Nuclear Power: Problem or Solution

atomic agency is complicated. A thermo thermonuclear office staff industrial plant forgets brawniness that does not contribute to global heating system. Climate disturbances have got seen a rise in the construction of new reactors to address growing demands of electrical vigor manhoodwide. Currently the United States and Canada receive 20% of their electric power from nuclear plants. The rest of the world is at 6% but rising. The benefits drive the nuclear vitality movement and continue to do so and the proponents of nuclear power see this as an indispensable solution in reducing the utilisation of conflict-ridden fossil fuels.Opponents of nuclear power also make a unassailable case citing cost, gum elasticty and justified global trouble of negate repositing and the voltage for nuclear weapons in atomic number 18as where terrorism is a major concern. These plants provide the uranium and plutonium regarded as critical components of nuclear weapons. This will be d iscussed in depth in this paper. This paper will also token the benefits and detriments of the incoming growth of nuclear power plants across the globe. The first uses of nuclear technology were the bombs dropped in japan in the 1940s.In the 1950s physicists and engineers harness this power and presented it as a less costly and an alternative mannikin of might. Nuclear power plants were built with an eye to safety this was the main concern early on. The 103 reactors in the U. S. today supply 25% more electricity than 109 reactors did a decade ago. This has been achieved through emendments in management, reliability and productivity. In 2010, fetching Sides, Clashing Views on Environmental Issues states that favorability to nuclear energy was running at 67% of Ameri suffers in favor of using this technology.The gap of sight against this was closing. These companies were be seen as valuable and all operating licenses were be renewed. Impressive gains in output and reliabili ty at many a(prenominal) another(prenominal) nuclear power plants have the perseverance looking to build more plants. Nuclear power is be accepted as the core bearing of the U. S. electric supply. And in this discolor era, nuclear is seen as the main source of assisting the U. S. in meeting dandy tune goals. The Clean Air Act of 1970 set out to improve air quality and nuclear power plants are credited as one big reason that compliance was met.Electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles are becoming more in demand and the clean electricity from nuclear power is driving policymakers to continue to support nuclear technology. These vehicles cut off carbon emissions, noise, maintenance and reduced oil usage and reliance on foreign oil. Clean energy is paramount to a sustainable increment globally. As the universe of discourse continues to grow, the demand for energy increases and harnessing wind and solar should increase because they are candid options and do not contrib ute directly to air or irrigate pollution.These renewable fuels contribute in a compulsive focus to a sustainable world but they just go intot produce enough electricity yet, they are con fountred good replacement options in conjunction with nuclear energy. The nuclear age started with the thought of this defecate of generating electricity universe less costly. That did not prove to be the case, in the beginning, but today nuclear energy is once again creation heralded as a value proposition. The volume of electricity that can be produced and done so in a clean and safe way is looked at as a way to provide environmental attributes and price stability.The Department of Energys Nuclear Power of 2010 program cookd a partnership between government and industry and ensured adequate keep for the building of new plants. The planned investment was $650 million dollars over near(prenominal) geezerhood and assists with the need of program stability and resources necessary to ens ure future viability. The U. S. faces an imminent energy crisis and even though electric power is plainly 3 to 4 % of our gross domestic product, the other 96 or 97% depends on that to fuel our $11 trillion dollar economy.Nuclear energy will remain a front runner because of the steady-going and continuous source of energy it provides and it allows us, as a nation, to lead the world in decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels. Coal is plentiful across many parts of the globe but contributes to global warming (there is research and development in developing a clean combust and this has been proven viable but bringing it to market at a competitive price has not happened). Natural gas is also reasonably abundant but unsustainable in power generation and makes little sense.This being said enhances the argument for nuclear energy plants to assume that the future plants being built will continue to grow worldwide and that as this continues, the industry will strive to address cost an d bolster safety. The other side of this issue sheds a disparate light on the said(prenominal) subject. The put down of nuclear energy is measured differently. Financial expense is a federal agent but fear is the most major concern. Nuclear energy has no pollution or emissions but the by-products of the process namely snitch, and how it is stored, transported and discarded is regarded by many as the downside of nuclear energy.The safety of power plants was the original concern but as these expanded across our country and the world, the waste has drive to be a mightier concern from the holding and containing in plants, to the transporting over advancedways and last the storage of these toxic solids, with a half-life of a thousand years. The potential harm of hot waste is to humans, wildlife and the environment. This waste contains plutonium, uranium and other elements along with parts of atoms. Nuclear waste needs to decay following a cooling process.Even after the waste h as been out of the reactor for 10 years, a human coming within a meter of it would tumble in three minutes. Waste from the first generation of reactors has not been success soundy dealt with and that said, this snuff its all reactors that followed looking toward a solution and the prediction of over a 100,000 metric tons of waste by 2035 that needs to be all told isolated from the environment for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years because it is so deadly. Sendai, Japan had an 8. 