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Wednesday, 19 October 2016

NUCLEAR CRISIS

Nuclear energy as defined by Wikipedia in simple terms is "The Use of  of Nuclear reactions that release Nuclear energy to generate heat". The most common agreed upon use of Nuclear Energy is to generate electricity, this result is reached through generally two ways NUCLEAR FUSION AND NUCLEAR FISSION. Nuclear Fusion involves fusing together atoms to form larger atoms and unlike Fusion, Fission is the process of breaking the atoms into smaller atoms to release energy. Nuclear reactions involve changes in an atom itself and transmutation of one element into a different isotope or a different element altogether.
As it may sound, this chemical reaction is very delicate and equally threatening. The Crisis that have been a part of this reaction historically are well known. Other than that of Atomic Bombs, the side effects of these reactions such as nuclear test GOING WRONG and NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS are the crisis of concern in today's article. Hence the following are the biggest accidents in chronological order:

  • The SL-1 was a nuclear reactor of United States Army. It underwent a steam explosion and meltdown on 3 Jan 1961 killing its three operators. The direct cause was the improper withdrawal of the central control rod, responsible for absorbing neutrons in the reactor core.
  • The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 in the No.4 Light water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Pripyat, in what was then known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
  • Last but not the least, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was an energy accident initiated primarily by the tsunami following the Tohoku earthquake on 11 March 2011. This event took place in Fukushima, Japan.
The picture painted by the aforementioned crisis is not hard to understand and the critics can easily fathom and deduce the reaction's effects. The cell mutations is the crisis that arise when the nuclear chemicals spread into the nature. This has long term effects on the Human Body and the illnesses associated with the mutations pass onto generations as witnessed by the surviving victims.

Solution:
The UN's perturbation on ill use of nuclear power is comprehensible hence the initiative is immediately taken to avoid any more deaths or property destruction. The international Atomic energy agency was setup in 1957 as the world's center for cooperation in the nuclear field, the Agency works with its Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote the SAFE, SECURE and most importantly peaceful use of nuclear technologies for a better world. The nuclear energy is a solution to the energy crisis of the world as exampled by the SUN itself. The consternation of the world over nuclear test at the beginning was understandable but to see it from the perspective of solving the issue haunting this world since the revolution of energy, now it is time to adopt strategies to develop and control this phenomenon for betterment of future.


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