Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy.

Nucular Energy

The long half-life of the isotope uranium-238 (4.51 × 109 years) makes it well-suited for long term storage in a shielded bunker. According to an interview from Scientific American, one Russian facility had been storing samples of enriched (weapons grade) uranium in a broom closet prior to the improvement project; another had been keeping track of its stock of nuclear warheads using index cards kept in a shoe box.

About 95 percent of the depleted uranium produced is stored as uranium hexafluoride, a crystalline solid, (D)UF6, in steel cylinders in open air storage yards close to enrichment plants. Each cylinder holds up to 12.7 tonnes (or 14 US tons) of UF6. In the U.S. 560,000 tonnes of depleted UF6 had accumulated by 1993. In 2008, 686,500 tonnes in 57,122 storage cylinders were located near Portsmouth, Ohio and Paducah, Kentucky.

The advantages of nuclear power:

• High energy density. Much more energy results from a small piece of fuel.
• Environment. No carbon dioxide emissions causing global warming (unlike fossil fuels). All waste (under under the vast majority of circumstances) is contained and removed from the environment.
• A long fuel cycle. Military cores last 30 years before needing to be refueled. Civilian cores require refueling every 18-24 months.

The disadvantages of nuclear power:

• The problem of how to transport and store the dangerous radioactive waste safely.
• The risks of a dangerous accident or terrorist attack at the nuclear power plant.
• The safety risks in mining and transporting the radioactive fuel.
• The risks of theft of material, possibly for a nuclear bomb.
• Very expensive to build. It can take many years to create a nuclear plant.

A Long Answer

Advantages:

Nuclear power produces fewer carbon emissions than most other

traditional energy sources. The production of energy does not come from burning molecules but from splitting atoms.

Nuclear plants provide baseload power. Under normal operation the plant produces power at a constant rate. Each reactor core typically provides 800-1200MW of power. Many sites have more than one reactor.

Nuclear power plants don't require a lot of space. As the reactor cores are very energy dense.

Nuclear plants do not produce smoke particles to pollute the atmosphere.

Nuclear energy is by far the most concentrated form of energy; a lot of energy is produced from a small mass of fuel.

The fission products (aka nuclear waste) created during a normal fuel cycle make up <10% of the mass of the fuel rods, 90% or more of it remaining 'fertile material'. This means that it is capable of producing fission events (aka making power). Newer core designs utilize this unused material, relieving transportation and mining concerns. However, it is currently cheaper to mine Uranium and the spent fuel rods currently requires offsite refinement.

Newer designs refine the fuel in-line with the power production core. This will greatly reduce the volume of waste and greatly increase the amount of power generated by mass.

Nuclear power produces a small volume of hazardous waste products per unit of energy created. Currently this waste is being held on-site in spent fuel pools.

The number of accident-free hours per Terrawatt/hour of energy produced is the highest of any known power source.

New reactor types have been designed to make it physically impossible to melt down. As the core gets hotter the reaction gets slower, hence a run-away reaction leading to a melt-down is not possible.

Radiation is easy to detect in very very small amounts. The same cannot be said for coal-ash pollutants such as mercury or arsenic. This means that leaks can be detected early on to minimize release of radioactive materials.

Disadvantages:

There is the possibility of environmental contamination for a variety of reasons. One is human malfeasance, such as happened at Chernobyl. Another is because radioactive metals cause pipes, vessels, and so on to weaken and eventually crack, potentially spilling radioactive materials into the environment.

There have been radiation leaks due, such as unanticipated natural conditions, such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011. The

The economic and environmental costs of catastrophic accident are overwhelming. The economic cost of the Chernobyl Disaster has been estimated as high as a trillion 1995 US dollars. The amount of land rendered unusable for at least several years was about a quarter of the size of New England. The area where there were agricultural losses of one sort or another was about an eighth of the size of the United States. The area left permanently uninhabitable was many square miles. Recent trips to the chernobyl exclusion zone has seen dramatic increases in local wildlife. Yet these species are hypothesized to have shorter life spans than normal populations.

Nuclear plants cannot be sited just anywhere. They must be sited where there are sufficient heat sinks. This means they must be sited where there is a lot of water, such as at a lake, river, or ocean. This, in turn, means that any radioactive materials that are released into the environment are dispersed into the water table. The plants, can also be subject to floods. The waste storage at some sites is only 3 inches above the 500 year flood level, and coastal plants could be subject to damage from tsunamis.

It is impossible for the private insurance industry to cover the cost of a catastrophic event at a nuclear site, so the risk is typically covered by governments, with some countries even owning the companies that run the plants.

Nuclear plants are very costly, so governments that want nuclear plants have to subsidize them by loans or direct payment. This means that reactors must be run longer, spanning multiple decades, raising concerns over maintenance and reliability.

Owners of nuclear plants cannot afford to dispose of the high level waste. It currently resides at the plant site. To date, there is no long term waste disposal program. Yucca mountain was projected to serve as a long term burial site. However, due to political infighting the site was delayed for decades and recently (2014) the plan was scrapped altogether.

