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Tritium is one of those elements that just sounds bad. There’s something about the name that simply feels radioactive even before you know what the stuff is. That’s one of the reasons people have been so spooked by a new investigation the Associated Press conducted of Nuclear Regulatory Commission records, revealing that tritium has leaked from [...]
Of all the crucial decisions that Tepco engineers faced at the Fukushima Power Plant in the frenzied hours after the March 11 earthquake, none was more agonizing or difficult than this: should the company intentionally vent gas from the overheating reactors even though doing so would release radioactivity into the atmosphere? The decision took time—and [...]
Day by day, it seems, emergency workers are moving closer to bringing the Fukushima nuclear crisis under control. On Monday, IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano said he had “no doubt that this crisis will be effectively overcome”. But each day, too, seems to carry a reminder of how serious the situation remains: on Monday, workers were [...]
There is a very important report out today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) on the performance of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)—the government agency that enforces safety regulations for U.S. nuclear reactors in the hope of preventing a catastrophe such as is occurring in Fukushima. The report looks at 14 “near-misses” at U.S. [...]
On Monday, my colleague Jeffrey Kluger wrote an insightful post, “Butterfly Wings and Nuclear Disasters,” about how—with all respect to the Greek dramatists— there really is no such thing as a single “tragic flaw”; rather, tragedy results most often in the real world from the accumulation of small but significant mishaps. While that holds true [...]
Today I was scheduled to attend a press briefing in London with Sir David King, the former Chief Scientific Adviser to the British government. Sir David was due to address the future of nuclear power in the U.K.. This morning, I received a hurried voicemail from Sir David’s press spokesman: thanks to the events in [...]
Government officials have confirmed that radiation has leaked from the Fukushima power plant site in Northern Japan, where workers are scrambling to prevent a meltdown at two damaged reactors. The surrounding area has been evacuated. It’s difficult to ascertain how much radiation has already leaked from the plant–or what the exposure will be if either [...]
This week I wrote a piece for the magazine on what many energy analysts believe to be the future of the nuclear industry: small modular reactors. These mini reactors, which generate up to 300 megawatts compared to 1500 megawatts for traditional large nuclear power plants, are all the rage because they are versatile and [...]
Even if you love nuclear power (gee whiz, it’s carbon free!), you have to admit there’s a problem with using the energy that binds atoms as a source to power cities: nuclear waste. Fission produces isotopes that remain radioactive for thousands of years. And no one wants the waste anywhere near them. In December, [...]
