Hello Yulia,

Sure, yes. In the pre-university level, historically in Egypt, there were good topics about the nuclear reactions and nuclear energy applications in the electric power production in physics and chemistry courses. Currently, these topics are highly abstracted. Consequently, the knowledge of the youth about the high value of peaceful applications of the nuclear energy is reduced. IMHO, the nuclear energy is the main cause of the life on the Earth as supplied from that wonderful semi-renewable nuclear reactor in the sky i.e.the Sun.

Hello Claudio,

I agree with your comment.IMHO, fast food, ignorance, and inaccurate/incorrect news are more dangerous than the nuclear risks. I also agree with you most of the current generation of university graduated people have incorrect information about the value of nuclear power and its high sustainability level.

thank you very much for your thoughts. It's true, one needs simple facts on the tricky questions ready on hands and easy for comprehension. With the fast food it is very funny.

You are welcome. Yes, the fast food issue is funny but fairly true. If you have, or will prepare a course about essentials of nuclear power, please let me know. If it is possible, please also send it to me. Thanks for your valuable discussions.

Thank you. I will try the Google translate.

Dear Yulia,

I have worked as nuclear engineer from 1966 to 1994 in various positions. I have analyzed in depth the accident at Tsjernobyl and to a somewhat lesser extent the one I Fukoshima. I spent a period at General Electric in the USA in the design of passive safety in nuclear reactors.

There are several issues from which I have concluded that nuclear energy is not a viable option.

- Radioactive waste generated during mining. The Germans spend a huge amount of money to clean up the waste in Eastern Germany from the Sovjet nuclear program.

- The utilities are unwilling to change the fuel cladding from zircaloy to stainless steel. About 50 % of the energy released in the accidents of three mile Island, Tsjernobyl and Fukoshima came from the chemical reaction of zircaloy and steam.

- Safety features were out of operation or disconnected during the accident at Fukushima. A passive emergency cooler of unit one was out of operation at the time that the tsunami hit and although the personal heroically tried to put this one into operation they did not succeed. The core melt and subsequent emission of radioactivity hampered further rescue work. Unit two had a containment failure after several days and this did not cause much extra problems. In unit three a core coolant pump that worked without outside electrical power was shut off by an operator with subsequent core melt and containment failure.

In safety analyses negative effects of human intervention have not been taken into account.

Education on nuclear energy seems to me not wise. The psychological effects of nuclear accidents are much more severe than the effects of radiation on the body. The Bello rusian noble prise writer has a vivid description of these effects in her book, that is really worth reading

wiem Jan oosterkamp

Hello Mr. Willem,

Thank you for your valuable comment. The mentioned drawbacks of the nuclear energy can be classified into two categories. First, waste generation during the mining processes. Second, human factors and related errors. Based on these drawbacks, you are currently opposing the education and applications of nuclear energy in power production. I do not agree with your opinion because the mentioned problems are secondary issues and the mentioned bad events are simply lessons. If the same approach is used to judge the viability of most known energy technologies including renewable, I would reject them too. At least, power systems need specific specific, limited power of specific characteristics for secure and stable operation. Since we would like to extensively use renewable, the required security and stability can be achieved by either conventional generators or generators operating within hydrogen fuels produced from renewable. If the conventional generators are adopted, the nuclear energy would be a good choice for better environmental impacts and relatively lower costs in comparison with fossil. If the hydrogen fuels are adopted, it will be feasible for small and medium scale energy sources. The situations where large scale power production is needed would be technically and economically better produced from nuclear and hydrogen fuels produced.

From the psychological effects point of view, if we told the people that the majority of photovoltaic industry uses toxic materials and produce toxic residuals, and the operation of some photovoltaic technologies also emits toxic chemicals, then we may face intense opposition to the photovoltaics !!!!!

IMHO, psychological effects are usually based the given knowledge, and faced experiences.

I consolidate the opinion of Claudio. IMHO, the psychology is the most dangerous science ever. With its bad applications, fake, and delusions may be adopted widely to the level of sustainability. It is the cure, and illness gathered within the same hands. Even most of the religious thoughts, act on the psychological control of humans, and its success is measured by the level of control on the brains. The media also attempt to control, and bias us through neat psychological statements, and images that nearly subjected to us on a daily basis. Based on an extensive study (not published), I found that the nuclear energy is at the top list of energy alternatives considering all aspects of electric energy (and generally energy) production except following high rate of changes in the load. May be better solutions will be found in the future, but I have to respect the structure of the universe which is mainly based on nuclear energy sources. I am also not underestimating the dangers and the human errors role in activating the risks; however, we live to learn and evolve. What do you think about the nuclear energy applications in France?

Dear Willem,

I agree with your statement that decisions in the power sector are extremely multi-sided and can't be accessed with just one single criteria. As you perfectly know, everything which is happening on the earth can bear an inherent risk. One can find the prove in in the database on the power sector accidents at http://www.needs-project.org/RS1a/RS1a%20D12.2%20Final%20report%20concentrating%20solar%20thermal%20power%20plants.pdf, page 25. Thus a multi criteria decision making process is needed to approve a power system development strategy for a particular country.

Dear Cloudio,

Students in Arab and south Asian countries, maybe even Mediterranean countries should learn about solar and energy storage as that is the future. For Northern Europe this is wind power and storage. biomass is for russia the most attractive.

I do not know of risk assessment for the supply chain of solar and batteries.

I am present working on solar systems with battery back-up (Ni-Fe) for hospitals in South Asia that are connected to a grid with frequent black-outs.

Willem Jan

Dear Yula ; to educate, maybe that you could teach to the young generations to 'think globally' (and 'act locally'). In others questions here, I have answered this below, based on the 'rebound effect' problem (here, with few changes) ;

I think it's relevant here, even if nothing is proved.

I think that it's not merely NP technology that matters, it's energy in general and what to do with it. Can you answer this ? Would you include this ?

"If your nuclear plant works well, you can expect to ‘externalize’ the costs of the wastes, transfer it to the future generations (and if an accident occurs, obviously, some of the costs are transferred to the future). So you may produce energy at a ‘low price’ for the present generation, with the idea that the next will also benefit. This is a ‘trade off’ : you give a sustain to economic growth for the wastes and the future raising of the price ; 

If the price of electricity is low for you, as you expected it to be, than you may get a massive rebound effect for all your consumption (you still need ‘fossils’, the substitution effect is bounded). This is due to a ‘permanent income effect’ that makes you feel more rich, and your ‘fossil-CO2 loaded’ consumption will also rise… you will loose the benefits of the substitution, ‘fossil’ plants by nuclear plants, simply because of the lower the price of electricity, the richer you (think you) are and the more you consume (empirically, you are richer : as you have 'more things'). For ex. you’ll be allowed to trip more if your electricity bill is lowered, thanks to the nuclear plant, and you will not make less CO2 (with a strong nuclear rebound effect, you may produce more CO2 in fact). (...) So ‘climate change’ is just an opportunity to sell more nuclear plants, that (probably) are (and will be) parts of the problem." 

Dear Yulia,

I think the need for nuclear energy education is related to the labor force crisis in this area. If nuclear energy has a future, then the need for workforce training in this area is vital.

https://journalissues.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Han-et-al.pdf

Dear Yulia

In Mexico it would be very important to implement education in nuclear energy because in the world, in spite of the controversy, countries use their technology for peaceful purposes such as energy generation, if there were more education about it, and if the advanced countries lost the fear that the developing countries would use nuclear energy to generate electric energy. For example, my country would not depend on oil to survive and its economy would be more solvent. a greeting .

excellent question

Dear Jaime Cuauhtemoc Negrete ; excellent answer ; you write 'my country would not depend on oil to survive and its economy would be more solvent' ; but do you think that your country would be (more) peaceful with NP ?

I propose you to build a nuclear educational center in Cuernavaca, Rancho Tetela, the best place.