Overview of Nuclear Energy

Transport of nuclear materials

Safety is the prime requirement with nuclear transports, particularly those of highly-radioactive used fuel, and the record is impressive. Shielding, and the security of that shielding in any accident, is the key with any nuclear materials, especially those which are significantly radioactive. 

There has never been any radiation release from an accident involving such materials. For instance, if used fuel needs to be transported, it is shipped in large and extremely robust steel casks weighing over 100 tonnes, and each holding only about 6 tonnes of fuel.

Radiation

Ionising radiation, such as occurs from uranium ores and nuclear wastes, is part of our human environment, and always has been so. At high levels it is hazardous, but at low levels such as we all experience naturally, it is harmless. Considerable effort is devoted to ensuring that those working with nuclear power are not exposed to harmful levels of radiation from it, and standards for the general public are set about 20 times lower still, well below the levels normally experienced by any of us from natural sources.

Introductory factsheet on radiation

Avoiding weapons proliferation

The initial development of atomic energy during and immediately after the second world war was to produce bombs. An early concern when the atom was harnessed for controlled civil use was that this nuclear power should not enable more countries to acquire nuclear weapons. 

Through the United Nations, procedures were set up to ensure this, and in fact they have been perhaps the most conspicuous success of that body. No nuclear materials such as uranium from the civil nuclear fuel cycle have ever been diverted to make weapons. In fact today the whole picture is reversed in that a lot of military uranium is being brought into the civil nuclear fuel cycle to make electricity, which is widely seen as a positive development, unimaginable 40 years ago. One tenth of US electricity is made from Russian military warheads.