The Pros And Cons Of Nuclear Power Plants

Improved Essays
As of 2002, nuclear power supplies 20 percent of the United States electricity and the consumption of it will only grow. Around the same time, the U.S. government based the idea that the United States should begin to construct power plants. With doing this, we would be collecting more energy from nuclear power for ourselves. This is not a smart move for the U.S. whatsoever Nuclear power is not cheap, does not a healthy environmental impact, and it has many risks involved. Nuclear power is definitely not an easy task. There are high risks involved with having a nuclear power plant around. A meltdown is an accident in which the fuel overheats and melts the reactor core. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commision the chance of a meltdown …show more content…
Radioactive tailings are produced from the mining process of the nuclear fuel cycle. These tailing result in high doses of radiation which is not good for humans or the environment. The radiation enters the food cycle and is passed through plant and animal life. With a nuclear power plant, nuclear reactor is required to control nuclear chain reactions. Nuclear fuel is produced from this and is basically seen as radioactive waste. So far, no one knows how and where to properly dispose of this nuclear waste. They have short-term places to control this waste but these locations are not realistic as the fuel is continued to be produced. It is dangerous to have this radioactive waste around due to how toxic it can be. With disposing high-level waste in the United States there are multiple problems. One is getting the waste to where it needs to be and making sure it is distant and safe in that location. Also, as time goes on it needs to be ensured that future generations do not mess with it. The Environmental Protection Agency has conducted a plan to use Yucca Mountain as a permanent underground disposal of nuclear and radioactive waste. All the nuclear waste and radioactive waste will produced in the United States will come here to be stored. It may seem like it solves all the problems but as time goes on and more waste is produced, more places similar to Yucca Mountain will have to be created. Also, it has been argued that nuclear energy is not associated with worsening global warming. The whole situation with the nuclear waste is becoming more of a problem though. It is not worth putting the environment at more of a risk then it already

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The nuclear power plants let the waste cool for an amount of time before combining it with glass and putting it away into gigantic cooled, solid structures. This avoids the possibility of the materials falling into the wrong hands (terrorist activities). It costs a lot of money to put together the plant, mine for uranium, transport the uranium to and from the facilities and to find a place to store it. The money could be invested for many other important things, rather than possibly ruining our environment more.…

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Nuclear power has a lot of benefits, especially towards the environment. For example, in Document A, it states that “nuclear power production releases no pollutants into the air.” Meaning that while the nuclear power plant is giving out energy for us, it’s not harming the environment. This is important because since it's not releasing any air pollutants, then its not releasing any greenhouse gasses, the earth’s temperature is going to decrease. It's a win win for both the humanity and Earth.…

    • 476 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Nuclear waste is awful, luckily thanks to research and persistence it can be disposed of. Further according to “No ‘’Show Stopper’’ at Proposed Nuclear Dump.” “The U.S. government has spent three decades And $6 billion trying to find a permanent home for the radioactive material left over from Nuclear power plants and munitions factories. ”(No Show Stopper n.pag)…

    • 218 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nuclear energy is the energy released during nuclear fission or fusion. Nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction in which a heavy nucleus splits spontaneously or on impact with another particle, with the release of energy. Nuclear fusion on the contrary is the exact opposite; it gathers energy from the heavy nucleus combining with the shot particle. These two combined produce a lot of energy that is used all over the world on a daily basis. Nuclear power has proved to serve a huge part of our society today.…

    • 2040 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pros And Cons Of TMI

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages

    I think we should keep TMI(Three Mile Island) because the positives outweigh the cons. In my opinion, keeping TMI would be a good idea because of the amount of energy it can produce. If they closed TMI then a lot of people would lose their jobs. TMI produces emission free energy unlike coal or other fuels. If TMI closes, then Pennsylvania's main source of energy would be coal or propane which is very bad for the air.…

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Australia has many already existing methods of disposing of radioactive waste materials, each with their own list of pros and cons. However, there are also many theoretical methods of disposing such waste that have not been put into action, and if one of these were to be better than an already existing method when put into practice surely it should be given more attention. Therefore, this presentation shall cover each of these topics in order to identify which method of disposal, theoretical or already in practice, would be the most efficient, and if it isn 't already used, a reason for why not. But what is radioactive waste?…

    • 1104 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Australia has been engage using energy future or as it call, nuclear power and signed a contract around 1951s and in fact, Australia start creating uranium not as much of 2 grams between 1906 till 1932 Australia has exported their production in 1962s After that, large and high grade of uranium has been discovering around Australia, during the same era, the safety has been forcing to take in action to minimise the nuclear producing. However, uranium oxide has been to start move up and carbon an emission has been getting high in the air, nuclear power might be the solution to reduce this amount of pollutions. According to studies that mad, Australia has around 25% of the world’s resources of economic uranium.…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The generation of electricity through nuclear energy reduces the amount of energy generated from fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Meaning that it is lowering the greenhouse gas emissions such as CO2 due to the use of less fossil fuels.…

    • 119 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Saying “No” to Nuclear Power As of 2003, 49,000 metric tons of nuclear waste has been produced in the United States alone. Every day, more and more of this incredibly dangerous substance is released into our planet’s soil. Nuclear power seems like a good idea on the surface, but obviously, it is not the answer. Nuclear power is too dangerous, too expensive, and unable to be contained, therefore it should not be the world’s primary source of energy.…

    • 1098 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Low pollution, Nuclear power also has a lot fewer greenhouse emissions. Nuclear energy has one of the least effect on nature, since it doesn’t discharge any greenhouse gasses. Low operating cost, Nuclear power produces very inexpensive electricity. Since the cost of a nuclear reactor is anywhere between from 40-60 years, depending on how often it is used and how it is being used. Reliability, There has been an estimation that with the current rate of consumption of uranium, We may have enough uranium for 70-80 years.…

    • 975 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Even though utilizing nuclear fission as a power source does have its respectable pros, the cons seem to overwhelm the pros. Setting up nuclear power plants is very expensive and the majority of nuclear power plants’ fuel relies on a very meager source. The other cons include and are not limited to: mining for the meager source poses a health risk to the people mining and not mining and if not dealt with properly, the radioactive materials used in a nuclear power plant can severely harm the environment as well as the people and animals within it. Opposed to other nonrenewable resources like coal, petroleum, and natural gas, nuclear power plants emits little to no amount of pollution/greenhouse gases into the air. In addition, they are cheap to run.…

    • 919 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Meanwhile, nuclear proliferation risks remain a prohibitive concern for many experts—even those who believe that nuclear energy can play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So in my opinion we need to have a long-term plan for nuclear waste. If we do not have it, we should not use of nuclear energy…

    • 1068 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    s nuclear power worth the risk? Are the positive aspects of nuclear power worth the possible negative outcomes? To use nuclear power, Uranium atoms must split, which is called fission. The heat produced from fission is what makes the water turn into steam. The steam is what makes the turbines turn and the turbines are used to generate electricity.…

    • 725 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Nuclear Energy Controversy

    • 1506 Words
    • 6 Pages

    (History of Nuclear Power) Lastly, one of the biggest problems with nuclear energy is the disposal of its created waste. In 1982, Congress formed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, this was created to find two repositories for high-level waste and the Department of Energy (DOE) took action in…

    • 1506 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Also, using nuclear energy has very a few environmental problems compared with…

    • 1765 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays