Is Nuclear Energy As Clean AS They Claim?

A recent accident casts a grim shadow over nuclear energy.
You can't see it or smell it. You wouldn't know if it wafted through the window while your family ate dinner. But if radiation (radiating waves or particles emitted by some elements) were to accidentally spew from a local nuclear power plant--a plant that uses the radioactive element uranium to generate electricity--results could be dire.
"Immediately you might turn red and throw up," says Cindy Folkers at the Nuclear Information and Resource Center. Within a week, your hair and teeth might start to fall out--and your dog or cat could drop dead.
Exposure to radiation initiates changes in human cells that years later can lead to many types of cancer or cause organs to fail. It can also cause genetic mutations, changes in cells' hereditary information that can trigger birth defects for generations to come.
Yet many government leaders and nuclear industry officials around the world maintain that nuclear energy is necessary, efficient, and safe.
SAFETY FIRST?

Nuclear reactors, which split atoms of the radioactive elements uranium and plutonium to create nuclear energy, currently produce 20 percent of all electricity in the U.S. And stricter regulations have made plants safer than they were even 10 years ago, claims Victor Dricks, a spokesman at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
But what if something goes wrong, as it did  in Tokaimura, Japan? That morning, radioactive gas gushed into the air from a nuclear fuel factory 110 kilometers (70 miles) northeast of Tokyo. The Japanese Atomic Energy Research Institute recorded radiation readings immediately outside the plant at 20,000 times normal radiation levels! At least 55 people were exposed, mainly plant workers and firemen, two of whom may not survive radiation sickness.
Officials shut off all access to the city, ordered children to stay at school, and advised more than 300,000 city residents to remain indoors with windows tightly shut--and not to drink tap water. What went wrong?

CHAIN REACTION

Workers at the Tokaimura nuclear fuel factory mistakenly poured 16 kilograms (35 pounds) of uranium instead of the usual 2.4 kg (5.2 lbs) into a solution of nitric acid and water--the uranium solution is processed into fuel pellets that power nuclear reactors (see diagram, left).
The result was a sudden flash of blinding blue light--the ominous flash of radiation that occurs when uranium begins a chain reaction. When stray uranium neutrons (atomic particles with no electrical charge) strike other uranium molecules, the atoms split in an unchecked process called fission. This releases huge amounts of energy. (Controlled fission generates electricity in nuclear power plants.)
Twenty-one hours after the chain reaction began, rescue workers halted it by draining water from the mixing tank and smothering the uranium with boric acid, which absorbs maverick neutrons. The Tokaimura accident was the sixth major mishap at a Japanese nuclear facility since 1997.

To Be Continued..