AALL Internet Lesson: What is Nuclear Power and How Safe is it?

Student Online Activity Sheet

You have just completed a discussion about the words nuclear and radiation with your teacher and the other students in your class. some of the questions asked may have been:
What do these words mean?
Are there feelings you associate with these terms?
If you live in a major city in southern Arizona do you realize that you are usually downwind of a major nuclear power plant?

In this lesson you will explore numerous web sites to find answers to the question the lesson poses "What is Nuclear Power and How Safe is it?" You will see new vocabulary words in this lesson and may see some terms you have heard before but never quite knew what they meant. Here is a list of some of those words. It is recommended that you click on each one to read the definition before you begin the lesson. Just click the back button to come back to this page each time.

Dictionary of Terms
atom
nucleus
atomic number
atomic mass
radioactive
radioactive decay
alpha decay
beta decay
gamma radiation
half-life
fission
fusion
nuclide
isotopes
radioactive
stable (meaning 2.)
critical state
fission product
chain reaction
proliferation
If you should run into any other terms with which you are unfamiliar, you may try: Glossary of terms or try Harcourt Dictionary

Before we go on with the lesson proper, try the  Nuclear phobia quiz and report your results here.______________
Now go on and read about Fear and nuclear energy
Are you a victim of the media? Is nuclear power safe after all?

Part A: Background and History:

Before going on to see more about how nuclear power is generated and the problems associated with that generation, it would be helpful to read understanding the nuclear in nuclear radiation. What part of the atom does the word nuclear refer to? ______________________ What naturally occurring elements are radioactive?_______________________________
_______________________________________________________

At this point, you may still be unclear about what the nucleus has to do with radiation or radioactivity. Read Nuclear Structure down to the word "Half-life" and report here the three major kinds of radiation, where they come from, and what they are:
Name                From                    Composed of:

_____________ __________ ___________________________
_____________ __________ ___________________________
_____________ __________ ___________________________

For most people, the word radiation is not one they want to consider on a daily basis. Yet, if you read some interesting daily sources of radioactivity, you will see that it is tough to avoid.
 If you were trying to avoid radiation it might be a good idea to quit _______________________ (it's a nasty habit anyway), have those ________________________ removed (and replaced with gold?), and stop eating ________________________. Those are perhaps the three highest sources of radiation on the list. 
What was not the highest on the list, and in fact was one of the lowest sources of radiation, was living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant. Take a minute and figure out your yearly dose  :___________________.

Uranium is not only the heaviest naturally occurring element, and radioactive, but one of its isotopes can perform one more trick: read  How Nuclear Power Works and describe the induced fission of U-235:
________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________

The first nuclear reactor was actually built in 1942, for a interesting description of the event read the description of the first reactor The reactor was designed by _________________________, who had it built out of bricks made of _________________________, the same substance found in your pencil point.

If Fermi had no fear of operating a nuclear reactor on a squash court, and radiation much stronger than living near a nuclear power plant comes from living in a concrete block home, then what is the fuss? When did the fear start? Read the history of nuclear power plant design and safety concerns, a rather long but informative chapter from a book by Robert Pool. According to Pool, in the beginning people were happy to leave the worrying or risk assessment to ____________________________. This eventually turned out to be four groups: __________________________, _________________________, __________________________, and the suppliers and builders of the reactors: the nuclear industry. The four groups should have been of one mind concerning safety, but because of political pressures they were somewhat at cross purposes. The ________________ , composed of _____________________________, wanted to promote nuclear power. The ____________________ was composed of ___________________ who were interested in the big picture of reactor safety. The engineers at the ____________________________ were concerned with the nitty-gritty of a technical approach to reactor safety. And the nuclear industry, essentially businessmen, had as its core goal the making of profit. In the beginning the best approach to safety was to place reactors so that there was an exclusion radius: an area around the reactor where ______________________. Then General Electric came up with the idea of a _______________________. The greatest concerns centered around LOCA, an acronym for ______________________________________. The concerns about LOCA were the gravest for larger power plants, where a LOCA might cause a China Syndrome where ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________.
The problems in perception and perspective got worse in the early 1970ís. The public became involved in the question of safety in the form of three men associated with _____________________________, who challenged the building of a power plant near Plymouth, Massachusetts, and there were others elsewhere in the country challenging other power plants. Hearings were held which led to a perception by many involved that the AEC ignored ______________________ and catered to _____________________. This eventually caused the AEC to be dismembered and its responsibilities were turned over to two other groups: ___________________________ and ___________________________.
The times caused a change in safety philosophy: from considering the maximum credible accident and how to prevent or contain it, to probabilistic risk assessment (explain this concept in your own words):
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

