elon musk recently suggested that europe ought to restart investing in nuclear power to reduce
its energy dependence on russia his statement that radiation risks are exaggerated suggest that these
risks are much lower than most people believe although how much truth is there to this well
the recent fire accident at the zapparizia nuclear power plant in ukraine judo russian shelling sent
shockwaves across the world but the fire at one of the largest nuclear power plants in europe
was soon controlled and there were no reports of casualties or major damages the incident brought
to light the real risks of nuclear catastrophe this was of course not the first time the ukraine
has been involved in a serious radiation event memories from the chernobyl disaster still remain
fresh for many and at the time ukraine was a part of the former ussr or the soviet union
the city of chernobyl still remains a ghost town and the general population is not allowed to enter
the area surrounding the power plant due to high radiation to this day
well the fire accident at the zaparizia nuclear power plant initiated a decade old debate on how
safe exactly a nuclear energy is we all know the benefits of a nuclear power include 24 7
reliable supply no carbon emissions and potential to aid in lowering the dependence on fossil fuels
like coal and petroleum however aftermaths of the chernobyl and fukushima nuclear disasters make us
think about whether the risk is worth taking nuclear power plants which came into existence
in the 1950s account for approximately 10 of the global electricity supply from about 440 reactors
only 32 countries operate nuclear power plants and more than 50 countries are benefited from the grid
supply system so we come to our original question which is how safe are these nuclear power plants
well the answer is not an easy one as it involves a lot of technical analysis regarding the entire
process of power generation starting from uranium enrichment to the safe disposal of nuclear waste
natural uranium is not radioactive and cannot be used as fuel it needs enrichment and processing to
make the fissile material to be used in reactors a reactor is a place where a nuclear chain reaction
occurs and heat is released which is then used to produce steam to roll the generator's turbine
so back to the question how safe are nuclear power plants well the right question is actually how
safe is safe enough like any high-end technology which possesses the potential for mass destruction
it comes with numerous fail-safe systems the companies involved in the construction
and operation of nuclear power plants run several tests based on different scenarios
that could lead to a potential failure events like earthquakes of high magnitude cyclones floods
fires and failure of containment or the cooling system or backup supports are all accounted for
in the designing and planning phase mock drills are run before the plants become operational
the two most common methods for the risk assessment of nuclear plants employed by designers
are deterministic methods and probabilistic methods under the deterministic method the
designing team postulates an accident assumes a signal failure criterion and then includes the
failure of the backup system that would be placed in the situation a reactor is declared safe enough
when this safety study demonstrates that there will be no system failure in the sequence of
hypothesized accidents the problem with the method is that it treats more common incidents the same
way it treats rare ones the second method employed for risk assessment i.e the probabilistic method
is based on the facts of how much risk people or the government is willing to take there are
nuclear regulatory agencies that set standards for the construction and operation of nuclear plants
there have been a very few nuclear power plant accidents so it's very difficult to quantify
risks based on experience most of the nuclear power plants operating today
use the deterministic method to determine at their safety standards it could of course be
supplemented with the probabilistic method for risk-informing regulations now that you're up
to speed hit the bell icon to stay up to date i'm molly shields for kalkine media