Search results for "Nuclear Power"
showing 10 items of 60 documents
Building future nuclear power fleets: The available uranium resources constraint
2013
Abstract According to almost all forward-looking studies, the world′s energy consumption will increase in the future decades, mostly because of the growing world population and the long-term development of emerging countries. The effort to contain global warming makes it hard to exclude nuclear energy from the global energy mix. The availability of natural uranium resources is a major constraint in terms of meeting this demand. In line with the scenarios floated by various international organisations and taking into consideration only current uranium-consuming light water reactors technologies with slow neutrons, 4 to 7 Mt of uranium could be consumed by 2050, namely, all identified or know…
Nuclear community considering threats and benefits of final disposal. Local opinions regarding the spent nuclear fuel repository in Finland.
2012
This paper focuses on local opinion regarding the siting of a spent nuclear fuel repository in the municipality of Eurajoki, Finland. The research question is how the residents perceive the final disposal. The analysis showed that positive perceptions regarding spent nuclear fuel siting issues are more likely to be found among men and more affluent residents, which can be viewed as an indication of the ‘white male effect’. Contrastingly, women and less-advantaged people are more likely to resist the disposal of spent nuclear fuel in ‘their backyard’. Two approaches, ‘nuclear oases’ and ‘industry awareness’, are used to interpret the findings.
Leadership and employees’ perceived safety behaviours in a nuclear power plant: A structural equation model
2011
Leadership is considered an essential element in guaranteeing the safe running of organizations. The purpose of the present study is to find out how leader behaviours influence employees' safety behaviours (perceived safety behaviours) in the nuclear field. In an attempt to answer this question, the authors of this research have considered the way this influence is exercised, taking into consideration some important factors like safety culture and safety climate. To achieve this, the empowerment leadership model, based on a behavioural approach to leadership, was used. The sample was made up of 566 employees from a Spanish nuclear power plant. The results indicated that when safety culture …
Validation of the group nuclear safety climate questionnaire.
2013
Abstract Introduction Group safety climate is a leading indicator of safety performance in high reliability organizations. Zohar and Luria (2005) developed a Group Safety Climate scale (ZGSC) and found it to have a single factor. Method The ZGSC scale was used as a basis in this study with the researchers rewording almost half of the items on this scale, changing the referents from the leader to the group, and trying to validate a two-factor scale. The sample was composed of 566 employees in 50 groups from a Spanish nuclear power plant. Item analysis, reliability, correlations, aggregation indexes and CFA were performed. Results Results revealed that the construct was shared by each unit, a…
TRACE Code Analyses for the IAEA ICSP on “Integral PWR Design Natural Circulation Flow Stability and Thermo-Hydraulic Coupling of Containment and Pri…
2011
Considering the world energy demand increase in order to fulfill an environmental and economic sustainability, the energy policy of each country has to diversify the sources of energy and use stable, safe energy production option able of producing electricity in a clean way contributing in cutting the CO2 emission. In the framework of the sustainable development, today the use of advanced nuclear power plant, have an important role in the environmental and economic sustainability of country energy strategy. In the last 20 years, in fact, the international community, taking into account the operational experience of the nuclear reactors, starts the development of new advanced reactor designs…
TRACE and RELAP5 Codes for Beyond Design Accident Condition Simulation in the SPES3 Facility
2012
Code validation on qualified experimental data is a fundamental issue in the design and safety analyses of nuclear power plants. The SPES3 facility is being built at the SIET laboratories for an integral type SMR simulation, in the frame of an R&D program on nuclear fission, funded by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and led by ENEA. The facility, based on the IRIS reactor design, reproduces the primary, secondary and containment systems with 1:100 volume scale, full elevation and prototypical fluid and thermal-hydraulic conditions. It is suitable to test the plant response to design and beyond design accidents in order to verify the effectiveness of the primary and containm…
Strengthening Safety Compliance in Nuclear Power Operations: A Role-Based Approach
2014
Safety compliance is of paramount importance in guaranteeing the safe running of nuclear power plants. However, it depends mostly on procedures that do not always involve the safest outcomes. This article introduces an empirical model based on the organizational role theory to analyze the influence of legitimate sources of expectations (procedures formalization and leadership) on workers' compliance behaviors. The sample was composed of 495 employees from two Spanish nuclear power plants. Structural equation analysis showed that, in spite of some problematic effects of proceduralization (such as role conflict and role ambiguity), procedure formalization along with an empowering leadership s…
“Living in Contaminated Areas”—Consideration of Different Perspectives
2020
Following large-scale nuclear power plant accidents such as those that occurred at Chernobyl (Ukraine) in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi (Japan) in 2011, large populations are living in areas containing residual amounts of radioactivity. As a key session of the ConRad conference, experts were invited from different disciplines to provide state-of-the-art information on the topic of "living in contaminated areas." These experts provided their different perspectives on a range of topics including radiation protection principles and dose criteria, environmental measurements and dose estimation, maintaining decent living and working conditions, evidence of health risks, and social impact and risk c…
Childhood Leukemia in the Vicinity of Nuclear Power Plants in Germany
2008
SUMMARY The causes of leukemia are largely unclear. The question whether leukemia rates are increased near nuclear power plants is controversial. The German Childhood Cancer Registry has published an epidemiological case-control study on childhood cancer and nuclear power plants. Method: The study was based on the distance of children's residences from nuclear power plants and addressed the question whether children under age 5 with cancer live closer, on average, to nuclear power plants than randomly selected controls. Odds Ratios (OR) for distance categories and standardized incidence ratios (SIR) were calculated. Results: An association was found between the nearness of residence to nucl…
Fuel for commercial politics: the nucleus of early commercial proliferation of atomic energy in three acts
2020
Historical research into the nuclear industry has focussed upon military and commercial aspects of the technology whilst ignoring fuel. This article discusses nuclear fuel, the resource at the centre of the industry and the role superpower politics played in its supply. Starting with the context of superpower competition, we examine the spread of nuclear technology from its beginnings in post-war Britain via West Germany in the 1950s to Finland in the 1960s and 1970s. We demonstrate that each country had varied interests affecting the choice of nuclear fuel for early energy projects; British fuel choices were constrained by its weapons programme and Germany needed legitimacy in the face of …