The catastrophe that took place in Fukushima, Japan, has brought the safety of nuclear power plants across the globe into question, but for Gregory Maxwell, associate professor of mechanical engineering, the concern is unnecessary.

Several aspects are required to be considered before any nuclear power plant is sited, and then constructed.

“When you go build a new plant, you start with a site study, population has a lot to do with it, [nuclear power plants are] usually a few miles away from a downtown city,” Maxwell said. “They do a lot of meteorlogical studies, they want to know which way is the prevailing wind so that if you have a radioactive release, you have an idea as to who would be affected downwind from the plant.”

Beside the consideration of population and weather patterns, constructors do research on groundwater conditions; ecological conditions as to whether the plant would disturb fish and migratory habits of birds; and even more important, seismic activity, Maxwell said.

“There’s all these design specifications,” Maxwell said. “They do seismic studies and geologists have a pretty good understanding of where your major seismic events are and what the magnitude of them are, you never know anything 100 percent certain, but you know it fairly well and that sets a limit when you go to design a nuclear power plant.”

“It sets a structural requirement that you must build a plant to withstand a certain level of earthquake and depending upon where your plant’s located, it will also have to withstand any other natural disaster,” Maxwell said.

The safety systems and evacuation plans that have to be provided and integrated with state and local authorities is another attribute the professor stresses.

“What we do on a routine basis, the power plant and state legislatures all exercise together to recreate scenarios where they damage part of the reactor and cause many failures, they practice those things so that the state officials are prepared to implement the protection actions that are necessary to protect the public but also give the plant operators a chance to look at what their procedures should be,” said Ken Kerns, associate director of environmental health and safety.

As emphasized by Kerns and Maxwell, several aspects need to be considered for both siting and operating a nuclear power plant. Margaret Harding, consultant for 4 Factor Consulting, stresses an entire criteria that needs to be followed, strictly enforcing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“The NRC has a number of very clear criteria about how the plant has to be constructed, what kinds of safety considerations have to be made in the design of the plant,” Harding said.

“In operation, the company that operates the plant has to continuously train the workers, they do safety drills, they mock up the control room, they mock up the parts of the operation and the operators train,” Harding said.

More precautions were taken after the tragedy of 9/11, an attempt to prevent any man-made disasters from occurring in nuclear power plants.

“After 9/11, they did a lot of studies to see whether or not the containment buildings will sustain a plane being flown into them, whether or not people could infiltrate a nuclear reactor and cause damage that way,” Kerns said.

There were concerns about other kinds of man-made disasters occurring on the plant site, the regulatory commission and other organizations put the backup generators in protected bunkers so they couldn’t be damaged by outside sources, Harding said.

A common concern is the risk of radiation, the practices involved with handling radiation; however, Harding counters this concern.

“There’s radiation which is a closed phenomenon, you can move away from a radioactive source and you don’t have to go very far before you’re safe,” Harding said.

The only people at potential risk are workers close to the radiation itself, Harding said. The handling of radiation comes in three steps: time, distance and shielding.

“If you have to walk into a hot area and you can’t be shielded and you have to go close, you have to be quick because you pick up radiation in a time-dependent dose,” Harding said. “If you’re instantaneously in and out nothing happens. If you stand there a long time, you’re exposed to a lot of radiation.”

Shielding the radiation implies dealing with the spent fuel under a 30-foot pool of water, it not only cools down the reactor, but shields workers from the radiation.

When shielding isn’t an option, it’s best for workers to distance themselves from the radiation.

“If given a choice, most people in the radiation safety field would much rather live in the backyard of a nuclear power plant than a coal plant,” Kerns said.

With safety strongly enforced and implemented in nuclear power plants, Kerns, Harding and Maxwell hope students understand the genuine safety of nuclear power plants.