Safety at the Plants

The safety in a nuclear plant should not even be questioned.  In 2001 the Paul Scherrer Institute (a Switzerland based organization which specializes in natural science research) did a study of deaths from generating electricity in one year and this is how it went: Coal-fired plants (includes the mining and transportation aspects) had 342 deaths, hydro-electric plants (includes dams collapsing) had 885 deaths, the Natural gas plants had 85 deaths, and Nuclear power had the least amount at 8 deaths.  This study was done in nearly every country (Hick, 2006). 

The only devastating non-natural disastor caused nuclear meltdown in history was at the Chernobyl Generating Station in Ukraine on April 26, 1986.  The reactors on the site had “design flaws” and the technicians were “under qualified” (West, n.d.).  The operator was trying to test out and see if the reactor could produce enough energy to keep the cooling pumps running in case of a power outage.  That is when an unexpected power surge caused an explosion inside the reactor; melting the fuel rods, exploding the graphite shell of the reactor, and then released a cloud of radiation into the air.  The explosion killed 30 people and injured hundreds.  That is the only nuclear meltdown in history causing direct death to people.  There has only been three nuclear meltdowns in history, the Chernobyl plant, Three Mile Island Generating Station in Pennsylvania and the most recent Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Japan.  There was no one killed at the last two mentioned; in fact at the Three Mile Island meltdown, there was not even a single injury. However, there is still a lot to be done about the Japanese meltdown which is truely unfortunate.

The reactors in Canada are all of the CANDU type.  The CANDU Reactor is built so that a meltdown is virtually impossible.  It has four emergency shutdown stages  each to ensure the safest conditions possible if a meltdown were to happen.  The first stage controls the substance by shutting off the flow of water and closing all of the pipes leading in and out of the core chamber.  The second stage injects a high-pressure liquid poison into the moderator causing the explosion to stop.  The third stage is the Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) which re-establishes the core by spraying coolant onto all of the reactor heads, cooling them down gradually.  Then the Containment System comes in and brings the pressure back down through a giant vacuum, filtering the air as it flows through.  The filters are then put into waste barrels and stored in a dry storage on site.  A CANDU Reactor has never had a complete or partial meltdown.  Because of that the operators of the reactor have to be trained in a simulator like that of an airplane pilot.  CANDU Reactors have been around since the 60s, so that is over 40 years of a safe, reliable and powerful source of energy in Ontario.  That statistic by itself should be enough to prove how safe nuclear energy production is.