Here is your short article on Radioactive Pollution

Environmental contamination by radioactivity is feared because of its mutagenic and lethal effects. The higher the dosage sustained or the longer it is sustained, the greater the biological damage.

Radioactive damage to an ecosystem is not temporary, since radioactive pollutants may persist for thousands of years. Some forms of radioactivity become more concentrated as they transferred up food chain. Moreover, the individual atoms are recycled repeatedly, with the potential for doing damage at every step along the way.

Operational Contamination of the Environment. One type of radioactive pollution is the contamination that arises from normal operations in the production of nuclear weapons and the operation of nuclear power plants.

These operations include the mining, processing, transporting, the strong of radioactive ores; the normal operating of power plants and weapons arsenals; the storage and reprocessing of spent fuel; and the shortage of the radioactive components of decommissioned overage facilities. The possibilities of environmental contamination during the process of producing electricity from nuclear fuel can occur.

1. during the mining and processing of ore,

2. during the operation of nuclear power plants,

3. during the reprocessing of spent fuel, and

4. in the storage of radioactive wastes.

Because the mine tailings of uranium ore extraction are themselves radioactive, they pose a threat to the health of miners and anyone else that lives or works in their vicinity for a time.

The processing of uranium ore involves its enrichment to increase the proportion of uranium 235 (²³⁵U) by three to four times the natural level. Radioactive contamination of the environment generated by the enrichment process is minimal and not regarded as hazardous.

In the operation of nuclear power plants, minor defects in boiling- water nuclear reactors result in small leakages of radioactivity into the cooling water circulating through the reactor core and thus into the environment.

Some krypton 85 also escapes as a gas. Both of these “routine emissions,” however, are at such a low level as to be comparable to the normal background of radioactivity from rocks and the cosmics rays from outer space. Barring accidents, nuclear power plant operation is not regarded by the industry or the United States government as a significant threat to health.

In a conventional reactor, after a year or more of a operation, fission products accumulate in the fuel rods in amounts sufficient to slow the reaction.

The fuel is then regarded as spent and must be replaced. The spent rods contain high concentrations of highly radioactive fission products of ²³⁸U and ²³⁵U. From a health and environmental stand-point, the question of what to do with these and the even more abundant radioactive wastes from military sources has proved to be far the most difficult problem of the nuclear age.

The original goal was to reprocess the waste, remove its uranium and plutonium for reuse, and then safely store the many remaining by­products of radioactive fission for an indefinite period. In the case of the power plants alone, it was anticipated that for each reactor in full operation, some 10 to 60 shipments per year would be made to reprocessing plants; until 1972 specially designed casks were used in shipping, and most shipments were made by truck or rail.

Reprocessing of fuel rods involves dissolving them in concentrated acid and recovering the uranium and plutonium. The procedure leaves a waste solution that remains highly radioactive for as long as a million years.

The liquid, which is said to boil “like” a teakettle” was tc be temporarily stored in huge tanks until it cools. Reprocessing regularly results in the emission of radioactive gases (for example krypton-85) more long-lived than those emitted during the operation of a power plant. A slight increase in cancer deaths-well fewer than 1 percent-was expected to result in those exposed to this pollution source.

Regulations provided that the liquid be converted to a solid form within 5 years and shipped to an approved depository within 10 years- What some regard as they remain problem with nuclear power occurs at this point: no generally satisfactory was has been found of permanently storing these wastes for as long as thousands of years, let alone hundreds of thousands.

Storage of the liquid in tanks has not proved practicable. Not only is it impossible to design at tank that will last for even 100 years, but between 1969 and 1980, 16 cases of leakage from tanks occurred in the United States, permitting the escape of over 1.3 million 1 (350,000 gallons) of radioactive liquid into the environment.

The impasse over the storage problem and problems associated with reprocessing nuclear fuel in the United States has haltec all reprocessing since 1972.

One approach to storage is to incorporate the liquid into solid black of glass for storage in abundoned salt mnes equipped with remote-control television cameras for continual monitoring.

Not only does salt conduct heat well-the glass-block will remain hot for some time-but most salt mines are dry and sustain little damage from earthquakes. Among other proposals is one to drop the blocks of glass into the ocean at some of the deeper and quieter locations or sink them into deep holes bored in the ocean floor.

Partly because of the lack of agreement on how and where to store high-level radioactive wastes, by 1985 over 400,000 tons of spent fuel rods had accumulated at power plant in the United States.

Nuclear Accident. In addition to the operational contamination of the environment, another area of concern is the possibility of a major accident at a nuclear facility, with the potential for deadly contamination of air, soil, and water in a wide area surrounding the accident site.

The only accident that has thus far resulted in massive contamination of a large area apparently took place in 1957 in the Ural Mountains, in the Soviet Union.

According to a 1980 report of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, an accidental explosion occurred during nuclear waste processing at a remote Soviet weapons plant, dispersing millions of curies of strontium-90 and other nuclides, contamination over 1,000 km², including 14 lakes.

Like most details of the accident, the number of casualties has been kept secret. Thirty towns were permanently evacuated and subsequently eliminated from Soviet maps, and 60,000 survivors were relocated.