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Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > Energy industries & utilities > Nuclear power industries
South Africa's Bomb kept the world guessing for years. Six-and-a- half nuclear bombs had been secretly built and destroyed, former South African President F.W. de Klerk announced in 1993. No other country has ever voluntarily destroyed its nuclear arsenal. From 1975 Nic von Wielligh was involved in the production of nuclear weapons material, the dismantling of the nuclear weapons and the provision of evidence of South Africa's bona fides to the international community. The International Atomic Energy Agency declared South Africa's Initial Report to be the most comprehensive and professional that they had ever received. In this book the nuclear physicist and his daughter Lydia von Wielligh-Steyn tell the gripping story of the splitting of the atom and the power it releases. It is an account of ground-breaking research and the scientists responsible; it deals with uranium enrichment, the arms race and South Africa's secret programme. The Bomb: South Africa's Nuclear Programme is a story of nuclear explosions, espionage, smuggling of nuclear materials and swords that became ploughshares.
Award-winning investigative journalist Karyn Maughan and former National Treasury insider Kirsten Pearson reveal the inside story behind South Africa's controversial nuclear deal. Through insider accounts, audio recordings and confidential minutes, the authors piece together the Zuma administration's secret dealings with Russia and how it went to extraordinary and dark lengths to conclude the nuke before Zuma's time ran out.
Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions and New Energy is a summary of
selected experimental and theoretical research performed over the
last 19 years that gives profound and unambiguous evidence for low
energy nuclear reaction (LENR), historically known as cold fusion.
In recent decades, the number of IAEA Member States planning to extend the operation of their nuclear power plants (NPPs) beyond the time frame originally anticipated has steadily increased. These decisions have been influenced by the significant economic advantages offered by the long term operation (LTO) of existing NPPs. This Safety Report complements IAEA Safety Standards Series Nos SSR?2/2 (Rev. 1), Safety of Nuclear Power Plants: Commissioning and Operation, and SSG?48, Ageing Management and Development of a Programme for Long Term Operation of Nuclear Power Plants. It provides information on selected topics from the latter, and specifically, it addresses data collection and record keeping, scope setting for structures, systems and components, plant programmes, corrective action programmes, and documentation of ageing management and LTO assessment. The publication focuses on NPPs throughout their lifetime, including operation beyond the time frame originally established for their operation and decommissioning, while considering the different reactor designs that exist around the world. It is also relevant for facilities for spent fuel storage and radioactive waste management at NPPs. It may also be used as a basis for managing the ageing of other nuclear installations and for radioactive waste 2 management facilities. This Safety Report is intended to provide information for operating organizations but may be also used by regulatory bodies.
On 26 April 1986, the unthinkable happened near the Ukrainian town of Pripyat: two massive steam explosions ruptured No. 4 Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, immediately killing 30 people and setting off the worst nuclear accident in history. The explosions were followed by an open-air reactor core fire that released huge amounts of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere for the next nine days, spreading across the Soviet Union, parts of Europe, and especially neighbouring Belarus, where around 70% of the waste landed. The following clean-up operation involved more than half a million personnel at a cost of $68 billion, and a further 4,000 people were estimated to have died from disaster-related illnesses in the following 20 years. Some 350,000 people were evacuated as a result of the accident (including 95 villages in Belarus), and much of the area returned to the wild, with the nearby city of Pripyat now a ghost town. Chernobyl provides a photographic exploration of the catastrophe and its aftermath in 180 authentic photos. See the twisted wreckage of No. 4 Reactor, the cause of the nuclear disaster; marvel at historic photos of the clean-up operation, with helicopters spraying decontamination liquid and liquidators manually clearing radioactive debris; see the huge cooling pond used to cool the reactors, and which today is home to abundant wildlife, despite the radiation; explore the ghost town of Pripyat, with its decaying apartment blocks, empty basketball courts, abandoned amusement park, wrecked schools, and deserted streets.
This book traces the history of the nuclear power industry in the United States from the 1950s when electricity from nuclear power was expected to be too cheap to meter, to the 1990s when the nuclear power industry lies in shambles and the landscape is dotted with the billion dollar carcasses of unfinished or inoperable nuclear power plants. Using the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island as a case study, and reviewing the civil racketeering trial relating to that plant, McCallion details how a fatal combination of fraud, incompetence, and naivete has driven utility companies to the brink (and in some cases, beyond the brink) of bankruptcy in the vain quest for the nuclear power fix.
