Nuclear science and technology improves our lives in many ways and in many different areas. It makes our food safer; it improves the quality of tools, gauges, and machines; it diagnoses abnormalities of the metabolism and treats cancers; it powers space applications; and it offers one of the cleanest and most environmentally friendly ways of generating electricity.
Energy, isotopes, and radiation produced by nuclear science provide for a vast range of beneficial applications.
Political Stability and Food Security
There is perhaps nothing more fundamental to human survival than political stability and food security.
Our struggle today and in the future is that population numbers have exploded within the past century, with billions of more mouths to feed.
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Around 805 million humans on earth (approximately 1 out of 9) go to bed hungry every night.
About 21,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every four seconds.
With as much as 25 – 30% of the world’s food production being lost to insects, bacteria and rodents after harvesting, there is an enormous need to find new ways to increase food production and deliver it with minimum spoilage.
Nuclear technology uses radiation to improve the productivity of the entire food chain in a substantial manner.
Here are just a few examples:
Water Use and Soil Management
 Neutron meters improve irrigation practices that help conserve water and protect vulnerable land.
 Tagging fertilizers with radioisotopes can determine how plants are using nutrients.
 Nuclear techniques help increase crops yields and help determine which plants to grow in areas with less available water.
 Selective breeding creates disease resistance plants with greater nutritional value.
Pest Control
 Sterile insect technique (SIT) uses gamma radiation to sterilize large populations of insects.
 The Mediterranean fruit fly (Medfly) and tsetse fly have been successful controlled using this method.
Animal Health and Productivity
 Radioisotope tracers are used to follow the path of the food in animals’ digestive systems and helps determine the nutritional value of the feed.
 Radiation techniques can diagnose harmful pathogens in animals early so we can vaccinate them and eliminate the wide spread of diseases.
Food Safety
 Irradiation uses kills bacteria, molds, and parasites in our food.
 Irradiated food can be stored for an extended period without refrigeration, which increases their availability in underdeveloped countries.
 Using lower does of ionizing radiation can lengthen the refrigerated life of fresh fish and chicken for several weeks. Strawberries treated this way can last for about 30 days. Sealed, treated foods can stay on your shelf at room temperature for years, like canned foods.
DID YOU KNOW?

Irradiation does not make food radioactive, and irradiated foods look and taste just like the fresh, raw food.
Understanding our Past
Carbon-14 dating has allowed us to accurately date historical artifacts. All living beings (plant or animal) have the same ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12. When plants or animals die, the ratio changes and this change can be used to determine the matters age. This technique is used to date specimens from 50 to 60,000 years C-14 dating is useful for dating items up to about 50,000 – 60,000 years ago (useful for dating organisms like Neanderthals and ice age animals).
 The age of Egyptian mummies is determined to be over 2,000 years old using carbon dating
 Charcoal from the “Marmes Man” site in southeastern Washington allowed us to determine that the oldest known inhabited sites in North America are just over 10,000 years old.
Other radioactive techniques using beryllium, aluminum, potassium, argon, and uranium have been developed to measure specimens older than 50,000 years.
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 The age of Lucy, the most famous Australopithecus afarensis, was determined to be 3.2 million-year-old using argon-argon dating.
The age of Earth was determined to be 4.6 million years old using uranium-lead dating.
The Potassium-argon method was used by the Mars Curiosity rover to date rocks on the surface of Mars at
60-100 million years old.
DID YOU KNOW?
Carbon Dating
If we look at the carbon-14 atom, we find that C-14 does not last forever. There is a time when it loses its extra neutrons and becomes carbon-12. The loss of those neutrons is called radioactive decay. That decay happens regularly. For carbon, the decay happens in a few thousand years (5,730 years). Some elements take longer, and others have a decay that happens over a period of minutes. Archaeologists are able to use their knowledge of radioactive decay when they need to know the date of an object they dug up. C-14 locked in an object from several thousand years ago will decay at a certain rate. With this knowledge, archaeologists can measure how many thousands of years old an object is.
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Creating Beauty
Very few people know that radiation plays a significant role in transforming gems into desirable colors.
