One of the concerns over nuclear power that I keep returning to is the incompetence and malpractice of corporations that are members of the nuclear industry. Over and over again, major nuclear corporations have been caught cheating on safety practices, equipment maintenance, construction standards, regulatory requirements, etc. on nuclear projects.
The handling and disposal of nuclear waste is an enormous problem in the U.S.
Transatomic Power Corporation is one of the new companies that is pushing a different approach to nuclear power reactors than the conventional light water reactors (LWR). The company was founded in 2011 by two MIT students from the MIT Nuclear Science & Engineering department.
Accidents at nuclear power plants can release massive amounts of radioactive materials that are unimpeded by national borders as they spread with the wind. This means that nations have a responsibility that extends beyond their borders to neighboring nations to manage nuclear power plants responsibly.
I have mentioned the threat of terrorists smuggling small nuclear bombs into the United States in previous posts. As a matter of fact, my 2012 novel, Rare Earths, featured just such activity as part of the plot. A decade ago, a software company that I worked for bid on a project to improve inspection and tracking of containers coming into U.S. ports.
In early January, minute amounts of radioactive iodine-131 were detected in the atmosphere over the Svanhovd, Norway air monitoring station very close to the border with the Russian Kola peninsula. The next observation was at Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland.