The low level waste will be dangerous for over a million years. The time it takes for the waste to be reduced to the radioactivity of uranium ore (which is also toxic) is approximately six million years. This is a large multiple of the length of human history, and we do not know how to secure it for anything like that length of time. However, newer designs can use all of this low level waste as fuel leaving only the high level waste.

The high level waste is dangerous and can stay very radioactive for approximately 300-400 years before returning to normal background levels.

The cost of decommissioning a nuclear plant is enormous. The equipment is often not included as nuclear waste, but it has since become brittle and radioactive. It too must be considered nuclear waste.

Nuclear plants are significantly more expensive to build and maintain.

Proliferation concerns - breeder reactors are able to produce plutonium. Which could potentially be stolen and turned into an atomic weapon. However this plutonium would normally not be usable in bombs due to high levels of plutonium-240 and plutonium-241 in the normal power reactor fuel cycle. Production of bomb grade plutonium requires an unusually short fuel cycle in the reactor, which could make it easy to identify "power" reactors being used this way. To prevent theft and diversion into bombs all breeder reactors should be operated on long or very long cycles (especially for the breeding blanket material, which is not part of the fission core)!

There is presently no adequate safe long-term storage for radioactive and chemical waste produced from early reactors, such as those in Hanford, Washington, some of which will need to be safely sealed and stored for thousands of years. These designated 'super-fund' sites are maintained at the taxpayer's expense 'forever'.

Recently, for instance, underground contamination emanating from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State in the U.S. was discovered and threatens to contaminate the Columbia River (the largest river in North America west of the continental divide).

A lot of waste from early reactors was stored in containers meant for only a few decades, but is well past expiration with some resultant leaks furthering contamination.

There exist safety concerns if the plant is not operated correctly or conditions arise that were unforeseen when the plant was developed, as happened at the Fukishima plant in Japan; the core melted down following an earthquake and tsunami the plant was not designed to handle despite the world's strongest earthquake codes. Corporate failure to build a flood-wall higher than historical records for the tsunami lead to the disabling of the generators which in turn lead to the meltdown.

Many plants, including in the U.S., were designed with the assumption that "rare" events never actually occur, such as strong earthquakes on the east coast (the New Madrid quakes of the 1800s were much stronger than any east coast earthquake codes for nuclear reactors; a repeat of the New Madrid quakes would exceed the designed earthquake resiliency for nuclear reactors over a huge area), Atlantic tsunami (such as the 1755 Lisbon quake event, which sent significant tsunami that caused damage from Europe to the Caribbean) and strong hurricanes which could affect areas such as New York that are unaccustomed to them (rare, but possibly more likely with global warming). Making existing plants more durable adds huge cost to the lifetime operation of the plant.

Original Answer:

The Pros of Nuclear Power Plants are that they can be produced almost anywhere unlike oil which is mostly imported. Another is they don't depend on fossil fuels which can cause horrible things. Nuclear Power is also a very safe way to produce energy

Hope this helps Second Answer:

improvment:

ADVANTAGES:

Nuclear energy tackles 3 of the greatest problems humanity has encountered in its struggle to get energy.

a)Nuclear power plants don't require a lot of space.

b)It doesn't pollute (it does, but in a very different way... more about it further on.)

c)Nuclear energy is by far the most concentrated form of energy.

DISADVANTAGES:

• One of the main disadvantages of nuclear energy is that nuclear explosions produce radiation, this radiation harms the cells of the body which can make humans sick or even cause them death. Illness can appear or strike people years after they were exposed to nuclear radiation.

• A possible type of reactor disaster is known as a meltdown. In a meltdown, the fission reaction of an atom goes out of control, which leads to a nuclear explosion releasing great amounts of radiation.

Here are some examples of meltdowns that have happened through history::

• In 1979, at the Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the cooling system of a nuclear reactor failed. Radiation escaped, forcing tens of thousands of people to run away. Fortunately the problem was solved minutes before a total meltdown would have occurred, and there were no deaths.

• In 1986, a much worse disaster hit Russia's Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In this incident, a large amount of radiation escaped from the reactor. Hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to the radiation. Several dozen died within a few days. In the upcoming years, thousands more may die of cancers induced by the radiation.

• Reactors produce nuclear waste products which emit dangerous radiation, because they could kill people who touch them, they cannot be thrown away like ordinary garbage. Nowadays, lots of nuclear wastes are stored in special cooling pools at the nuclear plants.

• The USA plans to move all its nuclear was to an isolated underground dump by the year 2010.

