neutron releases more neutrons to cause more fission and a large amount of energy that heats up the surrounding material, which is the reactor vessel itself that contains the nuclear fuel and the primary cooling water. In a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) design the primary cooling water is pressurized so that it does not boil for the given temperature of the primary cooling water.
The primary cooling water enters a heat exchanger where it rejects its heat from itself to the secondary water. The heat exchanger physically separates the primary and secondary water to help contain the radioactive material within a specified boundary. This boundary is normally a containment structure built around the reactor vessel, associated piping, and heat exchanger to prevent the release of radioactive material into the environment in the event of a meltdown. The secondary water is heated until it boils to make steam. The steam is then used to drive a steam turbine that is coupled to a generator that transfers rotational mechanical energy to electricity.
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The process for Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) is almost similar to a PWR except here is no secondary water and the primary cooling water is the water that gets turned into steam to drive the steam turbine (Ricci, M.D., personal communication, March 29, 2020). Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR) is the exact same as PWR, except they use heavy water. Heavy water is composed of two heavier atoms of hydrogen, that consist of one proton and one neutron in its nucleus, and one atom of oxygen (Helmenstine, A. M., 2019). PWRs, BWRs, and PHWRs are the most common of the few nuclear reactors in the world and as of 2020, 85% of the world’s electricity is generated from PWRs (Nuclear Power Reactors, 2020).
Is Nuclear Power Bad for the Environment?
A clear definition must be used when determining if nuclear power is bad for the environment. As with everything in life, there is always going to be an associated risk.
It must be determined if nuclear power poses a greater threat to the environment than its benefits. One way to look at the effect of nuclear power on the environment is to look at its emissions during the electricity generation process. According to Pravalie and Bandoc (2018) “the average quantity of CO2 emissions per unit of electricity generated is currently 15g CO2/kwh” which is “~30/50/70 times smaller than the emissions generated by the combustion of gas/oil/coal” (p. 85). But it isn’t justified to say that nuclear power plants have significantly less emissions than conventional power plants based solely off daily operation of the power plants. The procurement of fuel and the construction of the power plant itself also plays a role in the overall emission process of power plants. When taking into consideration infrastructure, the fuel procurement process, and the daily operation, the emissions released from the very beginning into the environment are still less than that of conventional power plants (Turconi, Boldrin, & Astrup, 2013).
As history has shown, nuclear power plants have the possibility of releasing harmful radionuclides into the environment when the most sever accidents occur. The three most notable and referenced accidents are the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukashima power plant accident. The impact of the Chernobyl accident has left the surrounding 30km as an exclusion zone to the country. Let’s say an accident was to occur that caused a meltdown of the James A. Fitzpatrick nuclear power plant, where Mr. Ricci works.
There is a permanent containment structure that surrounds the reactor that is “designed with the purpose to contain the entire amount of energy contained in the core including heat and pressure that is likely to come from such an event” (Ricci, M.D., personal communication, March 29, 2020). The entirety of the radioactive material that leaked out of the core during this accident would inevitably be stopped from reaching the outside environment by the containment structure specifically built for this purpose. Accidents can’t be completely prevented and that is why “multiple redundant power supplies and safety systems and high strength containment’s have been added/designed for the [Nuclear] power plants” (Ricci, M.D., personal communication, March 29, 2020).
Everything is considered when designing a nuclear power plant to minimize the chance of a core meltdown such as training personnel for a year to a year and a half before they are allowed to operate the power plant under supervision, the procedures written that the operators must strictly follow, layers of safety measure set in place, and even having snag proof switches in the control room to prevent inadvertent manipulation of controls (Ricci, M.D., personal communication, March 29, 2020). These precautions are set in place to combat the likelihood of a reactor plant meltdown.
Nuclear power plants generate radioactive waste that must be properly stored in specially designed containers and not disposed of. Like the rest of the United Sates, the James A. Fitzpatrick nuclear power plant stores all the radioactive waste locally on site in these specially designed containers that are monitored regularly (Ricci, M.D., personal communication, March 29, 2020). The reason this is the current storage method is because the state of Nevada is opposed to using Yucca Mountain as the permanent underground storage facility for all the waste of the entire country. Even though Yucca Mountain was established in 1987 as the permanent storage facility, it is still not in operation to store the radioactive material (Holt, 2019) and no other underground facility in the world has been established to store nuclear waste (Pravalie & Bandoc, 2018).
What is the Mortality Rate for Each Operating Hour of Nuclear Power Plants?
Determining the loss of life due to the operation of nuclear power plants is one way to rationalize its usefulness as a primary source of electricity. Dai et al. (2019) calculated the health risks of nuclear power using the Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY), which is the years of healthy life lost due to illness or early death, from radionuclide emissions from a selected number of nuclear power plants in operation or under construction in China for the years 2020 and 2030. This data was analyzed and compared to the emissions of conventional power plants that nuclear power would have prevented from being emitted.
In addition to this information, a simulation was also conducted to determine the risk associated with nuclear power in the event of an accidental release of radionuclides into the surrounding environment in 2030. For individuals living within 80 km of nuclear power plants in China, there will only be “9.1 days of DALY” and “individual exposure doses caused by gaseous radionuclides in nuclear power plants are within safe limits, and the health impact on the population is negligible” during normal plant operating conditions in 2030 (Dai et al., 2019, p. 203).
But with everything, there is always some form of risk, and nuclear power is no exception. When considering nuclear accidents from the simulation in 2030, the largest DALY from the worst-case scenario was 9199 years that came from 353 deaths and 423 illnesses (Dai et al., 2019). Quantifying the usefulness of an energy generation source based on the human mortality rate method is morbid, but this method must be utilized when comparing nuclear power to other forms of energy generation that may also cause harm or unwanted side effects to people.
Why doesn’t the United Sates Recycle/Reprocess Spent Nuclear Fuel?
In 1987, President Jimmy Carter believed that reprocessing spent nuclear fuel “will create a dangerous-weapons grade plutonium” and therefore canceled the reprocessing of spent fuel in the United States (Smith, 1980). As Pravalie & Bandoc (2018) stated “it [United States] is the largest producer of radioactive waste” which can be countered by reprocessing this waste, which would lower the volume of nuclear waste generated (p. 88). France, unlike the United States, relies on nuclear power for 80% of its electricity and has been recycling spent fuel since the 1970s without any incidents regarding lost uranium or the creation of nuclear weapons (Spencer, 2007). Although reprocessing nuclear waste would make a huge impact on the current volume of unprocessed waste, not all the nuclear waste would be recycled, and the rest of it would still require permanent underground storage, which is still not set in place as discussed before.
Conclusion
Like many other methods of electricity generation, nuclear power has it faults, but it also has strengths. This literature review has covered the basic operation of a nuclear power plant as well as some of the common issued associated with it. Currently, the United States is heavily dependent on other sources of power generation and moving over to nuclear power would require years of planning and construction along with general public acceptance.