This book explores how different governments have leveraged their capacity to advance a revival of nuclear power. Presenting in-depth case studies of France, Finland, Britain and the United States, Baker and Stoker argue that governments may struggle to promote new investment in nuclear power.
The German abandonment of nuclear power represents one of the most successful popular revolts against technocratic thinking in modern times-the triumph of a dynamic social movement, encompassing a broad swath of West Germans as well as East German dissident circles, over political, economic, and scientific elites. Taking on Technocracy gives a brisk account of this dramatic historical moment, showing how the popularization of scientific knowledge fostered new understandings of technological risk. Combining analyses of social history, popular culture, social movement theory, and histories of science and technology, it offers a compelling narrative of a key episode in the recent history of popular resistance.
Accidents and natural disasters involving nuclear power plants such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and the recent meltdown at Fukushima are rare, but their effects are devastating enough to warrant increased vigilance in addressing safety concerns. Nuclear Power Plant Instrumentation and Control Systems for Safety and Security evaluates the risks inherent to nuclear power and methods of preventing accidents through computer control systems and other such emerging technologies. Students and scholars as well as operators and designers will find useful insight into the latest security technologies with the potential to make the future of nuclear energy clean, safe, and reliable.
The Magnitude 9 Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, followed by a massive tsunami struck TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and triggered an unprecedented core melt/severe accident in Units 1 - 3. The radioactivity release led to the evacuation of local residents, many of whom still have not been able to return to their homes. As a group of nuclear experts, the Atomic Energy Society of Japan established the Investigation Committee on the Nuclear Accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, to investigate and analyze the accident from scientific and technical perspectives for clarifying the underlying and fundamental causes, and to make recommendations. The results of the investigation by the AESJ Investigation Committee has been compiled herewith as the Final Report. Direct contributing factors of the catastrophic nuclear incident at Fukushima Daiichi NPP initiated by an unprecedented massive earthquake/ tsunami - inadequacies in tsunami measures, severe accident management, emergency response, accident recovery and mitigations - and the underlying factors - organizational issues, etc., have been clarified and recommendations in the following areas have been made. - Nuclear safety fundamentals - Direct factors of the accident - Organizational aspects - Common items (R&D, International cooperation, human resources management) - Post-accident management/recovery from the accident.
"International Energy Forum 1999" was held in Washington D.C. during November 5-6, 1999 in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Crystal City. Once again the main topic was Nuclear Energy. Various papers presented contained pros and cons of Nuclear Energy for generating electricity. We were aiming to clarify the often discussed subject matter of the virtues of Nuclear Energy with regard to Global Warming as compared to using fossil fuels for the generation of electricity. The latter is also currently the only way to operate our means of transportation like automobiles, planes etc. Therefore emission into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases constitutes the main source of Global Warming, which is absent in the case of Nuclear Energy. These arguments are often put forward to promote the use of Nuclear Energy. However not all is well with the Nuclear Energy. There are the questions of the waste problem so far unsolved, safety of Nuclear Reactors is not guaranteed to the extent that they are inherently safe. If we aim to construct inherently safe reactors, then the economics of a Nuclear Reactor makes it unacceptable.
The objectives of nuclear criticality safety are to prevent a self-sustained nuclear chain reaction. This Safety Guide provides guidance and recommendations on how to meet the relevant requirements for ensuring subcriticality when dealing with fissile material and for planning the response to criticality accidents. The recommendations address how to ensure subcriticality in systems involving fissile materials during normal operation and during credible abnormal conditions, from initial design through commissioning, operation and decommissioning. This publication also provides recommendations on identification of credible abnormal conditions; performance of criticality safety assessments; verification, benchmarking and validation of calculation methods; safety measures to ensure subcriticality; and management of criticality safety. The guidance and recommendations are applicable to both regulatory bodies and operating organizations.