Estimating the probability of major accidents was nearly impossible, but that didn't stop the AEC (before its demise) from hiring Norman Rasmussen, an MIT nuclear engineering professor, to do just that, and quickly. While Rasmussen's report actually detailed many ways that things could go wrong that had not been previously considered, the AEC summarized his findings as "a person was about as likely to die from an accident at a nuclear power plant as from being _________________________________________." The probability of a meltdown was only once in 17,000 reactor-years, according to Rasmussen. 
They were proved drastically wrong only five years later when the ___________ ________________________________ had a major accident and partial meltdown. No probabilistic risk assessment could have predicted this event. The _________________ of the systems was the main cause of the accident. Adding more safety features actually decreases safety at some point.  Since the accident in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has created more rules, specifications, and required documentation regarding safety. There has not been an accident in the United States since. However, the confidence of the public has not been regained.
Today's reactors are much more complex in design, not to mention safety features. First find out how power plants of all kinds work, click on the following words and read the paragraph that is titled Making Energy.  In a short sentence summarize how electricity is made.
____________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For a good, although still simplified demonstration of a nuclear power plant in action go to  How a nuclear reactor works. It is important to notice that there are three separate water systems: one in the ___________________, one in the ________________________, and a third one that cools the condenser (the water that was steam to turn the turbine until it was cooled down. The water that goes to the cooling tower never comes into contact with the water in the reactor and therefore should contain no radioactivity.

Nuclear energy is not the energy-of-choice predicted in the fifties, coal is. Fill in the chart to compare the two sources of power: 
Compare:                                                                                     

Check more comparisons to find another advantage and disadvantages for each power source:
            Advantage for                               Disadvantage for
Coal:_____________________ ____________________________
Nuclear:____________________ ___________________________

Part B: Issues and Concerns

To learn more about some of the major issues that are keeping nuclear power from being more widespread in the United States today, go to nuclear power and some of the problems, start reading at point nine of the answer to the question "What are the details on nuclear energy?" and read down to (but not including) the section "What about Breeders?".
According to these passages our biggest problems are the spent fuel rods and what to do about them. They should be ___________________ to reduce the amount of waste and to collect the _____________________  which is another element that be used as a nuclear fuel. The problem is it can also be used to construct bombs. For one opinion on this see  Nuclear Control Institute (NCI) website. Obviously, the United States isn't contributing to this problem because it does not ________________________ because of a decision by the _______________ administration (you may need to go back to  nuclear power and some of the problems to find these answers) in hope of stopping ____________________________. Not only have many countries developed nuclear bomb capabilities anyway (most recently India and Pakistan), it is questionable whether a terrorist could construct a bomb from spent fuel rods. Go to PBS Article Q: Can't plutonium produced in a reactor get into the wrong hands, and somebody with an elementary chemical training turn it into a bomb? which is about halfway through the article, part of an interview on "Frontline" and read on. There is a difference between the nuclear power plant fuel rods and the weapons production facility production reactor which is set up to specifically manufacture _____________________, the isotope of plutonium necessary for bomb manufacture.

The interview on "Frontline" was part of a show entitled "Nuclear Reaction: Why Do Americans Fear Nuclear Power?' Now read NCI's response to the Frontline show . (do a  search on frontline response on the nci main page) And to see the whole picture (because you have not seen a transcript of the entire show), you should read Frontline's response to the NCI If you think one or the other sounds more reasonable, which one is it, and why?
____________________________________________________

Many of the anti-nuclear groups have been accused of being alarmist (you may want a second look at Nuclear Control Institute website). Some of the groups are merely cautionary. The Sierra Club opposes any new nuclear power plants until three conditions are met; what are they (in your own words)?:
________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________

And for one more reading on nuclear waste nuclear waste explains what is/was supposed to happen to it.

Now that you have read all of this, do two things: first take the   Nuclear phobia quiz  and report you score
here: ________________
Then write an essay on whether or not you agree or disagree with the following statement: We should build more nuclear power plants. Support your opinion with facts and examples learned here or you may want to gain additional fuel from the sites listed below.

Some anti-nuclear links:
http://pw1.netcom.com/~res95/energy/nuclear/opposed.html 
http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/no.nukes/nenstcc.html 

A pro-nuclear link:
  Nuclear Control Institute website

Some links that may prove that low level radiation is beneficial:
http://www.junkscience.com/news/lehr.html 
http://www.ans.neep.wisc.edu/~ans/point_source/AEI/may95/long.term.html 

And for the curious:
For more information about Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant:
http://www.pnm.com/Investors/update/PVNGS.htm 
http://www.cannon.net/~gonyeau/nuclear/pvngs.htm 

For more information on Chernobyl:
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/chernobyl.htm l
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/chernobyl.html 
http://www.belarusguide.com/chern

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