The
fission product inventory calculation has been evaluated with ORIGEN2.2 code.
As Sakharov relates in his Memoirs, he worried so much about bomb-test fallout that in 1958 he made two remarkable predictions--that ingested
fission products would cause many deaths (extrapolating from his figures, perhaps as many as 1 million premature deaths worldwide for every 50 megatons of bomb-test yield) and that the radiation would accelerate the mutation of all microorganisms.
[[Chi].sup.2] analyses indicated that the frequency of spermatocytes containing either the acrocentric (
fission products) or the metacentric chromosomes was significantly different from random expectations in 3 of the 16 chromosomally intermediate individuals (table 3; inversion heterozygotes excluded).
As the fuel fissions in a reactor, the fraction of
fission productsAlso, many
fission products quickly form stable fluorides that will stay within the salt during any leak or accident.
The vast majority of radioactivity created in nuclear fuels disappears rapidly after reactors shut down, as short-lived radioactive elements (so-called
fission products) decay to become stable elements over periods of hours to days.
The thyroid can be affected by ionizing radiation through the skin by gamma radiation, including X rays; by
fission products, such as cesium; or by ingestion or inhalation of iodine-131 ([sup.131]I), an isotope present in nuclear
fission products.
The research is focused on risks associated with high-level radioactive
fission products. Certain components of this spent fuel are derived from nuclear reactor that continue to have a high-level of radioactivity for very long periods.
I participated in studies at Battelle in the 1970's that showed that the fuel can be reprocessed in such a way that the vast majority of the long-lived
fission products, including the transuranic materials, such as plutonium, can be recycled and successfully used as a new reactor fuel material.
Beyond normal operation, in the remote possibility of loss of control, even PBMRs producing somewhat more thermal power than the reactor planned by Eskom can withstand any series of failures without releasing
fission products. That statement was proved by an experiment conducted in 1986 on the AVR, a German pebble bed reactor.
* The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident released large quantities of radioactive
fission products over vast areas of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.
Because the fragments move at nearly the uranium beam's velocity and because they are totally stripped of electrons, "the
fission products are much easier to detect than in previous experiments," Bernas explains.