Gemstones can be enhanced from their natural condition by irradiation.
 Diamonds change from off-white to green or yellow
Pearls change to blue and gray (“black” pearls)
Topaz changes from colorless to blue, intensifies yellow and orange, or creates green
Preserving Art and History
Radiation is used to restore and preserve artifacts that have been exposed to air. Irradiation kills microorganisms that can cause decay.
By using an x-ray fluorescence technique we can determine the chemical makeup of paint in rare paintings. This allows us to authenticate the age and place of origin of the painting and reveal a forgery.
Improving Public Safety
Runway lights in the Alaskan outback, heart pacemakers, smoke detectors, criminal investigation, coating nonstick frying pan, luggage and security screening – all use radiation to make our lives easier and more productive.
For example:

 The transparent plastic wrap used to package fruits and others foods depends on radiation for its strength and clinging ability.
 Those runway lights in Alaska are made with tritium gas, a waste product of nuclear power plants. These lights burn for up to 10 years without wires or an external power source, and could cost only 1/5 to 1/2 the price of using regular lights.
DID YOU KNOW?
Smoke detectors have saved countless lives
Experts say the simple act of installing smoke detectors on each floor of your home can go a long way toward saving your family from a fire. Today, the ionization smoke detector is the most commonly used. This type of smoke detector is one of the many applications of research done by nuclear scientists and engineers.
How it works
The ionization smoke detector uses a tiny bit of radioactive americium-241, a source of alpha radiation. An airfilled space between two electrodes creates a chamber that permits a small, constant current to flow between the electrodes. If smoke or heat enters the chamber, the electric current between the electrodes is interrupted and the alarm is triggered. This smoke alarm is less expensive than other designs and improves the original smoke alarm by measuring more than the heat of a fire. It can detect particles of smoke too small to be visible.
Safe, reliable, clean
The role electricity plays in our lives by enhancing our productivity, comfort, safety, health, and economy is obvious. We live with the benefits of electricity every day. So much so that we take it for granted that whenever we plug our phones and tablets into the wall socket, the power will be there. While most people give little thought to where electricity comes from, there are many different ways to generate electricity – including coal, oil, gas, hydroelectric, nuclear, and solar. Each option inherits certain advantages that merit consideration whenever there is a need for a new power plant. Nuclear generated electricity is unique in that it inherently addresses many of the shortcomings of the other means for power generation. The use of nuclear power provides answers for many problems in the areas of the carbon emissions, fuel efficiency, cost, and reliability.
DID YOU KNOW?
 At least 20% of America’s electricity is from nuclear energy.
 Nuclear energy is mostly carbon-free and avoids the emissions associated with fossil fuels that pollute the air and water.
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The power from one kilogram of uranium is approximately equivalent to 42 gallons of oil, 1 ton of coal, or
17,000 cubic feet of natural gas.
Operation of a nuclear plant generates 400 to 700 permanent jobs, which on average pay a 36 percent higher wage than other regional jobs.
Zero Carbon Emissions
In contrast to fossil fuel plants (coal, oil and gas), nuclear power plants do not produce any carbon dioxide or sulfur emissions, which are major contributors to the greenhouse effect and acid rain, respectively. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, U.S. nuclear power plants prevent 5.1 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 2.4 million tons of nitrogen oxide, and 164 million metric tons of carbon from entering the earth’s atmosphere each year.
Nuclear power reactors do contribute a measurable increase in radiation to the environment around a nuclear power plant. However, this increase is relatively small compared to natural background radiation, and is less than the radioactivity released from a typical coal plant. Even with this increase in radiation, most employees of nuclear power plants receive exposures typically of workers in all occupations. In addition, no evidence exists that show that small increases in radiation exposure having negative health effects.
More energy for less

Like fossil fuels, the nuclear fuel raw materials come from the earth. Uranium, the primary fuel material, is mined. The environmental impact of mining is well known; however, the advantage of nuclear power comes from the amount of power that comes from a small amount of uranium. The power from one kilogram of uranium is approximately equivalent to 42 gallons of oil, 1 ton of coal, or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas .
