Yesterday, I blogged about the nuclear bomb test just carried out by North Korea. While scientists doubt that it was a hydrogen bomb as claimed by N.K., there was a strong international reaction to the Test. Many countries have condemned the test including China which has been the main international supporter of N.K.
Often I have the luxury of looking around for interesting stories about nuclear issues and choosing what I want to write about on a given day. Other times, there are events that happen that require me to write about them. Today is one of those days. As I was watching the news over dinner last night, there was a breaking story about seismographs registering a 5.1 earthquake in North Korea.
One of the biggest problems with nuclear waste is polluted water. Dumping nuclear trash into the oceans of the world, leaking nuclear waste dumps and leaks from nuclear reactors have contaminated billions of gallons of water around the world. The nuclear disaster at Fukushima was and is a huge example of this.
Part Two of Two Parts (Please read Part One first)
The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is located on the coast of San Luis Obispo County in California. Since the closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant near San Diego because of damaging caused to piping by new turbines, Diablo Canyon has become the last nuclear power plant in California. Diablo Canyon is owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric. It has two nuclear power reactors.
I have blogged in the past about the U.S. shortage of plutonium-238. Plutonium-238 is an radioactive isotope of plutonium which is very useful in the construction of space probes for the exploration of space. It has a half-life of eighty eight years which means that its production of heat will take that long to fall to half its original output.
