The Growing Demand for Energy

Nuclear power plants should not be built due to the biological effects it poses during a meltdown. Radiation is exposed to inhabitants during a meltdown but many people are not aware of the horrific effects. An example of this is explained in the article “Biological Effects on Radiation”. “The higher the radiation dose, the sooner the effects of radiation will appear…this syndrome was observed in many atomic bomb survivors in…1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident…of these, 28 died within the first three months from their radiation injuries. Two more patients died during the first days…” (2012).

Radioactive waste/radiation and environmental causes and changes are the two main causes of safety hazards. Radiation is harmful because it can kill people or deform parts of their bodies and when having a baby, the baby can get deformed in the arms legs, or other body parts. This happened at Chernobyl were the reactor’s blew up and radiation got to pregnant women and their babies became deformed and people that were close or in the nuclear power plant died. Then also if you want to make the place livable again, you had to remove the radiation from the explosion and you would have to if it was a major explosion, remove the radiation from the site somewhere else so it wouldn’t spread to the other countries or states. One other thing is that terrorist want to blow up the nuclear power plants to cause the same destruction that happened at Chernobyl. Environmental causes and changes are a huge part in why we should shutdown Three Mile Island. Environmental causes are animals getting hurt because of what nuclear is power plants have to do to get uranium. Mining uranium is dangerous in many ways. Uranium produces radiation, so when mining it the radiation spreads into the forest where animals get contorted or they die. This also happens when the nuclear power plant takes about one billion gallons of water per day and marine or aquatic animals start to die because of the loss or drought of

Nuclear energy was likewise discovered to be useful in naval tactics and in sourcing electricity. As technology has significantly advanced and knowledge has expanded beyond measures, the realm of nuclear engineering has indeed achieved scientific milestones. In practice of modern times, nuclear energy is manufactured within power plants, capable of supporting an outstanding amount of electricity (World Nuclear Association). However, this limited method of energy production is thought to be dangerous. Nuclear engineering is certainly one complex subject and is foreign to the majority of the world population. Within a nuclear power plant, reactors are employed to force uranium ions to undergo the process of nuclear fission; nuclear fission is the separation of atoms, the smallest unit of matter. This splitting of uranium ions releases energy, thus, producing usable heat. Heat is crucial to not only nuclear energy production; rather, heat is necessary in all power plants. Such will then become the steam that gyrates turbines. These turbines are coupled with electromagnets which, finally, yield electricity (How Nuclear Reactors Work). One foremost flaw of nuclear power is the consequential radioactive waste that must be monitored for a long while following disposal. Nevertheless, as resources upon this planet are surely depleting, original forms of energy production are mandatory. In consideration of such, nuclear power plants have proved to be both efficient

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

There have been lots of nuclear accident around the world. One of the accident that had a major impact on the world was the Chernobyl disaster. The disaster took place on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The disaster was caused by a reaction explosion induced by design faults and staff application errors. The accident took place in the course of scheduled tests to check the power supply mode in the event of external sources loss. Even after 10 days, explosions and ejections of radioactive substances continued. The release of radiation and radioactive substance polluted the places within 30 km of Chernobyl, and those areas have been closed for a long period of

The most recent major incident with nuclear power took place in Fukushima. Some people believe that the explosion of nuclear reactor the tragedy is similar to the detonation of a thermal nuclear device and this is a common misunderstanding: nuclear reactor cannot possibly explode in the way atomic bomb does because the reactors utilize only slow neutrons. After the Chernobyl disaster, with improvements in emergency procedures and plant designs, the fission process can now be effectively moderated. When the Fukushima reactors were hit by the tsunami, the fission reaction was shut off successfully. However, the real problem is that even if the fission process has been shut off, the core still must be continuously cooled because the naturally

The destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, caused by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami, resulted in massive radioactive contamination of the Japanese mainland. In November 2011, the Japanese Science Ministry reported that long-lived radioactive cesium had contaminated 11,580 square miles of the land surface of Japan. Approximately 4,500 square miles – an area almost the size of Connecticut – was found to have radiation levels that exceeded Japan’s allowable exposure rate of 1 mSV (millisievert) per year. For perspective, 1 mSV is equivalent to 100 milliRem, which is the standard unit of dose used here at the shipyard. In a normal background radiation field, an individual is exposed to .02 milliRem/hr dose. Studies of the disaster have identified design changes, response actions and other safety improvements that could have reduced the amount of radioactivity released from the plant. As a result, nuclear plant safety requirements around the world have been reexamined, including here in the United States.

