The human race has an insatiable appetite for energy. Since harnessing fire many thousands of years ago, humanity has developed new ways to power civilization. Fortunes have been made, wars have been fought and great harm has been done to the environment in the quest for energy.
Southern California Edison (SCE) owns and operates the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station one the Pacific Coast between Los Angeles and San Diego. The station is located next to the Cristianitos fault which is listed as inactive. Around 7.4 million people live within 50 miles of the plant.
The adverse effects of ionizing radiation on human health have been extensively studied. I have included information about what damage radiation can do in human bodies in other posts. Recent research indicates that there may be more biological damage caused by uranium than previous thought.
In a recent post, Hanford 3 – New Problems, I talked about a lump of radioactive waste that had been found between the inner and outer shells of tank AY-102. There have been many DOE funded studies of the contents of that tank. Here are some of the findings.
Nuclear reactors require a huge continuous flow of water for cooling. There are a number of problems connected to this.
The Hanford nuclear facility contains fifty three million gallons of high-level radioactive and chemical waste. These wastes were generated when corrosive chemicals were used to dissolve spent fuel rods to retrieve plutonium. Steel tanks in concrete pits are used to hold the waste.
Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number of 28. It is a slivery-white transition metal. Nickel was used as early as 3500 BC as part of a nickel-iron alloy found in meteorites. Nickel was first purified and identified by Axel Fredrik Crosntedt in 1751. It was named for Nickel, a mischievous creature in German Miner mythology.
Krypton is a chemical element with symbol Kr and atomic number 36. Krypton is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas. It was discovered by the Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsey in 1898. He discovered a series of noble gases by examining the residue left over from evaporating liquefied air.
Promethium is a chemical element with the symbol Pm and atomic number 61. A gap in the periodic table was pointed out between neodymium at 60 and samarium at 62 by Bohuslav Brauner. After two false claims of discovery in 1926, in 1938 a few atoms of promethium were created but intentional production and chemical proof did not happen until 1945 at Ohio State University when promethium was extracted from irradiated uranium fuel. A sample of the metal was only produced in 1963.
Californium is a chemical element with the symbol Cf and atomic number 98. It is a silvery white actinide metal element that was first synthesized by bombardment of curium with alpha particles by a team at the University of California, Berkeley in 1950 and named for the state of California.
