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Nuclear Safety

Yes, I believe Nuclear is safe and our best solution for Malaysia for the future energy sources.

First, we take a look why nuclear power plant should be close to oceans. Nuclear power plants should be close to oceans, or sea water to get the required cooling capacity for the steam condensate that is passing through the condenser. This condensate, after being cooled down, is recirculated back to the steam generators (in a closed circuit where is turned again into steam that passes over the steam turbines). Once the water is cycled through the cooling system, it would be sent to a cooling tower where it would cool off and be used again. Some water is lost through evaporation in the closed cooling system, so the cooling system would still have to intake some water. The closed cooling system would cut water usage by up to ninety-five percent and significantly reduce damage to the ecosystem and of course not affect the fish.

Exposure to the outside world can bring danger such as earthquakes. With the safety the first priority for nuclear plants, it is incumbent upon nuclear installation designer and builders to prepare for the worst that nature can bring to bear.


Usually nuclear plants have very compact sites of 500 to 1000 acres including the exclusion area around the plant. 

Containment - a building designed to sustain pressures of about 50 pounds per square inch. Normally houses the reactor and the related cooling system that contains highly radioactive fluids. Building is of steel construction. Sometimes the building is surrounded by a concrete structure that is designed for much lower pressures (3 pounds per square inch). The area between the steel and concrete building is called the annulus. Designs vary. At one facility there are 4 1/2 foot thick concrete walls reinforced with steel. The dome is 2 1/2 feet thick and the base 12 feet thick. The containment is the 3rd fission product barrier. In BWRs, the drywell is located in the reactor building.

Reactor Building- a building separate from the containment that houses much of the support equipment that may contain radioactive liquids and gases. Emergency equipment is also normally located in this building.

Turbine Building - a building that houses the turbine, generator, condenser, condensate and feedwater systems.

Intake Structure - a building that houses the circulating water pumps used to pump water from the river, lake, sea for cooling the condenser. Trash racks and traveling screens also remove debris to clean the water so that it can pass through the condenser tubes.

Fuel Building - a building separate from the containment that is used to spent fuel assemblies in steel racks in a large 40 foot deep storage pool. Casks for shipping or onsite dry storage of spent fuel assemblies will be loaded (or unloaded in this pool). A new fuel storage area is provided for receipt of new assemblies and storage prior to going into the containment and subsequently into the reactor during a refueling.

Diesel Generator Building - a building used to house the diesel generators and supporting systems (air, water, radiator fans, fuel oil, lubricating oil, air conditioning, and ventilation). In some cases, related electrical switchgear for distributing electrical power produced by the diesel generator. The Diesel generators that provide backup electrical power to safety and non-safety systems.

In some plants separate buildings or areas within the buildings mentioned above may house the following:

• Water treatment systems used to purify water so that it can be used in the power plant.
• Radioactive waste treatment systems used to purify and store radioactive liquids and gases.
• Cooling tower pumps used to pump water to cooling towers. Cooling towers are often used for power plants located on rivers and small lakes so that impact of temperature of discharged water on fish is minimized.
• Control Room  related electrical cabling, and ventilation systems (sometimes called the Control Building)
• Administration Building
• Security

Defense in depth.

Defense in Depth philosophy requires that nuclear facilities shall be provided with multiple defenses in depth to assure safety of nuclear facilities so that any single failure of SSC does not cause severe consequences. The risking formed defense-in-depth approach and the procedures however do not seem to have been sufficiently developed for seismic design of nuclear power plants.

Q

Defense-in-depth measures for nuclear power plants (NPP) consist of the following steps:

Level 1: Prevent occurrence of abnormal events

Level 2: Prevent propagation of abnormal events to accidents

Level 3: Mitigate consequence of accidents

Level 4: Severe accident management (AM)

Level 5: Off-site emergency response

Why a Nuclear Power plant CAN NOT Explode like a Nuclear Bomb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Bombs are completely different from reactors. There is nothing similar about them except that they both need fissile materials. But they need DIFFERENT fissile materials and they use them very differently. A nuclear bomb "compresses" pure or nearly pure fissile material into a small space. There is no other material in The volume containing the nuclear explosive. The fissile material is either the uranium isotope 235 or plutonium. If it is uranium, it is at least 90% uranium 235 and 10% or less uranium 238. There is no isotope separation problem if the fissile material is plutonium. These fissile materials are metals and very difficult to compress. Because they are difficult to compress, a high explosive [high speed explosive] is required to compress them. Pieces of the fissile material have to slam into each other hard for the nuclear reactions to take place. A nuclear reactor, such as the ones used for power generation, does not have any pure fissile material. The fuel may be 2% uranium 235 mixed with uranium 238. A mixture of 2% uranium 235 mixed with uranium 238 cannot be made to explode no matter how hard you try. A small amount of plutonium mixed in with the uranium can not change this. Reactor fuel still cannot be made to explode like a nuclear bomb no matter how hard you try. There has never been a nuclear explosion in a reactor And there never will be. [Uranium and plutonium are flammable, but a fire isn't an explosion.] The fuel is further diluted by being divided and sealed into many small steel capsules. The fuel is further diluted by the need for coolant to flow around the capsules and through the core so that heat can be transported to a Place where heat energy can be converted to electrical energy. A reactor does not contain any high speed [or any other speed] chemical explosive as a bomb must have. A reactor does not have any explosive materials at all. As is obvious from the above descriptions, there is no possible way that a reactor could ever explode like a nuclear bomb. Reactors and bombs are very different. Reactors and bombs are really not even related to each other.

 Nuclear power is the safest kind and it just got safer.

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NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE

Hye peeps! Hope, all of you in a good condition today. Again, about nuclear. But, for this time, i will talk about nuclear fuel cycle. Sounds interesting right? So, let see what it's all about.