This occurs when there is a severe nuclear accident causing damage to the core which in turn causes overheating causing severe damage due to the release of radioactive materials into the environment. This is a major concern due to previous devastating incidents such as Chernobyl or Fukushima. However, Thorium reactors completely solve against which was stated in a study done by SP’s MAI (2015) saying that a thorium nuclear reactor has no possibility of a meltdown like the Fukushima reactor because thorium cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming, as a result of which fission stops by default. A global concern that has been protected against by treaties such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is the concern of nuclear weapons. Traditional Uranium Reactors that run on the Uranium-Plutonium, U-Pu, cycle have a problem with the Plutonium that is produced which can easily be separated from the radioactive waste which could then be used to create nuclear bombs. Since Thorium reactors do not produce any Plutonium they avoid the problem of by-products being used to create nuclear weapons.

The 1986 Chernobyl incident is a prime example of why we should avoid nuclear energy. The meltdown led to an explosion the Chernobyl unit-four reactor and caused a fire which burned for ten days, releasing radioactive material over an area of 200,000 km2. The immediate results were 30 deaths from radiation within three months. Long term affects from the radiation resulted in birth defects and shortened lifespans for many of the rescue workers who survived. According to the World Health Organization, there are 4000 deaths related to the Chernobyl incident as of September 5th 2005. Today, the earth within the 30-kilometer exclusion zone contains high amount of radiation. The plants and water around Chernobyl nuclear plant also have high radioactive contamination. Base on the report Chernobyl Accident and Its Consequences from the Nuclear Energy Institute, this accident is caused by a defective reactor design and human error. Workers at Chernobyl were also exposed to higher levels of radiation than workers at other nuclear power plants. A nuclear meltdown in progress is extremely difficult to contain and past a certain threshold a meltdown is unstoppable as in the case of Chernobyl. Workers must be extremely well trained and careful to prevent these disasters from happening. However, human error is inevitable. If we keep building nuclear power plants and relying on nuclear energy, incidents like Chernobyl will

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 a few years ago there was a significant catastrophic nuclear failure. This failure caused huge amounts of radioactive materials to be released into the environment. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster quickly became the largest nuclear incident since the 1986 Chernobyl accident while both have affected the environment immensely with radiation. Due to the potential safety issues, the risk to the environment, and the dangers of nuclear power, the use of nuclear facilities must be called off to prevent meltdowns and irreparable damage to the surrounding area.

Nuclear energy is a low-carbon emissions source of electrical energy that can be added to multiple locations as the need for more energy arises. However, nuclear power plants come with risks. If the plant undergoes meltdown, the entire facility becomes unusable. Also, if the radiation from the tanks escapes, the surrounding environment may become infected with radiation and the humans/animals near the plant would be required to leave or face death due to the radiation poisoning.

Nuclear power is a technology that has enormous benefits for humankind. As the demand for energy is only continuing to grow, it has become important to develop energy technology that has good yield and minimal negative side effects. After the harnessing of the atom for use in nuclear weapons, the knowledge of how to exploit the atom became incorporated in nuclear power plants (Corradini 1). These use uranium fuel in a process that releases tremendous amounts of energy to be captured, but also that creates minimal waste and other byproducts. Despite these, the benefits of nuclear energy outweigh any disadvantages, as seen by its high energy output, reliability, and minimal environmental impact when compared to energy sources such as

A. Since the first major nuclear accident recorded in 1952, more than 33 serious incidents at nuclear stations have been identified worldwide. Within the history of nuclear power, the three major nuclear accidents are the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima; the Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania, U.S.was safely contained overall whereas Chernobyl and Fukushima resulted in large damage to the surrounding area as well as discharge of radioactive content from the plant.(1)The Chernobyl incident in northern Ukraine resulted in the death of 28 plant workers as a result of thermal burns and radiation exposure in the first four months following the accident, while Chernobyl was found to be responsible for about 7,000 cases of thyroid cancer within individuals under 18.(2) In the event of a nuclear accident, the main concern is the release of radioactive material, most likely from a nuclear core meltdown and a breach in the containment of nuclear substances. These concerns have led to the utilization of procedures following an accident; evacuation from the area of the incident to prevent contamination, taking shelter in ventilation-closed areas to avoid radiation, disposal of contaminated products as well as use of proper medical procedures.(3)

The modern lifestyle requires energy. Industries need energy in their production; homes need energy to provide a comfortable environment. With the growing awareness of the need of environmental protection, however, there are debates about sources of energy. For the past centuries, fossil fuels have always been the most prominent source of energy generation, but it is certain that they will run out eventually. They are also criticized for polluting the environment and causing the global warming. There are many new energy sources like solar, tidal, or nuclear fusion. Among all the choices, nuclear fusion, although still not practical, has the greatest potential and best outlook. Governments should develop fusion as the future energy source for three reasons. It is efficient, safe, and nearly inexhaustible.