Nuclear talk - SYSTEM ENGINEERING INITIATIVE (SEI)

SEI GOALS :
•Engage engineering undergraduate students in interdisplinary and multilevel team projects sponsored by government/industry to:

oTarget students from underrepresented groups
oImprove student retention in engineering
oEnhance the engineering education of our undergraduates with real world experience

SEI BENEFITS :

Industry Benefits :-
•Increase research capability
oGain low-cost research
oScope/incubate project
oHelp develop high-tech workforce
oIncrease public awareness of engineering value

•Increase Access to students
oEnhance engineering value
oIdentify potential hires

Social Benefits :
•Enhance university
•Enhance engineering
•Encourage STEM
•Expand research infrastructure
•Increase technical workforce

Faculty Mentor Benefits :
•Enhance research activity
•Develop a pool of graduate students
•Network with industry/government

Graduate Mentor Benefits :
•Earn salary
•Learn project management
•Develop leadership skills
•Broaden research experience
•Network with industry/government

Government Benefits :
•Expend the research infrastructure
•Increase public awareness
•Help develop high-tech workforce
•Enhance education
•Encourage STEM
•Support underrepresented student populations
•Provide financial support to students

University Benefits :
•Enhance engineering education
•Increase overall research activity
•Support interdisciplinary education/research
•Support underrepresented student populations

Undergraduate Students :
•Gain real-world research experience
•Learn to work in a team environment
•Gain opportunity for mentoring

SEI PROJECTS IN NUCLEAR :-
•The multilevel, multidisciplinary teams paired with STP mentors working on real-world plant problems :
oEAB room heat up under HVAC failure
oEAB building neutral load analysis
oInterfacing systems LOCA analysis
oSpent fuel pool loading tool development
oEvaluation of probability of loss of service of transportation and electrical networks

SEI OUTREACH :-
•Students must participate in multiple Outreach Activities :
oHigh School and Civic Group Presentations
oGeorge Bush Library and TAMU activities
oHouston Hispanic Forum

•Dual Focus :
oGenerate interest/excitement for STEM careers
oProvide information regarding college from a student perspective

Beware the FEAR of NUCLEAR....

It is frightening to watch what’s going on with Japan’s nuclear plant at Fukushima. It is also worrying to watch the fear racing around the world as a result of those events, fear that in some cases is far in excess of what’s going on, or even the worst case scenarios of what might happen.

The Japanese are facing the danger of a meltdown and release of dangerous amounts of radiation into the environment.

But the world is facing the risk of getting the risk of nuclear power wrong, and raising the overall risk to public and environmental health far more in the process. It is vitally important to keep our fears in perspective as we weigh all our energy choices in a world confronted both by climate change, and by several hundred thousand premature deaths from local particulate pollution from burning fossil fuels each year.

There is serious trouble at the Daiichi plant. Explosions, releases of low levels of radiation, failure of cooling systems, damage to the nuclear reactor. A meltdown of at least some of the highly radioactive fuel seems frighteningly probable. The word ‘catastrophe’ is showing up more and more in the news, and is a realistic possibility.

But the Japanese themselves have taught us, in the most awful way imaginable, what the actual health danger of radiation like this might be, and we need to keep the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in mind as we assess how catastrophic events like this actually are.

We know from studying the survivors of those bombings, who were bathed in horrific doses of high level radiation – far worse than anything that could come from the Daiichi plant (or that came out of Chernobyl) – that ionizing radiation from nuclear energy is a carcinogen, but a relatively weak one. The roughly 100,000 survivors of the two atomic bomb blasts are known in Japan as hibakusha, and they are honored, and given special rights.

They have also been extensively studied, and 66 years later, by comparing them to cancer rates among Japanese not exposed to radiation, public health researchers estimate that only about 500 of the hibakusha died prematurely from cancer due to radiation exposure. Radiation-induced cancer killed roughly half of one percent of the exposed population. (This research is done by the Radiation Effects Research Institute, a Japanese organization supported by international public health agencies)

We also know that many of the children of hibakusha women pregnant at the time they were exposed suffered horrible birth defects. Studies of the atomic bomb survivors have also taught us, however, that there is apparently no generational genetic impact from radiation exposure. Kids born to parents who got pregnant after the exposure, were normal.

Based on studies of atomic bomb survivors, the World Health organization estimates the maximum lifetime death toll from cancer due to radiation exposure from Chernobyl, of roughly 800,000 people, will be about 4,000.

And what about environmental damage? A huge area around Chernobyl is off limits to humans for hundreds of years. But that’s to limit human exposure to ionizing radiation which, while dangerous, is less so than many of us presume. With people removed, wildlife in those areas is thriving

So why the nuke-o-noia? It is human nature that when we hear about a risk, we react quickly and instinctively, before we have all the facts, by interpreting the first facts we hear through what we already know. (The academics called this the ‘representativeness’ heuristic.)

