Nuclear Technology: Future Generation, Protection and Monitoring

Nuclear Safety is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency as "The achievement of proper operating conditions, prevention of accidents or mitigation of accident consequences, resulting in protection of workers, the public and the environment from undue radiation hazards". The IAEA defines Nuclear Security as "The prevention and detection of and response to, theft, sabotage, unauthorized access, illegal transfer or other malicious acts involving nuclear material, other radioactive substances or their associated facilities". This covers nuclear power plants and all other nuclear facilities, the transportation of nuclear materials, and the use and storage of nuclear materials for medical, power, industry, and military uses. The nuclear power industry has improved the safety and performance of reactors, and has proposed new and safer reactor designs. However, a perfect safety cannot be guaranteed. Potential sources of problems include human errors and external events that have a greater impact than anticipated: The designers of reactors at Fukushima in Japan did not anticipate that a tsunami generated by an earthquake would disable the backup systems.