• In 1957,nuclear wastes buried at a dump site in Russia's Ural Mountains, near Moscow, mysteriously exploded. This caused the death of dozens of people

• Another disadvantage is that nuclear reactors only last for about forty to fifty years. Third answer:

There is a more extensive answer at the related link, "What are the advantages and disadvantages for nuclear power?" (Below)

The advantages of nuclear power:

a.) Nuclear waste is cheap.

b.) Nuclear waste is a renewable resource because it takes a fortnight to form.

c.) Nuclear waste is efficient.

d.) Nuclear waste don't emit pollution.

e.) They don't have to plant enough trees near the power station.

f.) If there's a volcano nearby, it won't cause acid cloud to form and it won't cause acid rain to fall.

g.) Nuclear waste emits hydrogen and nitrogen which is harmless to the environment.

Disadvantages:

a.) Nuclear waste are formed under the sea and it's difficult to get.

b.) They can't build nuclear power station in the middle of the land where there are no rivers or lakes like the middle of Sahara Desert because it'll take a long time to get the nuclear waste. They can only build near the sea or on land where there are lakes or rivers nearby.

c.) Nuclear waste is a type of carcinogen, a cancer causing agent, therefore it can be harmful to the DNA and RNA and may cause cancer if the body can't fix it it. They need to wear protective clothes and handle nuclear waste very carefully.

d.) If there were any accidents, large amounts of radioactive waste can be released to the environment which would kill organisms that live nearby. It must be stored safely.

e.) If we set a nuclear bomb, it might cause nuclear explosion or a nuke which will destroy a large area.

• Avantages:
• Nuclear power plants are more efficient than ever before. New technology has made them more reliable (they break down less often) and safer. People for nuclear power argue that this is evidenced by more and more nations (such as China) building nuclear power plants.
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is a contentious issue. Proponents of nuclear power argue that, as no coal or fossil fuels are burnt, no carbon dioxide is released into the air. However, uranium has to be mined and transported to the nuclear plant. Both these activities require burning of fuels, so carbon dioxide is released. Also, producing nuclear fuel from the uranium requires a lot of energy, which also contributes to the emission of greenhouse gases.
• Although the initial cost of building nuclear plants is high, the running costs are relatively low.
• One reason the costs are low is that nuclear plants need only a small amount of uranium to produce a lot of energy. In fact, if the cost of uranium doubled, costs would only be increased by 7%. 1 truck of uranium produces as much energy as 1000 trucks of coal!
• Reduces dependence on foreign oils and natural gas (like biofuels). America, for instance, imports a lot of oil and natural gas from other countries. The price of these products is volatile, and change very quickly. If the price increases quickly, consumers have to pay more for their electricity (which they may not be able to afford). Building more nuclear power plants means that Americans will not be susceptible to price rises in oil and gas. President Barack Obama supports this idea of 'energy independence'.
• Nuclear wastes can be safely stored underground (another debated issue).

Disavantage:

• The problem of radioactive waste is still an unsolved one. The waste from nuclear energy is extremely dangerous and it has to be carefully looked after for several thousand years (10'000 years according to United States Environmental Protection Agency standards).

• High risks: Despite a generally high security standard, accidents can still happen. It is technically impossible to build a plant with 100% security. A small probability of failure will always last. The consequences of an accident would be absolutely devastating both for human being as for the nature (see here , here or here ). The more nuclear power plants (and nuclear waste storage shelters) are built, the higher is the probability of a disastrous failure somewhere in the world.

• Nuclear power plants as well as nuclear waste could be preferred targets for terrorist attacks. No atomic energy plant in the world could withstand an attack similar to 9/11 in Yew York. Such a terrorist act would have catastrophic effects for the whole world.

• During the operation of nuclear power plants, radioactive waste is produced, which in turn can be used for the production of nuclear weapons. In addition, the same know-how used to design nuclear power plants can to a certain extent be used to build nuclear weapons (nuclear proliferation).

• The energy source for nuclear energy is Uranium. Uranium is a scarce resource, its supply is estimated to last only for the next 30 to 60 years depending on the actual demand.

• The time frame needed for formalities, planning and building of a new nuclear power generation plant is in the range of 20 to 30 years in the western democracies. In other words: It is an illusion to build new nuclear power plants in a short time. :[

In the USA we consumed about 3.479 trillion [million million] kWh of electricity in 2003. If you estimate 300 million people, that would mean we each used over 10,000 kWh that year. This assumes that we each consumed our equal share of all electricity produced, even if some of it was used to make the can your soda is in, or the tires on your car. The quantity used goes up if you allow that we import more products than we export, which gives us a "hard" electricity import in power used to make imported sneakers, etc. On the other hand, China, with 1 billion people, used a bit more than a third of the amount we did in 2003, giving them a per capita kWh consumption of 1,300 kWh. Just divide the total used by 365.
The average use per person over a long period is given as 313 watts worldwide, 1363 watts in the USA and 688 watts in Europe. Canada is the highest at 1795 watts and the lowest is Afghanistan, Chad and Sierra Leone with 1 watt each per person.

So the worldwide average of 313 watts gives a daily consumption of 7½ units, varying from 0.024 unit in Afghanistan to 43 units in Canada.