Nuclear Fuel Cycle 

 

Figure 1: Nuclear fuel cycle

Nuclear fuel cycle or nuclear chain cycle is a process to generate electricity. It consists of 3 stages.

1. Front end fuel management.
2. In core fuel management
3. Back end fuel management

Front end fuel management is about preparation of the fuel, and in order to prepare it, those stages need to be done. First of all is mining and miling, following with conversion, enrichment, and fuel fabrication. And as a final result, electricity will be generated after steams from the water will turn the turbine in fuel fabrication process.

In core fuel management is about the fuel has been using in the reactor operation. While, for back end fuel management is about reprocessing or disposed spent nuclear fuel. The spent nuclear fuel that has been removed from the reactor will be hot and very radioactive, so it must be cooled and the solution is, stored it in the ponds at the reactor site. If the spent nuclear fuel is not reprocessed, we called it open fuel cycle, vice versa, closed fuel cycle.

 

Figure 2 : Cooling pond : In back end fuel management

Uranium
Definiton - A heavy silvery-white metallic element, radioactive and toxic, easily oxidized, and having 14 known isotopes of which U 238 is the most abundant in nature. The element occurs in several minerals, including uraninite and carnotite, from which it is extracted and processed for use in research, nuclear fuels, and nuclear weapons. Atomic number 92; atomic weight 238.03; melting point 1,132°C; boiling point 3,818°C; specific gravity 18.95; valence 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

reference from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/uranium

Uranium in nature consists primarily of two isotopes, U-238 and U-235. The numbers refer to the atomic mass number for each isotope, or the number of protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus. Naturally occurring uranium consists of approximately 99.28% U-238 and 0.71% U-235

Uranium mined from the earth's crust and actually not usable for power generation. But, by several processes, uranium can be efficiently generate electricity.

Figure 3: Uranium mining 

source from wikipedia.org

Mining
Mining is a process to extract the uranium from the hard rock. In mining uranium, it comprised of 3 ways. You can choose either one.

1. open cut mining (on the surface)
2. underground (blasting hard rock and ore to create large openings in the ground)
3. in situ leaching

In my opinion, the third way will be the best solution; in situ leaching because there are a lot of advantages if i'm using this way as my mining method compared with those two. Plus, after done with mining, we no need to proceed to miling process because uranium oxide already leached to form a uranium.The advantages of using in situ leaching are:

• less expensive
• less costly to build
• no solid waste
• less ground disturbance
• less rehabilitation required
• very little dust

Figure 4: In situ leaching process

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Nuclear Test ( 11.10.10)

 

It was the longest test because the test take time 3 and half hours..

The tests have two parts:

Part 1:  question 1, 2

Part 2: question 3, 4, 5

Since this semester only have one test, so we covered many chapters. Luckily, Sir Syukri, Sir Azzrudi and Sir Syamsul for the tips. Thanks sir.

The test supposed to start at 6pm ad finish at 7.30pm for the part one. Because of the previous class have presentation in that class so the test was delayed for 20 minutes.  So, the first part we start at 6.20 pm and finished at 7.50pm.

 Then, we had a break for 25 minutes. we feel excited to seat for the second parts since the first parts we can do well. Haha..

The second part test starts at 8.15pm and finished 10.15pm. The tips really help us to answers the question and thanks to Sir Syamsul because helped us to answers for the calculation questions.. Thanks to Sir Azzrudi also because of the hint to answered the bonus question..haha

I satisfied with the all of our answer and relief can answer the question well.

: D

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Should Malaysia build a nuclear power plant?

8 october 2010 (friday) NUCLEAR TALK.

It was very effective and informative talk  on nuclear power plant planning for our coutry today..,
Let us summarize of what we've been through the talk.,..,=)


 1. Malaysia aims to have nuclear power plant by 2021 

From some info,the  plan is for 2021, which now is about ten years, or eleven years gap between the actual  implementation where the reactor is functioning.Malaysia is now at the preparatory stage of building the      plant,adding that the country would have to first sign the relevant international treaties that it did not sign in      the past.

2.TNB ready to undertake Malaysia's first Nuclear Power Plant.
TNB, together with the Malaysian Nuclear Agency and Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water, had prepared preliminary papers for the government to consider. very impressive ! 

                                               TNB AND NUCLEAR POWER PLANT Read More

Radiation vs Radioactivity

Hi guys, today I would like to share with you all about the difference between radiation and radioactivity. Some of us still cannot differentiate between radiation and radioactivity.

Radioactive man !!!! 

: D

First of all, we look the definition Radiation and radioactivity.

Radiation :

Particles emitted in atomic or nuclear processes (neutrons, gammas–photons of nucleus origin, x-rays–photons of atomic origin, b-particles–electrons or positrons , a-particles–helium nuclei, heavy charged particles–e.g. FP)

Radioactivity:

A specific type of nuclear processes in which a nucleus spontaneously decay, emitting radiation in the process.

The radiation and radioactivity are related to each others. The ability to generate radiation is called radioactivity, while substances that possess this radioactivity are called radioactive substances.

For more clear, we take a look one example:

We taking the electric bulb as familiar example, where the light bulb would be the radioactive substances, the light rays emitting from the light bulb are the radiation, and the ability to generate the light is radioactivity.

Radiation can include alpha rays, beta rays, and gamma rays. The figures show the ability of the alpha rays, beta rays, and gamma rays.

 

The nucleus of a radioactive substance decays whenever it emits radiation, mutating successively into other substances until it reaches one that is not radioactive. 

The method used to for measuring the life of radioactive substance is called half life. Half life is the time required for the original radioactive level to weaken by one-half.

Figure show the unit of the radiation.

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