The Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant in Japan discharged approximately 350 gallons of radioactive water into the sea today after an earthquake shook the Japanese town, which is 160 miles northwest of Tokyo.

Fortunately, the radioactive contamination levels fell well below legal limits. The power plant is the one largest nuclear facility's in the world and just one of fifty-five nuclear reactors in Japan. The incident, in light of the recent swarm of headlines regarding alternative energy use and the possible re-emergence of nuclear power as a primary alternative energy source, leaves many to wonder, is nuclear power safe?

Nuclear energy has both good and bad points. It creates a huge amount of energy without using valuable fossil fuels, but it also produces radioactive materials that can be extremely harmful to the environment. Consequently, nuclear safety includes actions taken to prevent nuclear and radiation accidents or to limit their consequences.

Workers at nuclear plants, and the larger environment, run a risk due to this radioactive material. Nuclear power plants must be run very carefully to ensure that there are no mistakes, which is why nuclear power plant operators promote a safety culture. The term "safety culture" is a term introduced by the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group in a report published on the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) defines safety culture as "an assembly of characteristics and attitudes in organizations and individuals, which establishes that, as an overriding priority, nuclear plant safety issues receive the attention warranted by their significance." Safety culture is about improving safety attitudes in people, but it is also about good safety management established by organizations with a holistic, whole community, whole of life approach. A good safety culture implies a constant assessment of the safety significance of events, such as earthquakes or other natural disasters.

Additionally, nuclear power plants possess both active and passive safety systems. Active safety systems are systems activated by a human operator, an automatic computer driven system, or even a mechanical system to respond to dangerous events in an appropriate manner. Passive safety systems rely on the laws of nature to ensure a reactor responds in an appropriate manner during potentially dangerous events. The laws of nature include for instance, incorporating the law of physics in engineered components of nuclear power plants whereby a nuclear reaction would slow versus accelerate during potentially dangerous situations or events.

Nuclear power plants also possess structural safety systems. Surrounding a nuclear reactor are certain containment structures, such as the fuel ceramic, metal fuel cladding tubes and the reactor vessel and coolant system. Finally, nuclear reactors are housed in containment buildings. Containment buildings, which are made of steel or concrete, enclose nuclear reactors to contain the escape of radiation.

Ultimately, human exposure to radiation, the primary contamination of concern at nuclear power plants, is more likely to come from exposure natural background radiation and from some medical procedures. In fact, studies exist finding no evidence of increased risk of exposure to radiation or occurrences of cancer in individuals living near nuclear facilities. For instance, in 1990 a study by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health, which surveyed over 900,000 cancer deaths in counties near nuclear facilities, found no increased incidence of cancer mortality in people living near 62 different nuclear facilities in the United States.

Regardless of the safety systems in place, which promote a culture of safety in nuclear power plant operations, no industrial activity is risk-free. Occurrences take place, which are completely outside our control, as evidenced by the earthquake, which impacted the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power. Any malfunction, accident or natural disaster at or near a nuclear power plant presents potentially devastating, long-term impacts to the surrounding community and environment.