How does a nuclear meltdown affect the environment?

Answer 1

Generally speaking, a nuclear meltdown involves the release of highly radioactive materials into the nuclear plant where the reactor is. These very nasty substances may not be held within a containment structure, and they could escape into the environment. Once loose, they pose a threat to all life within the area. Further, the radioactive materials may be carried by air into surrounding regions, or captured by ground water and spread further in that manner.

Radioactive materials can cause tissue damage, and if even small amounts are ingested or (worse) inhaled, they can irradiate a living thing from the inside. Radioactive contamination of an area may make it unsuitable for habitation by people, and we could see a whole city evacuated and left to become a ghost town. The Russian city of Pripyat (in Ukraine) is a prime example.

Levels of radioactivity may not be sufficient to be "immediately" fatal to life in the area, but cancers and other medical issues will spike for individuals exposed. More people will become ill and die than would have in there were no radiation. Birth defects will become more frequent as well among peoples living in a radioactive environment.

Answer 2

Nuclear power plants running normally don't produce any nuclear pollution outside the plant. It takes a disaster such as Chernobyl to pollute the environment. Even the Three Mile Island reactor partial meltdown had virtually no effect in the local surroundings. It is easy to detect small amounts of radiation and areas around nuclear plants are checked regularly. Any increase over the background would soon be discovered, well before it had reached a level which would affect any person or animal.

Answer 3

The worst ever example of nuclear pollution occurred as a result of the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine in 1986, nothing else in the world approaches this in severity. The Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania in 1979 was trivial in comparison. Of course there have been cases of pollution from nuclear testing when that was carried out in the atmosphere, in the case of the US in the Pacific and in the Soviet Union in Central Asia. In the Pacific islands the population was moved in some cases because of fallout, we don't know much about the Soviet testing results.

An interesting paper is given as a link below, on Chernobyl. It is by a Polish professor who has been Chairman of the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and it seems to me to be reassuring. As he remarks, as a result of the disaster thousands of children were tested for thyroid cancers, so it is not surprising that positive results were obtained which would never have been known otherwise. This illustrates the danger of quoting raw results without thinking through what they are actually telling you.

Answer 4

Nuclear fusion in the sun is clearly the major factor in our environment on Earth, as it provides all the energy we receive from the sun. Nuclear fusion on earth is a dream for the future, but it should certainly have no more effect than fission power does, ie very little