What are the disadvantages of using nuclear power?

Answer 1

There are two, very large negatives to nuclear power.

1. The possibility of a nuclear meltdown. The past fifty years of nuclear power has seen two meltdowns and one close call. These issues could easily destroy hundreds of square miles of land and conceivably kill or inconvenience those that live in these areas. Chernobyl and the current crisis in Japan are examples of absolute worst case possibilities. Three Mile Island is a classic example of a system working to prevent a meltdown.

2. The issue of storing the spent radioactive material is problematic currently. There have been proposals for permanent disposal and even methods proposed to decrease the levels of radioactivity in this material. Politics has prevented these systems from being implemented.

The only current alternative to nuclear power though is coal or fossil fuel plants. The alternative energy proposals can assist in very small terms and in very small amounts. Coal causes hundreds of deaths each year in terms of mining operation issues and black lung. Whether or not these known environmental and health issues are offset by the unknown issues of a meltdown have been debated for decades. The United States has a current policy of taking the known annual deaths from coal as being safer and less problematic than the unknown issues of Nuclear.

Answer 2

· The complex design takes a long time to build and is expensive.

· Closing down a plant costs more than closing another plant.

· The hazardous waste is extremely dangerous if it escapes into the environment. The same applies to any release of contamination through accident or design flaws.

· The waste and by-products are a threat to world safety if obtained by terrorists.

Answer 3

There are good effects and bad effects. The worst effect is the storage of nuclear waste. When uranium is mined it is mostly U238 but there is a small amount of U235. U235 can be used as it is in nuclear reactors but U 238 can't. In order to use the U238, it is placed in breeder reactors where it absorbs neutrons to become neptunium 239 which quickly loses an electron to become plutonium 239, arguably the most toxic substance known. This plutonium can then be used in reactors or bombs.

Once the nuclear fuel is spent (energy released) the depleted fuel is still extremely radio active. This then has to be stored somewhere.

There have been several suggestions as to how to store it but it remains dangerous for many thousands of years. The half life of plutonium itself is 25 to 30 thousand years. This means that if you start off with a tonne of it, in 25000 years there is still half a tonne. 25000 years after that there is still a quarter of a tonne.

The time period is 75000 years and the fuel has only lost three quarters of its plutonium but it is still very dangerous because the elements it turns into, are themselves, very radio active.

The pyramids were only built about 5000 years ago. Think about it.

Answer 4

The main 'problem' is increased amounts of nuclear waste to manage, yet even when your entire country is being powered by nuclear power, (like France) the total amount of waste is still very small.

Answer 5

The waste is very powerful/dangerous