9 earthquake on March 11, 2011 that was followed by a tsunami of enormous proportions.There was a nuclear power plant in doing called Fukushima-Daiichi that continues to be in the news more than six weeks after the disasters and the falsehood continues to unfold. The first thing to point out, in fairness, is that these were unlike Three nautical mile Island and Chernobyl because the problems that forgeted were not the result of human error. The built in safety measures discover an earthquak e worked and as soon as the quake was detected, the plant started an automated, preprogrammed eject down and all the safety elements were working to achieve a cooling and treatment of the decay heat.Diesel generators provide the power to drive the pumps for the water coolant necessary to circulate through the reactors, removing the decay heat but when the tsunami hit, the diesel engine generators that were necessary to provide power necessary for the pumps was lost. There were other support systems but they too were lost and the fear of melt down and radiation being spewed into the atmosphere ensued. Heat removal could have continued indefinitely if there was power but that was not the case due to the tsunami. radiation levels are high and more than 6,000 families in surrounding cities have been told to leave the area. Minor traces of the radiation were found in the drinking water in my state, Massachusetts and this drives home the point of how small our world has become and wh erefore we all need to be better informed of the world near us. Radiation and its side effects are nasty and can convey years to manifest illness and cancers. There are also some discrepancies on how much area should be evacuated and there are many varying reports. The U. S. cientists seem to share a common number of 50+ miles, Japan is saying 12. The Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant problems echo most peoples concerns about nuclear safety and have started a hard look at nuclear power plants that are built in earthquake prone areas. This concern has spread to Germany where more than 60,000 protestors have been assemble outside the major nuclear plants in that area. The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) is difficult to assure people around the world that new safeties were already on the drawing board addressing issues like the one in Japan.Nuclear energy had been enjoying resurgence with relative calm ahead the tragedy in Japan. India and chinaware had a plan to add a t housand new nuclear sites in the next two decades. Japan nuclear facilities have withstood many earthquakes the tsunami is what brought this one down. Opponents are still focused on the long shape and the storage, handling, transporting and long term storage of the hazardous waste that is a lethal by-product of nuclear energy. The following is from www. wagingpeace. org and states the risks in a succinct way ?Nuclear Waste ?Nuclear waste is produced in many different ways.There are wastes produced in the reactor core, wastes created as a result of radioactive contamination, and wastes produced as a byproduct of uranium mining, refining, and enrichment. The vast mass of radiation in nuclear waste is given off from worn-out(a) fuel rods. ?A typical reactor will generate 20 to 30 tons of high-level nuclear waste annually. There is no k todayn way to safely dispose of this waste, which remains dangerously radioactive until it naturally decays. ?The rate of decay of a radioactive iso tope is called its half-life, the time in which half the initial amount of atoms present takes to decay.The half-life of Plutonium-239, one curiously lethal component of nuclear waste, is 24,000 years. ?The hazardous life of a radioactive element (the length of time that must elapse before the material is considered safe) is at least 10 half-lives. Therefore, Plutonium-239 will remain hazardous for at least 240,000 years. ?There is a current proposal to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. ?The plan is for Yucca Mountain to hold all of the high level nuclear waste ever produced from every nuclear power plant in the US.However, that would completely fill up the site and not account for future waste. ?Transporting the wastes by truck and rail would be highly dangerous. ?For a more detailed analysis of the problems of and risks incurred by the plan, see extend Ten Reasons to Oppose the DoEs Yucca Mountain Plan ? down payment sites in Australia, Argentina, China, southern Afr ica, and Russia have also been considered. ?Though some countries apply nuclear waste (in essence, preparing it to send through the cycle again to create more energy), this process is banned in the U.S. due to increased proliferation risks, as the reprocessed materials can also be used for making bombs. Reprocessing is also not a solution because it just creates additional nuclear waste. ?The best fulfill would be to cease producing nuclear energy (and waste), to leave the existing waste where it is, and to immobilize it. There are a few different methods of waste immobilization. In the vitrification process, waste is combined with glass-forming materials and melted. Once the materials solidify, the waste is trapped inwardly and cant easily be released.The final concern for the purpose of this paper goes foul to the second to last point from wagingpeace. org. The U. S. is banned from reprocessing nuclear waste because those materials are necessary components when making a bomb. There is a volunteer separate called the National Supplies Group (NSG) and they enforce guidelines to members and oversee exports to ensure that the technologies and materials are treated properly and are not being used to contribute to proliferation. The NSG has 46 member states but Israel, India and Pakistan are not among them.This is frightening and makes one oral sex why it is not mandatory to be part of this NSG. It seems that the rules should be the same for each state or country when dealing with nuclear energy and makes one wonder what the IAEA contributes. Nuclear energy is complicated. If I was writing this before the March 11, 2011 disasters in Japan, I would be impressed by how cold the industry has evolved. Natural disasters are just that, natural and occurring more and more. The strength of Hurricane Katrina was blamed on global warming and makes me wonder if we had more nuclear energy would the storm have been less severe.I dont know that I gave a lot of thought t o nuclear energy before this course and it seems that many movies I have seen over the years usually involves smuggling of components necessary for use in weapons of mass destruction. It now appears that this is a very real threat and one that needs full worldwide regulation. I think nuclear energy is here to rest and that the growth will be immense to keep up with the population and to decrease emissions. This product is a bit of an enigma to me. It strives to do good but has the potential to create so much evil. Nuclear energy and all its by-products are very complicated.