Just look at what people are saying about events in Fukushima…comparing them to Three Mile Island, or Chernobyl. Anyone who has those frightening events in the back of their minds, or the atomic bombings of Japanese cities, applies the few bits of information about what’s going on in Fukushima against that background.

And something called Confirmation Bias – we listen to and believe the people and information that confirms what we already believe – means that anybody predisposed against nuclear power will magnify the scarier aspects of what’s going on. (There is a long and frightening list of heuristics and biases that contribute to the instinctive way we make judgments here.)

On top of that, psychologists have found that risks have certain ‘personality traits’, psychological characteristics that make some feel scarier than others. Nuclear power is scary because it is invisible and odorless, which means we can’t detect it and protect ourselves, and feeling like we lack control makes any risk scarier.

Nuclear radiation is human-made, which is scarier than natural risks, like radiation from the sun (which kills 8,000 Americans per year from skin cancer). And radiation can cause cancer, a particularly painful way to go, and anything that involves more pain and suffering understandably causes more concern.

So nuclear radiation, in addition to being actually physically hazardous, has some psychological characteristics that make it particularly frightening, and a frightening history, and as a result, the worst case scenarios get played up, and magnified in the scream-a-thon that 24/7 global communication creates around events like those in Japan. Fear of nuclear energy is reinforced, fear that unquestionably in the coming weeks and months will infect the ongoing debate over what kind of energy future we should have.

Nuclear energy certainly has its risks, but are they as great as those from burning coal and oil, given what’s happening to the climate of the earth? Are nuclear emissions, including releases from accidents, as bad as the particulate pollution from fossil fuels? Not close. Remember the low radiation-induced cancer death toll among the hibakusha, or the WHO estimate of 4,000 lifetime cancer deaths from radiation for Chernobyl. Fossil fuel particulates kill several hundred thousand people around the world per year. (Estimates for this risk are all over the place, but Dr. Joel Schwartz of the Harvard School of Public Health, a pioneer in the study of air pollution risks, estimates the number could be as high as 250,000 in the United States alone, annually. Estimates for the annual US death toll from fossil fuel particulate pollution, on the low end, are 20-30,000.)

Catastrophe? Yes, we should worry about what’s going on in Japan, and about the risks of nuclear energy. But the more we exaggerate those risks, the more overall harm we could be doing to ourselves, by letting our fears drive energy policy that heavily favors a much more dangerous fossil fuel-based power supply.

As powerful a tool as our risk perception system is for keeping us safe in general, sometimes that instinctive/emotional system can get risk wrong, in dangerous ways. We need to watch events in Japan, and watch what we say and how we feel about those events, if we want to make the healthiest possible choices about how to keep ourselves safe.



About the Author: David Ropeik is an Instructor at the Harvard Extension School and author of "How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts".

Statement of potential conflict of interest: I covered nuclear issues as a environmental reporter in Boston for 22 years, then wrote a book, RISK A Practical Guide for Deciding What’s Really Safe and What’s Really Dangerous in the world Around You which includes a chapter on nuclear radiation, (paid for by the publisher, Houghton Mifflin). It floored me to learn what science knows about the carcinogenicity of ionizing radiation. In my teaching and consulting career I have worked for the IAEA to help them prepare communications materials for emergencies, and helping their member states do the same, and I have lectured to communications officers of nuclear companies and their trade association, on how to communicate to the public more honestly. The full list of my clients is on my website, www.dropeik.com



The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

The Future is Nuclear

I lifted the following article from The STAR few months back:
Malaysia is taking note of the Japan nuclear crisis when implementing its plan to build two nuclear power plants in the future, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today.
He hat while the government is concerned about public safety and is watching developments in Japan, he remained confident that Malaysia would “implement what is the best” for the country.

The deputy prime minister stressed that the government would learn from Japan to ensure public safety.

“I think it is something which every country in the world is taking note of, what is happening in Japan. There are many things that we can learn but what is important is the safety of the country and the people.

“In this matter, we have an agency that is responsible and they know what they are doing and we are confident that they will implement what is the best,” he told reporters during a press conference today.

Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Peter Chin had also said that the “government will not do it secretly without informing the public”.

Chin added that the Malaysia Nuclear Power Corporation had opened a tender to international consultants to conduct a study on the location, suitability and safety of the location, type of technology and public acceptance of the proposal.

However, MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek yesterday had called on the government to reconsider building a nuclear plant following the explosions to nuclear reactors in Japan after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country.

He said the government must re-evaluate nuclear power in the country.

Reuters reported today that Japan’s Prime Minister Naota Kan has warned that radioactive level in the vicinity of the Fukushima Daiichi plant had become high and that the risk of more radioactive leakage was increasing.

* This news article has been edited for clarity.

DID YOU KNOW.........

