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The Environment and How Nuclear Power Plants Effect the People Living Around Them Essay Example

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The Environment and How Nuclear Power Plants Effect the People Living Around Them Essay Example
The Environment and How Nuclear Power Plants effect the people living around them

As everyone should know Nuclear Power Plants contain a lot of radiation and when that radiation is exposed to people, they get diseases and cancers. In 1986 in Chernobyl, Ukraine their Nuclear Power Plant had an uncontrolled build-up of heat and it resulted in a meltdown of one of their reactor cores. It made the graphite moderator material combust which released more than 50 million Curies of radioactivity to the environment. Nuclear power has effects on the environment through the nuclear fuel cycle, through operation, and from the lingering effects of the Chernobyl disaster. Nuclear power has at least for waste streams that can contaminate and degrade land: they create spent nuclear fuel at the reactor site, they produce tailings at uranium mines and mills, during operation they routinely release small amounts of radioactive isotopes, and during accidents they can release large quantities of pollution. The worst accidents at nuclear power plants have resulted in severe environmental contamination. Both nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment facilities must be carefully decommissioned using processes that are occupationally dangerous, and hazardous to the natural environment, expensive and time- intensive. A nuclear meltdown is just an informal term for a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating. Nuclear safety covers the actions taken to prevent nuclear and radiation accidents or to limit their consequences. Nuclear power plants have three different wastes: liquid waste which is reprocessed continuously, gas waste which is filtered, compressed, stored so it is allowed to decay, diluted and then discharged. Then they have solid waste which can be disposed simply by placing it where it will not be disturbed for a few years. Nuclear power plants have three low-level waste disposal sites in the United States, South Carolina, Utah and

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