Can nuclear power plants result in a radioactive world void of life?

This question is for a research essay I'm writing in english class. I have to write about different ways the world can end up a radioactive mess. They're talking about the future by the way.

I've already listed a nuclear war as one way. I was considering nuclear power plants as another possibility. If in the future they become popular enough to be all over the place then maybe something can trigger them to explode?

I doubt they could explode but I'm here to find out. I also realize nuclear fission is pretty unlikely to become that popular for producing our energy but I'm just trying to find another possibility. Just the waste from nuclear fission plants should create plenty of radioactive dumps right? They do try to contain waste safely in radioactive storage facilities but still...

Nuclear fusion is supposed to be an amazing way to generate power, is it possible for a nuclear fusion plant to explode? Sense they havn't actually been made yet I know it's a hard question to answer but assuming there's any method at all for making a nuclear fusion plant that can explode, I would want to know.

I was thinking of writing something like: Rushing into developing nuclear plants can result in a similar situation to the one mentioned. We have to advance carefully blahblah.

Anyways, I don't know if I should list nuclear power plants as being a possibility at all. It sounds like even if they were dangerous it wouldn't come near making the planet radioactive. If anyone with more information on the topic can give me their opinion I would appreciate it, thanks. Maybe another idea on how the world can end up radioactive would be nice?

What with the naturally occuring Carbon-13 and Potassium-40, cosmic rays from space that expose Denver's citizens to an extra dose every year, why do you presume we aren't already living in a radioactive world?

With Nuclear plants there is a finite amount of long lived radioactive material that remains if you reprocess the spent fuel. We have been running hundreds of nuclear submarines with much higher fuel densities than commercial plants (read higher enrichments) and none of them have ever exploded (even the few that have sank such as the Thresher and Scorpion.) A poorly designed reactor (for example: Chernobyl) can result in significant contamination escaping, but not enough to contaminate the entire world. Three Mile Island, while a dsaster financially for the Nuclkear program, resulted in no longterm measurable affects and the only radioactive material that was released were relatively harmless (once they reached the ground) beta emitting nobel gases such as Krypton and Xenon.

Any event that could cause all nuclear plants to explode would have to involve high amounts of neutron radiation, so high it would cause the world to become radioactive through the neutron induced activation of materials such as iron, cobalt, aluminum and other elements that absorb nuetrons and become radioactive isotopes.

Now if you want to know who is releasing the most radiation and doing the most to contaminate the planet with radioactive material there are two sources, coal fired electric plants and coal fired industires and medical uses of radioactive isotopes. Under normal operations a nuclear plant in the USA is limited to between ten to the minus nineth and ten to minus sixth microcuries per liter of water released of long halflife and potentially damaging isotopes, a curie is equivilent to the radiation emitted by 1 gram of radium in one second. Medical releases are usually in the millicurie level. technicium is an element that had decayed away in nature (it no longer existed) then we created in the laboratory and found it was useful for doing many medical tests, now it is easily detected downstream from all major cities. Coal contains natural radium and the radon gases (alpha emitters wich are nasty if inhaled or ingested) from its decay, burning the coal releases all of the radium and its decay gases, every coal plant has a radioactive radium/radon footfrint down wind from it.

So, how can we make most of the planet radioactive? Burn coal and get medical tests.

Mike

Get used to it mault. High energy radiation's everywhere - great for evolution, and great for weeding out poorly adapted, cancer prone (crap immune system packaged) life-forms .... please give me mega-curies of Radon, give me Strontium 90 burgers and another 40 cigarettes per millisecond for good measure.

Simply put; live life to the upmost, and purely enjoy the spectacularly rare gift you have been blessed with - life itself.

p.s, you sad git!

Exploding nuclear plant: it already happened at Chernobyl. Not a nuclear explosion like a bomb does, rather a gas pressure that bursts the reactor dome - but the released radioactivity is much higher than what a bomb does.

Better designed reactors (which doesn't mean: Western ones! Both types exist everywhere) have a dome that (hopefully, as it's computed) withstands the pressure of all imagined internal accidents.

Now, to eradicate life everywhere on Earth, you'd really need many (more than all?) plants to burst, and this would need deliberate human action like bombing.

Bursting the dome with a specialized bomb is not very difficult. Bursting the stock of used fuel is even easier. This is something likely to happen if a war goes dirty. During WWII, whole cities were burnt down to ashes; under such circumstances, the military and governments would definitely bomb nuclear power plants in order to release their deadly radioactivity, provided it doesn't harm the assailant too much.

I don't see, however, how such a scenario would generalize to the whole planet.

Nuclear power plant becoming so popular to cover the whole planet: definitely not, because uranium reserves are much smaller than coal reserves. This is the case even with breeders - and high-tech countries wouldn't like to export breeders anyway, as building bombs from them is far too easy.

Not every coal plant emits radioactivity - that's just propaganda from the nuke industry. In Europe, all fumes from coal power plants are filtered and don't go to the atmosphere, including radium compounds. These filters did cost a little bit but were necessary to remove dust and then sulphur and nitrogen oxides.

By the way, the choice is not just between coal and nuke, you know?

I am not sad at all, just stating facts about the world we live in. To often one technology or another gets all the blame. Radiation is a part of nature, from cosmic to terrestrial it has been here long before there was any life and will be here afterwards. I was just answering the OP.

Mike