Why are nuclear power stations safe to work at?

Answer 1

There are many, but three important ones are:

1. The control rod system is used for controlling the reactor criticality, but also for rapid automatic (or manual) shutdown if any monitored parameters indicate the need to trip or scram the reactor quickly

2. The decay heat removal system. After a shutdown decay heat still needs to be removed to avoid fuel damage, and if the plant has lost its grid connection as can happen, the emergency feed pumps can operate supplied from on station diesel generators.

3. Should there be any leak from the primary circuit, a secondary containment building completely surrounding the reactor plant will prevent it reaching the environment 4. Wear safety helmets, and flouescent clothing

Answer 2

There are two primary safety features in nuclear power plants. One is some kind of containment structure for the primary system, and the other is some kind of emergency cooling system to cool the nuclear core if things go sideways. The containment structure is designed to keep primary coolant from a major leak in the primary coolant system (and the colant will be radioactive to some degree) from escaping. As bad as that is, the primary mission of containment is to keep nuclear material, which may have broken free of the fuel elements in the core during a meltdown, from getting out into the environment. The clever engineering design and the strength of the reinforced concrete structure are supposed to keep things "under wraps" if it all goes to heck in a handbasket and the primary system is breached. The emergency cooling (XC) systems are designed to cool the fuel elements in the event of a major loss of coolant accident (LOCA). Failure of the primary cooling system could mean a meltdown. We need a way to pump lots of clean, cool water into the reactor vessel to directly cool the fuel if primary coolant is lost. High pressure pumps and a large volume of stored water are needed. Now that we've touched on the containment structure and the emergency cooling system, let's back up a bit. In a reactor, the primary useful product is heat, and we use the primary coolant to carry the heat off to generate steam in a secondary system. When a reactor is shut down after having operated at high power for more than a modest length of time, the fuel in the core still generates an immense amount of heat, and will do so for days after shutdown. The amount of heat is so great that without cooling following a rapid shutdown from extended high power use, the fuel will effortlessly generate enough heat to melt the fuel and the metal inside which it is clad. (That why we need the XC system - to cut this off.) Failure of the fuel cladding will spill the fission products, which are highly radioactive and remain so for many decades or even centuries, into the core. And without cooling, this material will literally "burn through" the reactor vessel itself and end up outside the metal barriers provided by the reactor vessel and all the heavy piping through which the primary coolant flows. If this stuff escapes confinement in the primary system's Plumbing, it is hoped that containment inside a "dome" or "blockhouse" of sufficient volume and made of thick, reinforced concrete will hold it. And that's why we have those big, heavy structures in place. The two "biggies" out of the way, we'll need lots of reactor monitoring equipment to keep track of all aspects of the system. There will be temperature and pressure monitoring equipment, and a ton of indicators as to what is open or shut, running or off, high in level or low in level, and more. This equipment will need to be well maintained and will need to work around the clock. We will need radiation monitoring equipment, and we'll need chemical analysis on site to check the status of the coolant and primary plant chemistry on a continuous basis. We will need a well-trained staff who are intimately familiar with all the (well written) operating and contingency procedures for the plant. All the safety features designed into a system and incorporated during construction go for naught if faulty equipment fools operators, or if the operators don't appreciate what their instruments are telling them and act (or react) incorrectly during any evolution of "excursion" they are involved in. Let's all hope everyone does everything right and that everything works correctly. And all of that at all times.

Answer 3

The extremely unlikely, yet possible, chance of a nuclear power plant causing a major disaster via meltdown has resulted in the implementation of not only the strictest safety regulations for any energy production industry, but for practically everyindustry there is. Therefore, the nuclear power sector is one of the safest industries, period. For example, since 1969 there has been only one nuclear power accident resulting in the immediate loss of 5 or more lives (Chernobyl, 31 people) whereas there have been 1044 such accidents resulting in 18, 017 deaths from Coal plants. If you normalize those numbers to take into account the fact that there are more coal plants than nuclear plants (using a term known as GWey, GigaWatt-year of electric power) you come up with Coal: .597 fatalities/GWey and Nuclear: .048 fatalities/GWey, showing that nuclear plants have thus far been roughly 10 times safer to work at than coal plants.

What about long term effects? Glad you asked. The high end probability value of nuclear power deaths over the next 70 years from Chernobyl is 33,000 (33 thousand) which is about the probability of all deaths caused by nuclear power accidents since the chance of a nuclear power accident per year is about one in one million. The high-end probability of deaths caused by natural background radiation over the next 70 years is about 50,000,000 (50 million). The high-end probability of deaths caused by coal power plants over the next 70 years is about 70,000,000 (70 million)

Answer 4

safety features found in a nuclear power station?

Answer 5

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