A nuclear power phase-out is the discontinuation of usage of nuclear power for energy production. Often initiated because of concerns about nuclear power, phase-outs usually include shutting down nuclear power plants and looking towards fossil fuels and renewable energy. Three nuclear accidents have influenced the discontinuation of nuclear power: the 1979 Three Mile Island partial nuclear meltdown in the United States, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the USSR (now Ukraine), and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
Following Fukushima, Germany has permanently shut down eight of its 17 reactors and pledged to close the rest by the end of 2022. In late 2021 all but three of the remaining German nuclear power plants were shut down. However, there are no plans to shut down the research reactor in Garching, Forschungsreaktor München II. Italy voted overwhelmingly to keep their country non-nuclear. Switzerland and Spain have banned the construction of new reactors. Japan's prime minister called for a dramatic reduction in Japan's reliance on nuclear power. Taiwan's president did the same. Shinzō Abe, the prime minister of Japan from 2012 to 2020, announced a plan to re-start some of the 54 Japanese nuclear power plants (NPPs) and to continue some NPP sites under construction.
The impacts of the nuclear shut-downs on the power generation mix, post-Fukushima, have significantly set back emissions reductions goals in these countries. A recent study of the impacts of the German and Japan phaseouts concludes that by continuing to operate their nuclear plants "these two countries could have prevented 28,000 air pollution-induced deaths and 2400 MtCO2 emissions between 2011 and 2017.""By sharply reducing nuclear instead of coal and gas after Fukushima both countries lost the chance to prevent very large amounts of air pollution-induced deaths and emissions".
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Introduces nuclear engineering, covering reactor types, components, and thermodynamics, including pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors.
The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, national, or international level. Major anti-nuclear groups include Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Peace Action, Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
Nuclear energy policy is a national and international policy concerning some or all aspects of nuclear energy and the nuclear fuel cycle, such as uranium mining, ore concentration, conversion, enrichment for nuclear fuel, generating electricity by nuclear power, storing and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, and disposal of radioactive waste. Nuclear energy policies often include the regulation of energy use and standards relating to the nuclear fuel cycle.
The nuclear power debate is a long-running controversy about the risks and benefits of using nuclear reactors to generate electricity for civilian purposes. The debate about nuclear power peaked during the 1970s and 1980s, as more and more reactors were built and came online, and "reached an intensity unprecedented in the history of technology controversies" in some countries. In the 2010s, with growing public awareness about climate change and the critical role that carbon dioxide and methane emissions plays in causing the heating of the earth's atmosphere, there was a resurgence in the intensity of the nuclear power debate.
This course is intended to understand the engineering design of nuclear power plants using the basic principles of reactor physics, fluid flow and heat transfer. This course includes the following: Re
This course examines the supply of energy from various angles: available resources, how they can be combined or substituted, their private and social costs, whether they can meet the demand, and how t
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Building on prior analysis of ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) experiments (Henderson et al 2023 Nucl. Fusion 63 086024), this study compares simple analytical formula predictions for divertor detachment onset and reattachment timescales in JET experiments. Detachment ...
Iop Publishing Ltd2024
Nuclear fusion presents a promising clean energy source to mitigate future energy crises, with magnetic confinement fusion well-positioned to provide a baseload scenario to power future reactors. The unmitigated power exhaust of such reactors threatens its ...
Gamma-ray spectroscopy is an effective technique for radioactive material characterization, routine inventory verification, nuclear safeguards, health physics, and source search scenarios. Gamma-ray spectrometers typically cannot be operated in the immedia ...