Did you know that Einsteins famous theory E=mc² is closely related to the Nuclear fission process. This equation explains how energy is turn from mass to energy in a form of heat and radiation. This energy release of turning mass into energy is called the binding energy theory and this binding energy is energy released in when fission takes place in a nucleus.

E=mc²
E :- Energy released when mass is turn into energy
m :- mass defect ( mass lost due to binding energy in an atom)
c:- speed of light 300,000,000 (meters per-second)

In a fission process when an atom splits into 2 certain amount of mass will be annihilated or lost in the form of energy which is the binding energy and this is the energy that we harvest in a nuclear reactor to produce usable electricity. Whereby, the lost mass times multiply with the speed of light, we can estimate the amount of energy produced in a fission process.

Nuclear waste..eeeeeeeeee!!!

This has been a debut of most people around the world for quite some time now. This is one of the main concerns of people who are anti nuclear around the world and even if Malaysia is about to introduce nuclear power plant in the country, this would be the main issue discussed.

To contain the nuclear waste, the final disposal facility should be located several hundred meters underground. It was found that rocks and sands in the earth's crust would be able to block most of the radiations from coming out of the nuclear waste facility. Scientist have found a natural nuclear reactor that had reactivity and also highly radioactive waste product which stayed put without the elaborate containment we use today on nuclear power plant waste." More than a billion years later, everything is contained within a few meters of its source." (quoted from http://geology.about.com/od/geophysics/a/aaoklo.htm).

Fig 1: Underground waste management facility

The modern waste management facility would look like this. With the disposal canister and all the protection in it, leakage of radiation is impossible but still scientist and engineers have designed the canisters for the worst conditions.The canister itself would look like this. With all the impact absorbers and all the layers of protection it is expected not to leak any radiation.

Fig 2:Disposal Canister

For those who are wondering that the radiation is not leaking but it is actually harming the environment by the leakage of the radioactive waste, the solution for it has already been done. It was found that if the radioactive waste is mixed with glass the waste would become immobilized. Which means it would not leak into the environment.

HOW TO READ THE TABLE

As said by my group partner, there are 4 main types of reactors which are the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR), Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) , Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (AGR), Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor or CANDU reactors.

The way to look at the table is, first look at the major features. That is the row that tells you what type of reactor that is. For instance, AP 1000 is a type of PWR power plant and EPR is European Pressurized Reactor. The rest you could google it up and it will be interrelated to the types that I mentioned above. Then move on to vendor and you will find the name of the vendor and from there we can find where is the origin of that technology. One of the main criterion that is used for choosing the reactor is the output power. Its measured in MWe. Different types of reactor produces different amount of power.

Next is the plant efficiency and this value is the value that shows that out of all the excess heat, only that percentage of electricity is successfully converted. Then we can see the design life and nowadays its commonly made to up to 60 years. We could also see the amount of time needed to construct a power plant as well and the lesser it is the better it is. There is another row as well for "Extensive use of Prefab". What that refers to is the prefabrication of the construction parts and and assembling it at the construction site compared to conventional method of building the parts at the site. This would also reduce the time needed for construction of power plant.

Then you can see the containment row, it shows the amount of containment layer exist in the power plant. The more the better for this. Then there is safety system, and there is two types which are active and passive. The active ones has a higher chance of failing since it depends on some mechanisms which depends on electricity. If there is a power break down, then this mechanism doesn't work. Its better to have passive safety systems then. Next is the core catcher function, which is also another important safety feature in a reactor and the availability of it is good for our country. Fuel lattice type just explains to us the fuel rods assembly. The last is the availability of steam generators. A BWR reactor wouldn't have steam generators since it works by creating steam by itself. For the PWR reactor, the heat produced from fission would be transferred to the steam generator and the steam would rotate turbine for power. One of the best reactors for Malaysia is the AP1000 of the PWR type.

TYPE OF REACTORS

The impotent part of a nuclear power plant is the reactor itself. This is because the fission process takes place in the reactor. There are many different types of reactors which uses many different types of technology's to ensure the fission process is in its optimum performance and it is safe enough to contain the radiation of the fission products. The reactor technology has been improved drastically since the 1950's. These improvement is categorized into few categories according to the year the reactor generation is introduced. From the year 1950 - 1965 were the Generation I reactors (early prototypes), 1965 - 1995 Generation II reactors (commercial reactors used in most of the current nuclear power plant), 1995 -2010 Generation III (Evolutionary reactors), 2010 - 2030 (Evolutionary III+ reactors) and finally 2030 onward there is the Generation IV reactors which can produce hydrogen as the its by product.

In the Nuclear reactors which are available today are categorized in to almost 4 major types of reactors. Which are; the most comment reactor the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR). Next is the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor.(ABWR). Other than that there is the Advance Gas Cooled reactor (AGR). Then finally we have the Presurized Heavy Water Reactor or simply the CANDU Reactor.

The table below show the types of Generation III reactors available in the market currently and their details.