Most nuclear proliferation literature is focused on states seeking nuclear weapons, conducted in most cases clandestinely. The sharing of nuclear weapons technology between states is as important strategically, if unexpected, because nuclear weapons are such a powerful instrument in international politics. This book proposes to answer why, if nuclear weapons are such good preservers of peace, are states not more willing to see them proliferate? Schofield also examines the underlying phenomenon of the threat of proliferation races, and how nonproliferation bargains between adversaries make nuclear sharing far less common. But sharing is not rare. This book proposes a theory to explain nuclear sharing and surveys its rich history from its beginnings in the Second World War, including the cases of France-Israel, US-NATO, Russia-China, Israel-South Africa, China-Pakistan and Pakistan-Iran, as well as the incidence of soft balancing and permissive nuclear sharing in the cases of the US and Japan, Israel and India.
In this revealing book Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg tells what
it was like to be chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission during
the Nixon presidency. He draws extensively from his meticulously
kept diary, enabling the reader to be a fly on the wall during
meetings with Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and other key policy makers.
During the Nixon period, the debate over how to deal with the
Soviets on nuclear issues and arms control remained central. On the
domestic scene efforts to promote and regulate the growth of a
nuclear power industry were complicated by a rising tide of
environmental protest. Dr. Seaborg describes how the Atomic Energy
Commission, shorn of much of the political immunity of its early
years, sought to maintain its programmes and ultimately its very
existence, while besieged by competing pressures from the White
House, other government agencies, anti-nuclear activists, industry,
state governments, and Congress.
Dubbed Mr. Atomic Energy by Congressional colleagues and friends in recognition of his 28 years as a member and 10 years as House leader of the House-Senate Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), Democratic Congressman Chet Holifield of California's 19th Congressional District served 32 years in Congress, from 1943 through 1974, and was a powerful figure in atomic energy matters. This first biography of Holifield, in chronicling the Congressman's significant role in the development and course of U.S. atomic energy programs and policies, also serves as a history of the formative period of this new force in national and international politics. An early champion of atomic energy, Holifield's efforts contributed to the establishment of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 and earned him a place on the JCAE. His 1949 recommendation on the H-bomb led to the development of this new weapon nine months before the Russians. An ardent proponent of public power in the 1950s, Holifield opposed the premature involvement of private industry in the development of atomic power and urged increased government participation in that area; many of his recommendations were later authorized by the Atomic Energy Commission. Holifield supported the conversion of the Hanford, Washington N-reactor to electricity as well as plutonium production, criticized U.S. civil defense strategy as inadequate, and championed both peaceful use of atomic energy and a nuclear Navy. During the Nixon administration, in response to environmentalists opposition to further atomic power development, the Congressman took the unpopular position that trade-offs between safety concerns and the public's need for increased amounts of electrical power were necessary. He also sponsored legislation that divided the AEC into the Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a move that affected the course of atomic energy development well beyond his retirement. The first chapter is devoted to a biographical sketch of Holifield's life prior to his congressional career, while the remaining nine chapters trace his influence and contributions in atomic energy matters. The in-depth description of the Holifield Papers as well as the select bibliography will be of great value to scholars of atomic energy history. Serving as an introduction to the wide range of atomic energy topics and issues, this biography would be a significant addition to the reading lists for American history survey courses as well as being useful for seminars that have students investigate atomic energy history.
On May 26, 1958, the Shippingport, Pennsylvania, nuclear power station ushered in the age of the peaceful atom when it became the first nuclear power plant to go on-line. Throughout its more than three decades of operation, Shippingport encountered many of the crucial problems and issues that still confront nuclear power: policy formation, the role of government in technological innovation, technological management, environmental issues, breeder reactors, and the decommissioning of a nuclear plant. In an objective and nonprejudiced way, this book provides an accurate account of the important events in Shippingport's history and the role that they played in the future course of nuclear power. Unlike other general treatments of nuclear power, this volume presents a specific case history of one plant, with the major issues that influenced nuclear power analyzed in the context of both Shippingport and the nuclear industry as a whole. It draws on technical reports filed with the government, Congressional testimony by project head Hyman Rickover, interviews with participants in the Shippingport project, and relevant secondary sources to detail the history of one of the few successful government attempts to innovate energy technologies following World War II. The chapters trace the story of Shippingport from its beginnings, through construction, training, and management, to its final decommissioning. Other issues and influences, such as the AEC's reactor development policy and the plant's role in the adoption of the light water reactor, are also addressed. The book concludes with a general bibliography. This important new work will be a valuable resource for courses in the history of technology, public policy, technology and society, and technological management. It will also be an important addition to college, university, and public libraries.
