Developing Nuclear Power as Alternative Energy
Many researchers believe that harnessing the power
of the atom in fission reactions is the most significant alternative
energy resource that we have, for the fact of the immense power that it
can generate.
Nuclear power plants are very “clean-burning” and their efficiency is
rather staggering. Nuclear power is generated at 80% efficiency, meaning
that the energy produced by the fission reactions is almost equal to the
energy put into producing the fission reactions in the first place.
There is not a lot of waste material generated by nuclear
fission—although, due to the fact that there is no such thing as
creating energy without also creating some measure of waste, there is
some. The concerns of people such as environmentalists with regards to
using nuclear power as an alternative energy source center around this
waste, which is radioactive gases which have to be contained.
The radiation from these gases lasts for an extraordinarily long time,
so it can never be released once contained and stored. However, the
volume of this waste gas produced by the nuclear power plants is small
in comparison to how much NOx (nitrous oxide—that is, air pollution) is
caused by one day's worth of rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles. While the
radiation is certainly the more deadly by far of the two waste
materials, the radiation is also by far the easier of the two to contain
and store. In spite of the concerns of the environmentalists, nuclear
power is actually environmentally friendly alternative energy, and the
risk of the contained radiation getting out is actually quite low. With
a relatively low volume of waste material produced, it should not be a
difficult thing at all for storage and disposal solutions for the long
term to be developed as technology advances.
The splitting of an atom releases energy in the forms of both heat and
light. Atomic power plants control the fission reactions so that they
don't result in the devastating explosions that are brought forth in
atomic and hydrogen bombs. There is no chance of an atomic power plant
exploding like a nuclear bomb, as the specialized conditions and the
pure Plutonium used to unleash an atomic bomb's vicious force simply
don't exist inside a nuclear power plant. The risk of a “meltdown” is
very low. Although this latter event has happened a couple of times,
when one considers that there are over 430 nuclear reactors spread out
across 33 nations, and that nuclear reactors have been in use since the
early 1950s, these are rare occurrences, and the events of that nature
which have taken place were the fault of outdated materials which should
have been properly kept up. Indeed, if nuclear energy could become a
more widely accepted form of alternative energy, there would be little
question of their upkeep being maintained. Currently, six states in
America generate more than half of all their electrical energy needs
through nuclear power, and the media are not filled with gruesome horror
stories of the power plants constantly having problems.
About the Author: D. Benjamin is the owner of
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