Nuclear power generation: alternative for a clean energy in the future

V. Simionov, E. Bobric, I. Popescu

CNE-PROD Cernavoda

Environmental Problems with Fossil Fuels

A significant part of the energy is produced at present by burning fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas. The associated environmental problems exceed those of any other human activity: greenhouse effect which is supposed to change Earth’s climate, acid rain which is burning forests and killing fish and air pollution which make suffer a lot of people.

Human activities have been substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. These increases enhance the natural greenhouse effect and this will result on average in an additional warming of the Earth's surface and atmosphere and may adversely affect natural ecosystems and humankind. [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change]

All the participants at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change recognized that “all countries, especially developing countries, need access to resources required to achieve sustainable social and economic development and, in order for developing countries to progress towards that goal, their energy consumption will need to grow taking into account the possibilities for achieving greater energy efficiency and for controlling greenhouse gas emissions in general, including through the application of new technologies in terms which make such an application economically and socially beneficial.

From the technological point of view, the obvious way to avoid these problems is to use nuclear fuels. Nuclear power almost completely avoids all the problems related to fossil fuels. The impact of nuclear industry on population health or environment is related to radiation and, as we will show, is relatively minor. However, regardless of many favorable arguments, the acceptance of nuclear power is largely an emotional issue. Scientific community has always been firmly supportive of nuclear power development but the public opinion was negatively influenced when several groups opposed to nuclear power formed and gained support from the media to depict it as a dangerous technology operated by incompetents.

After Three Mile Island accident (1979) a set of modifications was developed to directly respond to safety related problems that really revolutionized nuclear industry. All over the world, in USA, Canada, Japan or Western Europe countries, billions of dollars were spent to improve safety programs. Unfortunately the worst reactor accident of all time occurred in 1986 at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union, where reactor safety has received much lower priority.

Understanding Risks

One of the main obstacles in gaining widespread public acceptance of nuclear power is that the great majority of people does not understand and quantify the risk. Every human activity involves risks. There are risks in travels, but also in staying home (25% of all fatal accidents occur there). There are dangers in eating – food is one of the most important causes of cancers and of several other diseases – but most people eat more than necessary. There are dangers in breathing – air pollution probably kills 100 000 Americans each year, inhaling radon and its decay products is estimated to kill 14 000 a year, and many diseases like influenza, measles, and whooping cough are contracted by inhaling germs. …Risk is an unavoidable part of our everyday lives.

There are many ways of expressing quantified risk ,one of them being the loss of life expectancy (LLE); i.e. the average amount by which one’s life is shortened by the risk under consideration. The LLE is the product of the probability of a risk to cause death and the consequences in term of lost life expectancy if it does cause death. (Bernard Cohen The Nuclear Energy Option, Plenum Press, 1990) Some of the averages LLEs in the USA are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1  Loss of Life Expectancy (LLE) due to various risks

Activity or risk	LLE (days)
Living in poverty	3500
Cigarettes (male)	2300
Heart disease	2100
Working as a coal miner	1100
Cancer	980
All accidents	400
Air pollution	80
Occupational accidents	74
Radon in homes	35
Radiation worker (age 18 – 65)	25
Airline crashes	1
Living near nuclear plant	0.4
All electricity, nuclear (NRC)	0.04

The additional risk associated to the full nuclear program in the USA is equivalent to the risk induced by the rise of highway speed limit from 55 miles per hour to 55.006 miles per hour and is two times less of danger than switching from midsize to small cars. (Bernard Cohen The Nuclear Energy Option, Plenum Press, 1990)

In order to discuss radiation exposure, quantitatively dose equivalent was introduced which is measured in milisievert, abbreviated mSv.

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