Nuclear Power is a Safe and Reliable Alternative Essays

Citizens of countries where fossil fuels are being utilized are concerned at the possible chance of global warming. So many greenhouse gases emitted, ice burgs and caps are shifting or melting, that population is beginning to worry about what is going to happen to the environment in the future if this source is kept being used. With nuclear energy we don’t have to worry about the environmental changes. Nuclear energy has

Firstly, the atomic incidents of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in Russia are often mentioned as examples for nuclear plants being unsafe. In both cases failures of workers led to a meltdown in the reactors and increased radiation in the surrounding area (Henderson 12-17). And as the recent disaster in Japan shows, a nuclear crisis cannot only be caused by human mishaps, but also by unpredictable and untamable natural hazards. Consequently, nuclear crises cannot be predicted or prevented completely. Nuclear plants are, furthermore, considered uneconomical because in the eighties the construction costs of nuclear plants were underestimated and exceeded the estimation by $100 billion (Henderson 103). Therefore, the nuclear power opponents are arguing that nuclear power is burdening the American economy unnecessarily. According to the nuclear physicist Jeff Eerkens, antinuclear groups are also claiming that nuclear power is not necessary for the future since renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal power will be providing sufficient energy for the United States, and are at the same time much cheaper than the costly nuclear power plants (Eerkens 20). Over all, opponents consider nuclear power to risky and inefficient to “deserve further support from U.S. taxpayers” (Henderson 104).

When people hear the term “nuclear energy”, the first thing that jumps to their minds is most often “danger”. Who could blame the world for their intense fears of nuclear power, especially after reading the reports from Dr. Ira Helfand and the American writer, David Biello? Dr. Helfand’s article, “Radiation’s Risk to Public Health”, attacks the nuclear energy with facts and concerns like those of the National Research Council BEIR VI report. Whereas Dr. Helfand supports his claims with scientific evidence, David Biello only had a script from a discussion that followed the Fukushima crisis. David Biello’s article, “How Safe Are U.S. Nuclear Reactors? Lessons from Fukushima”, he uncovers secret concerns and future plans about the incredibly disastrous incident. Although David Biello used credible sources and attempted to appeal to ethos, logos, and pathos, Dr. Ira Helfand contains an authority in his education and knows a great deal more about nuclear power and definitely has the best representation of ethos, logos, and pathos.

While Nuclear energy may have been beneficial to the American government and its citizens in some ways, it reshaped the way Americans and the United States Government thought of the role of citizens in Nuclear America. Americans could not rely on their government to keep them safe anymore and the government, through misguided attempts at preserving and improving the citizens’ lives, were putting those very lives at risk.

The United States must re-examine many policies previously accepted as reasonable, especially its own national energy policy. As the largest overall and per capita energy consumer in the world, the U.S. needs to decide upon a reasonable source of energy for the foreseeable future, especially since its energy needs will increase dramatically during that time. With political instability likely to remain the norm in the Middle East, oil continues to be an energy source of questionable reliability; in addition, current estimates of worldwide reserves suggest we may in fact run out of oil entirely in the next fifty years. Natural gas reserves are in fairly short supply too, and costs limit its

     The protest movement against nuclear power was already big after the Three Mile Island incident, but when the Chernobyl disaster happened, it was rocket-powered. The disaster put a stop to all construction of nuclear power plants nation-wide (Davis 315). The Three Mile Island accident, however, couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Americans need nuclear energy because the country is so oil dependent. But even back in 1979, people recognized that nuclear power needed to be part of our energy source (Readers Digest 72). The incident was responsible for the abandonment of the Shoreham Nuclear Energy plant and opened the door to an escalation of protest activity (Davis 315).

In its attempts to harness the power of the atom, mankind has itself in the possession of weapons with unbelievable, destructive power. Nations now have the ability to destroy entire cities from hundreds of miles away, in only minutes. These weapons are nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons cost the citizens of the United States billions of dollars in taxes each year, the testing and maintenance of these weapons pose serious health risks, and the actual need for these weapons is not and has not been around for years. For the above reasons, the United States should reduce its nuclear arsenal.

Nuclear power was the world’s fastest growing form of energy in the 1990’s. However, presently it is the second slowest growing worldwide. Considering that nuclear power accounts for eleven percent of the world’s energy supply, one must ask what happened [Nuclear Power]. Why is it that the growth of nuclear power has almost completely stalled? The simple answer is that after meltdowns such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, many people are afraid of nuclear power plants, which causes great opposition to the expansion of the industry. Unfortunately, most people are not well informed about nuclear energy; many do not take the time to view its positives and negatives.

On December 2nd, 1942, the Chicago Pile-1 nuclear reactor was brought online. It was the world’s first, and the beginning of a movement that would come to shape the world’s energy resources for decades to come. Since that day, nuclear power has peaked at ten percent of the world’s total energy resources in 2011 (International Energy Agency), and has fueled not only power grids across the globe, but a heated debate about the viability, environmental impact, and ethical concerns of using nuclear fission and radioactive chemical reactions as a public energy source. The most widespread arguments against its use all revolve around a trio of disastrous reactor failures spanning the last three decades: the meltdown on Three Mile Island, the

The world as we know today is dependent on energy. The options we have currently enable us to produce energy economically but at a cost to the environment. As fossil fuel source will be diminishing over time, other alternatives will be needed. An alternative that is presently utilized is nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is currently the most efficacious energy source. Every time the word ‘nuclear’ is mentioned, the first thought that people have is the devastating effects of nuclear energy. Granting it does come with its drawbacks; this form of energy emits far less pollution than conventional power plants. Even though certain disadvantages of nuclear energy are devastating, the advantages contain even greater rewards.

Just five pounds of plutonium, a component of nuclear waste, is enough to make a

abandoned. All three topics are dealt with in fusion, that is why it is such a

Nuclear Power? What is nuclear power and why do so countries pursuit it or ask to be ban? According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency nuclear power is created through a process call fission where uranian atoms are seperate which leads to the release of energy (paragraph one, epa.gov, 4/22/2011). The first major investment on nuclear power was seen in the Manhanttan Project. The results of the Manhanttan Project were seen on the island Japan during World War Two, where two nuclear bomb were used to end the war in the pacific. Ever since that event, nations have put their best scientist to make create nuclear power, some invest on nuclear research for alternative method of energy or

The opponents of nuclear power claim that nuclear power is not safe and it puts the general population at risk of radiation. They point towards the Chernobyl accident as reason that nuclear power should not be allowed. The Chernobyl accident happened in 1986 in the Ukraine and was devastating (Chernobyl). The accident occurred during a test and “By the time that the operator moved to shut down the reactor, the reactor was in an extremely unstable condition (Chernobyl). The result was the explosion of the reactor and the release of radioactive material into the environment. Yet another example opponents point to would be the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant failure. At the plant “equipment malfunctions, design-related problems and worker errors – led to a partial meltdown of the TMI 2 reactor core” (backgrounder). This accident was the worst in the United States and caused a review of nuclear power plants safety.

America relies heavily on foreign sources for the energy to run the country. The issue has received much media attention due to the political and economic implications it will have in the near future. This problem could at least be partially solved by using technology that already exists, rather than relying heavily on ones that have yet to come to fruition. America’s energy woes – specifically its reliance on fossil fuels – can be solved by reviving nuclear energy with the use of politics to tackle perceived dangers, technological advancements to make them more feasible, and public outreach to promote acceptance.