The central questions of this book are how technologies decline, how societies deal with technologies in decline, and how governance may be explicitly oriented towards parting with 'undesirable' technology. Surprisingly, these questions are fairly novel. Thus far, the dominant interest in historical, economic, sociological and political studies of technology has been to understand how novelty emerges, how innovation can open up new opportunities and how such processes may be supported. This innovation bias reflects how in the last centuries modern societies have embraced technology as a vehicle of progress. It is timely, however, to broaden the social study of technology and society: next to considering the rise of technologies, their fall should be addressed, too. Dealing with technologies in decline is an important challenge or our times, as socio-technical systems are increasingly part of the problems of climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequalities and geo-political tensions. This volume presents empirical studies of technologies in decline, as well as conceptual clarifications and theoretical deepening. Technologies in Decline presents an emerging research agenda for the study of technological decline, emphasising the need for a plurality of perspectives. Given that destabilisation and discontinuation are seen as a way to accelerate sustainability transitions, this book will be of interest to academics, students and policy makers researching and working in the areas of sustainability science and policy, economic geography, innovation studies, and science and technology studies.
This book offers a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics driving, and constraining, nuclear power development in Asia, Europe and North America, providing detailed comparative analysis. The book formulates a theory of nuclear socio-political economy which highlights six factors necessary for embarking on nuclear power programs: (1) national security and secrecy, (2) technocratic ideology, (3) economic interventionism, (4) a centrally coordinated energy stakeholder network, (5) subordination of opposition to political authority, and (6) social peripheralization. The book validates this theory by confirming the presence of these six drivers during the initial nuclear power developmental periods in eight countries: the United States, France, Japan, Russia (the former Soviet Union), South Korea, Canada, China, and India. The authors then apply this framework as a predictive tool to evaluate contemporary nuclear power trends. They discuss what this theory means for developed and developing countries which exhibit the potential for nuclear development on a major scale, and examine how the new "renaissance" of nuclear power may affect the promotion of renewable energy, global energy security, and development policy as a whole. The volume also assesses the influence of climate change and the recent nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, on the nuclear power industry's trajectory. This book will be of interest to students of energy policy and security, nuclear proliferation, international security, global governance and IR in general.
Requirements for the safe transport of radioactive material are established in IAEA Safety Standards Series No. SSR-6 (Rev. 1), Regulations for the Safe Transport of Radioactive Material, 2018 Edition. Packages intended for the transport of radioactive material have to be designed to meet applicable national and international regulations. For package designs that require approval by a competent authority, the documentary evidence of compliance with the applicable regulations is commonly known as package design safety report (PDSR). For package designs that do not require competent authority approval, a PDSR would also be an appropriate form of documentary evidence of compliance with the Transport Regulations. This Safety Guide provides recommendations on the preparation of a PDSR to demonstrate compliance of a package design for the transport of radioactive material with the Transport Regulations. This Safety Guide is intended for use by applicants for approval of package designs (when package designs are subject to competent authority approval) as well as by package designers and/or consignors (when package designs do not require competent authority approval). Regulators will benefit from the common structure for the competent authority assessment process, and designers and consignors will find a consistent approach to justify the compliance of a package design with the regulatory requirements.
Developing a nuclear power programme is a major undertaking requiring careful planning and preparation. This publication provides guidance for Member States that with to assess the resources required for the development of the infrastructure needed for a nuclear power programme. Resource estimates are presented in person years, to account for economic differences across countries, in terms of labour costs, which may vary significantly. The data are presented in sufficient detail that they can also be used by countries that have decided to expand their nuclear programme after a long period without building any new nuclear power plants.
An exploration of how and why Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and India have initiated and developed nuclear energy programs and what challenges they face today. Were the nuclear programs driven by the low energy endowment, a desire to pursue international prestige, national security concerns, environmental pollution or economic development?
There is a growing recognition amongst those involved with the creation and distribution of nuclear power of the value and positive impact of ergonomics, recognition heightened by the realization that safety incidents are rarely the result of purely technical failure. This work provides insights into plant design, performance shaping factors, the fostering of a safety culture, training, selection, alarm design, team performance and data collection. |
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