Nuclear emergency Japan Some resources excerpted, Nuclear Energy Institute, Wikipedia, etc.

japanese-reactor.html?ref=asia

MOX fuel rods at Daichi Mixed oxide fuel is a combination of finely ground up plutonium particles and uranium oxide fabricated into fuel rods at an AREVA subsidiary in La Hague, France. The fuel is made from reprocessing old reactor fuel. Reprocessing was abandoned by the United States in the 1970s because of the dangers of weapons proliferation. Plutonium is the heaviest primordial element, by virtue of its most stable isotope, plutonium-244, whose half-life of about 80 million years is just long enough for the element to be found in trace quantities in nature. Plutonium-239, with a half-life of 24,100 years. Plutonium-239 and 241 are fissile, meaning the nuclei of their atoms can break apart by being bombarded by slow moving thermal neutrons, releasing energy, gamma radiation and more neutrons. These can therefore sustain a nuclear chain reaction, leading to applications in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. Production:

3 rd most important graph in course

Heat generation The reactor core generates heat in a number of ways: * The kinetic energy of fission products is converted to thermal energy when these nuclei collide with nearby atoms. * Some of the gamma rays produced during fission are absorbed by the reactor, their energy being converted to heat. * Heat produced by the radioactive decay of fission products and materials that have been activated by neutron absorption. This decay heat source will remain for some time even after the reactor is shut down.

Waste Radioactive iodine (8 days) Longer lived isotopes What is potassium iodide? Potassium iodide is a salt, similar to table salt. Its chemical symbol is KI. It is routinely added to table salt to make it "iodized." Potassium iodide, if taken in time and at the appropriate dosage, blocks the thyroid gland's uptake of radioactive iodine and thus could reduce the risk of thyroid cancers and other diseases that might otherwise be caused by exposure to radioactive iodine that could be dispersed in a severe nuclear accident.