Now that plans for a national radioactive waste management facility near Kimba in South Australia have been abandoned, what next? Let’s learn from our mistakes.
The power plant’s sixth reactor has been shut down, all but eliminating the risk of a nuclear meltdown. But fighting at the site could still release radioactive material.
Exporting nuclear technology is lucrative, but without strict safeguards, buyers could divert it into bomb programs. Why is Saudi Arabia shopping for nuclear power, and should the US provide it?
Florida’s Turkey Point Nuclear Plant shut down 12 hours before Hurricane Andrew made landfall in 1992.
AP Photo/Phil Sandlin
Advanced small modular reactors, known as SMRs, will probably have many advantages over older technology. But it’s not yet known how they will stack up against other sources of electricity.
A 2015 tour of an entryway into the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
AP Photo/John Locher
By figuring out fission, physicists were able to split uranium atoms and release massive amounts of energy. This Manhattan Project work paved the way both for atomic bombs and nuclear power reactors.
Assumptions, authoritarianism and errors are just a few of the ways in which the world could be confronted by a nuclear disaster, physicist and disarmament expert MV Ramana suggests in his book reviews.
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Nuclear power plants don’t just pump out steady, carbon-free electricity; they also help produce the people the US needs for nuclear weapons inspections.
Large nuclear reactors could fade into history, proponents of small modular nuclear reactors argue. The reality may be more complex.
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Nuclear industry players tout small modular reactors as an “inherently safe,” cost-effective source of electricity. The reality may be less attractive.
A miner takes a break from sorting through coal at a mine in Vietnam. The country relies heavily on coal imports.
Julian Abram Wainwright/EPA
Vietnam recently cancelled it’s plans for the procurement of nuclear energy. There are lessons South Africa can take from this.
The Fukushima Daini plant, 11km from the ill-fated Daiichi station, suffered a technical problem in one of its spent fuel cooling ponds.
EPA/Kimimasa Mayama
The latest earthquake off Japan’s east coast was an ominous reminder of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. But despite a technical hitch at one of Fukushima’s other reactors, there was no repeat this time.
The country needs more nuclear power – but not more Hinkleys.
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Chernobyl is already responsible for up to 5,000 cases of cancer in Europe.
After one reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant caught fire and exploded in 1986, the whole site was encased in a concrete sarcophagus.
Vladimir Repik/Reuters
The meltdown at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 exposed 572 million people to radiation. No other nuclear accident holds a candle to that level of public health impact.
The UK government looks set to allow EDF to build a new kind of nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point. But are there better nuclear technologies we could use?