An Argument for Nuclear Power ☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢ Global warming today is on a rise. Our CO2 emissions, mostly that of which are used for energy, are not only having a significant effect on our climate, but also on our own personal health. Unless we take immediate action to reduce global warming emissions, these impacts will continue to intensify, grow ever more costly and damaging, and increasingly affect the entire planet, including us humans. I don't think that it's valuable nor proper to fear-monger, but I don't think that it's necessary either. We are already faced with the danger of global warming, and one only needs to look at the correlation between rising temperatures, flooding, and extreme weather events and air pollution caused by humans to know that we are causing the problem. ☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢ Many environmentalists today, the vast majority in fact, are opposed to nuclear power. This I find both surprising and worrying. They argue that our energy should depend primarily on wind and solar power. While I do agree that we should lower our dependence on coal and oil based energy as much as possible, I don't think that depending on wind and solar power is a plausible solution. These energy sources, although renewable, aren't efficient and cannot meet peak consumer energy demand when the sun isn’t shining or the winds die down. Creating enough machinery to convert solar and wind energy as our primary source would also be extremely expensive if it is to be used by the general public. The fact is, neither solar nor wind are actually substitutes for coal or natural gas or oil. The new product has to be equal to or superior than the predecessor and solar and wind are totally different than those fuels and inferior in that they’re intermittent. ☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢☢ This is why I argue that we need nuclear power as our primary energy source. Nuclear’s efficiency, small land-use footprint, and limited resultant pollution make it a vital part of any low-carbon future. Although people often point to Chernobyl and Fukushima to discredit the use of nuclear power, it must be noted that the power plants used in these cities were using more primitive technology without a proper containment chamber and automatic cooling system, which allowed for the nuclear accident. However, American nuclear generators in particular are safer than ever and have an extremely high capacity factor, meaning they produce almost all of their potential energy. American nuclear set a record high capacity factor of 91.8 percent for 2014. Wind and solar have capacity factors less than half as large. All this can make nuclear power plants seem like risky investments, which in turn raises investors' demands on return and the cost of borrowing money to finance the projects. Yet nuclear power enjoys low operating costs, which can make it competitive on the basis of the electricity price needed to recover the capital investment over a plant's lifetime. And if governments eventually cap carbon dioxide emissions through either an emissions charge or a regulatory requirement, as they are likely to do in the next decade or so, then nuclear energy will be more attractive relative to fossil fuels. Another concern about nuclear power plants for many environmentalists is the prospect of nuclear waste. While most low-level radioactive waste (LLW) today is typically sent to land-based disposal immediately following its packaging for long-term management, there are many other solutions that are just starting to be implemented now. Much of nuclear waste can actually be recycled into fuel as it could be separated into reusable uranium and transuranics (the most radiotoxic elements, like plutonium and neptunium, in used nuclear fuel). One other concern is radiation emitted from nuclear power plants. There are many misconceptions regarding radiation, which can be particularly harmful to an uninformed public. Natural sources, including bananas, which contain the isotope Potassium-40, account for most of the radiation we all receive each year, even for people who live close to nuclear power plants. The nuclear fuel cycle does not give rise to significant radiation exposure for members of the public, and even in two major nuclear accidents – Three Mile Island and Fukushima – exposure to radiation has caused no harm to the public. To further explain this, banana equivalent dose (BED) is an informal measurement of ionizing radiation exposure, intended as a general educational example to compare a dose of radioactivity to the dose one is exposed to by eating one average-sized banana.
continued... The radiation exposure from consuming a banana is approximately 1% of the average daily exposure to radiation, which is 100 banana equivalent doses (BED). The maximum permitted radiation leakage for a nuclear power plant is equivalent to 2,500 BED (250 μSv) per year, while a chest CT scan delivers 70,000 BED (7 mSv). A lethal dose of radiation is approximately 35, 000,000 BED (3500 mSv). A person living 16 kilometres (10 mi) from the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor received an average of 800 BED of exposure to radiation during the 1979 accident. I hope that you learned something new from my argument for nuclear power plants, and perhaps even changed your perspective on their usability. Please let me know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below, whether you agree or disagree!
