Risk of Nuclear Power - Essay Example

Risk of Nuclear Power Risk of Nuclear Power The rapid technological development in every sphere of life has tremendously increased the amount of power used. Across the globe, scientists are trying their best to explore the new sources and ways of energy to meet the power demand. Also they are trying to improve the existing resources of energy to ensure safe and efficient use of such resources. Nuclear energy is one of existing energy resources that can be used to produce power through nuclear reactors.

Yet the use of nuclear energy as a source to generate power is associated number of risks. The principle risks associate with nuclear power are the health effects from direct exposer of nuclear radiation. For power generation, nuclear reactors use radioactive materials as fuel. From fuel enrichment stage its waste and even after that the radioactive materials remain active in emitting radiation. During fuel enrichment, transportations, handling, reactors operation and waste storage process a minor leakage of nuclear radiation brings sever health and environmental issues.

The exposure from low to medium radiation badly damages the biological cells resulting different types of cancer and genetic diseases in progeny. Very high radiation exposer severely damages the most of human body systems stopping all functions that leads to an immediate death (Cohen n. d). A major risk associated with nuclear power generation is nuclear reactors core or fuel meltdown due to extremely high temperature. Though they are very few incidents of nuclear reactor meltdown yet they result number of casualties along with sever environmental consequences.

Also, in case of natural calamity, the issues to control and shut down of nuclear reactors also impart another risk associated with nuclear power. Additionally, improper storage and handling of used reactors fuels also pose a threat both to humans and environment (Cohen n. d). The information given in article is relevant to the information presented by Trfil and Hazen in their book; The Sciences: An Integrated Approach in many respects. Both the works highlighted the radiation, its types, applications and the risks associated with radiation.

Also detail discussion about the nuclear reactors, their structure and construction and types of nuclear reactions has been given in article just similar to the course work given in above mentioned book written by Trefil and Hazen (2007). The importance of above cited article is attributed due to fact that it gives detail information about nuclear radiation, the nuclear power generation and the risks and hazards associated with it. The cited article also gives an overview of various past nuclear accidents and their associated consequences and hence in view of information obtained we can profess the probability of likelihood of such incident in future Reference ListTrefil, J.

, & Hazen, R. M. (2007). The Sciences: An Integrated Approach. Chennai, R. R. Donnelley VPH. Cohen, B. L. (n. d.). Risks of Nuclear Power. University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved from http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/np-risk.htm