Nuclear Power Plant Will Evolve

In reality, nothing is safe. Driving a car to work may result in traffic accident. Walking down the street may result in being mobbed or hit by a vehicle. Eating may result in indigestion or stomachache. Jumping my cause the ankle to strain. Shouting may cause the voice to disappear. All things may lead to some sort of negative result if not being done properly or in a control manner. However, being a rational a person may always be, the above incident may not happen always, maybe sometimes.

The more dangerous actions or things are perceived as, the more careful the handling will be done. We are less careful when doing something that we do everyday like walking down the street. Sometimes we are too carefree that we do not look left and right when crossing the road. Oftentimes, we do not look down while walking assuming the roads are all even when in reality there could be a manhole being left open or nail sticking out waiting to pierce through our feet. Or driving a car, when are too used to it, we do not even wear the seatbelt. However we are more careful when doing things that we perceived as dangerous or risky such as bungee jumping. We want to make sure that the harness are tight and people who are maintaining the equipments are there to check on the equipments that you are wearing. Sometimes we insist that our equipments are being check twice or more times.

We are all well aware that nuclear bomb is dangerous, catastrophic. It can wipe out the whole city, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Nuclear power plant can be dangerous, like Chernobyl, it turned an industrial city in Soviet Union to become a dead city with no activity that light up the city. We have heard about the latest incident in Japan, when the tsunami and the great earthquake hit Japan on the memorable Friday noon of 11-3-2011. Today we are looking at the catastrophic events relating the nuclear power plants of Fukushima Daichi. It was design for 6.3 Richter earthquake, yet all safety features managed to halt the reaction when the 9.0 Richter earthquake started to tremble the city of Sendai. It was supposed to be a smooth shutdown of the nuclear power plant had it not been for the unpredictable tsunami. The cooling system failed when the 13 feet tsunami wipe out all backup power source, be it the diesel generator, mobile generator, the power grid and the batteries. Due to the failure of the cooling system, the reactor overheated, even though the nuclear reaction has been stopped or at least left to the bare minimum. The reactor continue to heat and causes steam built-up inside the reactor. The super hot steam coupled with unknown reaction (to me) produces hydrogen, lots of hydrogen which can explode easily. The reactor building exploded due to the hydrogen built-up.

The four units are all affected due to overheating. The explosions coupled with tsunami impact and continual tremor of the earthquake, caused cracks in the containment of the radioactive material which resulted in radioactive leakage. A radius of 20km affecting more than 200,000 people were being evacuated. It is horrendous and heart touching.

The risk of having a nuclear power plant is so great that the design is improving with safety as the main priority. The accident in Fukushima will initiate more robustness in the design. Therefore we can expect the nuclear plant in the future to be stronger, much stronger, able to withhold all knowns hazards, be it fire, fire crashing, etc. Of course, the cost of building it will be higher, but safety is not something we can take for granted.