Therefore, as a function of power consumption, very little uranium needs to be removed from the ground; hence, the environmental impact of uranium mines is much less compared with mining and drilling for fossil fuels.
Unlike oil or gas, nuclear fuel is solid; hence, nuclear fuel is immune to the environment problems posed by spillage during transportation to a power plant. Unused nuclear fuel is only slightly more radioactive that naturally occurring underground. Fuel delivery casks are designed with a high margin of safety to ensure that even in the event of a transportation accident, the environment remains free of contamination from the nuclear fuel.
Economical
Nuclear power plants are one of the most economical forms of energy production. Including capital and non-fuel operating costs, the cost of operating a nuclear power plant is roughly equivalent to fossil fuels. As 2012, the average cost of power generation by nuclear plants was 2.40 cents per kilowatt-hour, for coal-fired plants 3.27 cents, for oil 22.48 cents, and for gas 3.40 cents. Costs for solar and wind are still well beyond that considered to be competitive to the public.
The cost of regulation and industry oversight of nuclear power generation is substantially more than that of other power generation sources; however, improvements in reliability and operational and maintenance efficiency have contributed to reducing those costs.
Reliable Power
Currently, nuclear power plant capacity factors average over 85%. This is competitive with those of fossil fired plants (average 50-60%), or solar and wind which have capacity factors in the 30% range, or even lower. Most plants are designed to operate at full power regardless of the demand on electricity. Nuclear power plants are particularly well suited for this purpose since they are designed to produce large quantities of power and can sustain operation for up to two years without refueling.
The U.S. nuclear energy plants can supply large amounts of predictable, reliable electricity through virtually every period of extreme heat and cold. During the 2014 Polar Vortex, nuclear energy generation saw no drop in output and on the coldest day operated at 95 percent capacity.
Nuclear energy will be key to the clean, economical, large-scale production of hydrogen from water as a fuel for transportation and industry.
Problems inherent with fossil fuels are avoided with energy production using hydrogen. Per unit of fuel, hydrogen fuel cells in vehicles are about twice as efficient as combustion energies. Unlike conventional engines, fuel cells emit only water vapor and heat. 50 million tons of hydrogen are produced for global consumption per year. The goal of the U.S. Department of Energy is for hydrogen to produce 10% of our total energy demand by 2030.
When used as an energy carrier, 9 million tons of hydrogen could power 20-30 million cars or 5-8 million homes.
If we develop the production of hydrogen fuel to its full potential, we can reduce our demand for oil by over 11 million barrels per day by the year 2040. Only nuclear energy can produce hydrogen at large enough scales to meet future demand while avoiding the release of greenhouse gases.
Hydrogen Technologies
 Electrolysis –Electrolyzing water, splitting the hydrogen from the oxygen, is a mature technology and is used primarily for the production of high purity oxygen and hydrogen.
 Steam Reforming – Sometimes called fossil fuel reforming is a method for hydrogen production or other useful products from hydrocarbon fuels such as natural gas. Steam reforming of methane accounts for nearly all the 50 million tons of hydrogen used worldwide for ammonia based fertilizers and oil product enhancement.

 Thermo Chemical Processes –Hydrogen produced by high temperature thermo-chemical processes has not been demonstrated on a commercial scale but promises high efficiency production in the future.
DID YOU KNOW
 Hydrogen, when produced from fossil fuels, is no solution for energy independence or environmental compatibility
 Wind, solar, and geothermal do not possess the energy density to generate sufficient hydrogen
 The transition to a nuclear/hydrogen economy can begin today with electrolysis
 Should the nuclear/hydrogen vision materialize then uranium resource depletion becomes important
Since ionizing radiation can penetrate matter, it is used for a variety of industrial methods.
Non-Destructive Testing
It is essential to test materials, products, structures or buildings without altering their properties or affecting their usefulness. X-rays and gamma rays are used in industrial radiography to make images of the inside of solid products, as a means of nondestructive testing (NDT) and inspection. NDT radiography is used in the petroleum, chemical and nuclear industries, as well as on assembly lines to test consumer goods.
