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Nuclear Power Plants In The United States

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Nuclear power plants or renewable energy power plants? Dirty plants or clean power plants ? Harmful power plants or secure power plants? All these things should come to Americans minds when they are trying to decide on what path they should go on to get there energy from. Although Americans could choose nuclear power plants, I believe they shouldn’t because they are expensive and not time efficient, harmful to people and the environment, and they’re susceptible to accidents.
As a matter of fact, there is lot’s of chemistry behind the use of nuclear plants. In the United States there are two types of reactor nuclear power plants, boiling water reactors and pressurized water reactors. Commercial nuclear power plants in the United States are …show more content…

The use of nuclear power and nuclear weapons is forcing humankind, and indeed the whole ecosystem, to participate in a particularly cruel and totally uncontrolled experiment. The United States can not afford continuing to raid the environment with long-lived radioactive materials that are scattered to the wind and embedded in our soil, exposing large populations, and foisting health impacts - such as: “high instances of infant mortality and more than six thousand cases of thyroid cancer in children and adolescents according to a 2008 UN report” - (6) on unsuspecting future generations who have no choice in this matter. With this in mind, nuclear energy also puts out more carbon dioxide, puts out more air pollutants, enhances mortality more and takes longer to put up than real renewable energy systems, namely wind, solar, geothermal power, hydro-tidal wave power and, the radiation exposure will force animals and insects out of their homes, or possibly kill them as to what happened in Chernobyl. Moreover, nuclear power enhances nuclear weapons proliferation. (Ted Talk) Due to the fact, that the people haven’t yet came up a solution to where to store spent energy. Moreover, short- and long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel has been a challenge for the industry and policymakers. Spent fuel, if not disposed of properly, could contaminate water supplies or be used by terrorists to create a dirty bomb. This …show more content…

According to the article At U.S. Nuclear Sites, Preparing for the Unlikely they say “The fact that the odds of a nuclear accident are unknowable and the risks hard to measure make it in some ways more frightening than the known — and greater — risks of driving without a seat belt or breathing the fumes from a coal-burning power plant.” (11) This emphasizes the fact that when using nuclear power you will never be aware of when an accident or explosion can happen. For example, in the article Nuclear Power Safety Concerns they mention the explosion at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine. The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel. Furthermore, the resulting steam explosion and fires released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere and downwind and two Chernobyl plant workers died on the night of the accident, and a further 28 people died within a few weeks as a result of acute radiation poisoning. This exemplifies how an accidental explosion of a nuclear power plant was unplanned, killed people, and left over radiation on to the site till this day which people had died

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