 Car wheels, receive a quality check of this type before leaving the factory.
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Pipelines are inspected both during installation and maintenance to ensure that welds remain intact.
Adding a gamma tracer to a gas or liquid in a closed system makes it possible to find a hole in a tube.
 Adding a tracer to the surface of the component of a motor makes it possible to measure wear by measuring the activity of the lubricating oil.
Ensuring Product Quality
 Nucleonic gauges – instruments that use a radioisotope source to measure materials and products – are used to ensure optimum coating thicknesses, such as metal-coating.
 Moisture gauges are used in construction materials (asphalt and concrete), glass, mineral processing, chemicals and food.
 Radioisotope gauges are used to measure mass per unit of area in manufacturing aluminum foil, paper and steel plate.
Enhancing Material Quality
 Radiation is used to create high-performance polymeric materials.
 Radiation can cause cross-linking of some molecules to form giant molecules which have higher heat, chemical and mechanical resistance. This helps harden plastics.
 The wire and cable industry also uses cross-linking to strengthen the insulation of wires and cables and make them more heat resistant.
 Radiation vulcanization of natural rubber latex (RVNRL) imparts strength and elasticity, making it ideal for the production of surgical gloves (standard and allergy-free), catheters, balloons used in cardiac procedures and even automobile tires.
Electrostatic control To avoid the build-up of static electricity in production of paper, plastics, synthetic textiles, etc., a ribbon-shaped source of the alpha emitter 241 Am can be placed close to the material at the end of the production line. The source ionizes the air to remove electric charges on the material.
Radioactive tracers Since radioactive isotopes behave, chemically, mostly like the inactive element, the behavior of a certain chemical substance can be followed by tracing the radioactivity.
Oil and Gas Exploration Nuclear well logging is used to help predict the commercial viability of new or existing wells. The technology involves the use of a neutron or gamma-ray source and a radiation detector, which are lowered into boreholes to determine the properties of the surrounding rock such as porosity and lithography.

Nuclear medicine and radiology are the whole of medical techniques that involve radiation or radioactivity to diagnose, treat and prevent disease. While radiology has been used for close to a century, “nuclear medicine” began approximately 50 years ago. Today, about one-third of all procedures used in modern hospitals involve radiation or radioactivity.
These procedures are among the best and most effective life-saving tools available, they are safe and painless and don’t require anesthesia, and they are helpful to a broad span of medical specialties, from pediatrics to cardiology to psychiatry.
While both nuclear medicine and radiology are used as a diagnostic procedure (to determine a patient’s health, monitor the course of an illness or follow the progress of the treatment) and as a therapeutic procedure (to treat illnesses), they are different in that in nuclear medicine radioisotopes are introduced into the body internally, whereas in radiology X-rays penetrate the body from outside the body.
DID YOU KNOW?
Personal health improves with radiation .
 It allows for quick, safe, early and more accurate medical diagnoses.
 It can be harnessed as a treatment for certain diseases.
 Tens of millions of patients are treated with nuclear medicine each year, and more than 10,000 hospitals worldwide use radioisotopes in medicine.
 Employment of nuclear medicine technologists is projected to grow 20 percent from 2012 to 2022, faster than the average for all occupations.
Major Advances in Nuclear Medicine Diagnosis and Treatment
Exploratory surgery used to be the way doctors investigated health problems. Doctors would cut, poke, and prod.
But since the 1940 ′ s, nuclear technologies have offered an increasing array of diagnostic techniques that help patients avoid the pain of surgery while their physicians gain knowledge of the body’s inner workings.
X-rays, MRI scanners, CAT scans, and ultrasound each use nuclear science and technology to troubleshoot different parts of the body and diagnose conditions. Each of these are non-invasive procedures means patients do not need to undergo surgery. More advanced nuclear medicine uses computers, detectors, and radioisotopes, to give doctors even more information about a patient’s internal workings. Known as nuclear imaging, these procedures include bone scanning, Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Single Photon Emission Computed
Tomography (SPECT) and Cardiovascular Imaging. The use of these procedures depends on the patient’s symptoms.
Radioisotopes are useful because the radiation they emit can be located in the body. They can be administered by injection, inhalation, or orally. A gamma camera captures an image from isotopes in the body that emit gamma radiation. Then, computers enhance the image, allowing physicians to detect tumors or fractures, measure blood flow, or determine thyroid and pulmonary functions.
The first radiopharmaceutical to be widely used was the fission product, iodine-131, in the form of the simple salt, sodium iodide, the use of which was established in the late forties as a diagnostic test for certain thyroid disorders.
Since the drug could be administered orally, in solution, it was referred to in the press as the “Atomic Cocktail”.
Since those pioneering days, the practice of nuclear medicine has soared in most developed countries.
Approximately 16 million people in the United States are tested diagnostically each year with a radioactive drug, either in vivo or in vitro .
Powering Space Missions
Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTG) are a nuclear technology attached to a spacecraft that supplies power and heating. When the radioactive isotope plutonium-238 in the RTG decays, it gives off heat, which can be used to generate electricity using a thermocouple device. This process is known as thermoelectric conversion.
The decay heat warms one end of the thermocouple, and the cold environment of space cools the other. This process produces an electric current that then powers the spacecraft. Thermocouples can even be found here on
Earth in appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioners. Excess decay heat is also pumped through the

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 spacecraft’s systems in order to warm up its instruments and subsystems, allowing it to operate in cold environments.
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DID YOU KNOW?
Radioisotopic Thermoelectric Generators have been involved in more than 25 space missions providing power in deep space for Voyager 1 and 2, several Apollo missions, Galileo, Nimbus and LES. RTGs have enabled major scientific accomplishments such as:
 Cassini spacecraft and Huygens probe’s exploration of Saturn and Titan, one of its moons, since 2004
Landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars in 2014
Flyby images of Pluto from the New Horizons mission in 2015
Current Applications
According to NASA, eight generations of RTGs have been used in U.S. spacecraft since 1961. Currently, they use the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) in the vacuum of space or in planetary atmospheres.
MMRTGs carry approximately 10.6 lbs of plutonium-238
They support spacecraft for at least 14 years and supply heat to maintain proper functioning
They provide around 110 watts of power (a 13’’ color TV uses approximately 150 watts)
They are also modular, meaning that if more power is needed for a mission, several can be used together to meet this higher power requirement.
NASA is also working on a new RTG technology, called the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG).
The ASRG, like the MMRTG, converts decay heat from plutonium-238 into electricity, but does not use thermocouples. Instead, the decay heat causes gas to expand and oscillate a piston, similar to a car engine. This moves a magnet back and forth through a coil of wire over 100 times per second, generating electricity for the spacecraft. The amount of electricity generated is more than that of MMRTGs, at approximately 130 watts, with much less plutonium-238 (approximately 8 lbs less). This is a result of the more efficient Stirling cycle conversion. If more power is needed for a mission, ASRGs can also be used together to generate more power.
There are no missions scheduled as of yet that would use ASRGs, but they are being designed for 14-year mission lives.
Instruments
Nuclear technology in space exploration is not limited to the use of decay heat from radioisotopes for power.
There are many instruments used to detect radiation and determine the composition of distant stars or another planet’s rocks, atmosphere, and soil, among many other things. One of these instruments is called the Alpha
Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS). This instrument determines the composition of rocks and soils using alpha particles and X-rays. To do this, alpha particles are generated in the APXS and directed at a target. The alpha particles interact with the materials in the target, which then emits X-rays of certain energies. Each nuclide emits its own unique X-ray energy “fingerprint”, enabling the APXS to determine the makeup of the target.
Future Applications
While there is no current space application for the large energy generation capability of nuclear reactors, future applications include manned exploration of much of the solar system and reduced trip times between planets.
Radiation exposure during space exploration can be dangerously high even for short periods of time, making the use of nuclear-powered rockets is almost requisite for interplanetary visits. Additionally, nuclear reactors can be used for electricity production in inter-planetary missions with large power requirements, such as manned missions and missions with a large scientific payload.