U.S.A. Needs to Make Nuclear Power Plants Safer

Nuclear energy, which has historically been depicted as a dangerous and evil energy source, has recently seen renewed attention as an alternative form of energy and has been rehabilitated in the eyes of the public after rising concerns regarding global warming and a rise in the demand of energy (World Nuclear Association 2011). However, due to the March 2011 Fukushima accident,

When someone thinks of problems plaguing the world, nuclear energy is not the first thing that comes to peoples minds these days.[1]Nuclear power was once deemed the new energy of the future.[2]However, numerous nuclear power plant accidents around the world put a damper on that notion.The United States considers itself one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, but 103 nuclear reactors currently operating within her borders, one was bound to fail sometime or another.[3]

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).

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 power plants are a safe, clean and reliable source of energy production. They are uniquely qualified to meet the growing demand for energy in the USA.

Second of all, those against the expansion of the Darlington Nuclear Facility claim that it is unsafe for those who work at the facility, the environment, and the people who live in distant municipalities (Revkin, 2013). They feel that the 1986 Chernobyl and 2011 Fukushima nuclear disasters prove that nuclear power plants are unsafe and dangerous (Solar Schools, n.d.). However, Chernobyl and Fukushima experienced meltdowns because their plants were constructed with older designs models (Revkin, 2013). On the other hand, modern designs of nuclear reactors (like the Darlington Nuclear Facility) are less likely to

Lastly, the lack of proper supervision and protection for the nuclear plants can potentially cause detrimental amount of damage to the environment and society. We need to take responsibility for the safety for our next

Nuclear power plants increase cancer risk by .002%, shortening life expectancies by less than an hour while fossil fuels shorten by 3-40 days. The cancer risk is similar to delaying parenthood by 2.5 days, or by a man wearing pants for 8 hours more per year. There has only been one incident that has seriously affected the cancer risk in the area. Most radiological injuries/deaths each year are due to large, uncontrolled radiation sources.

Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island — all known as major nuclear power disasters. Nuclear power might be a good source of power, but in the long run it can be a real hazard and should be banned. If we rely on nuclear power to be our primary power source, it will cause major problems to humans and the environment. Nuclear power is hard to dispose of, expensive to run, and the reactors can easily be disrupted and cause the release of massive amounts of radiation.

These accidents were chosen because they constitute worst yet valuable examples of what can – and, occasionally, does – go wrong in the nuclear power production realm, and because they shape our understanding of the caused harm. They also embrace a thirty-five year period, during which nuclear power underwent significant regulatory development worldwide, aiming to address growing concerns with respect to short- and long-term effects of such disasters on human health, environmental, social, and economic factors.

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

Nuclear power plants were set up to harness the energy and provide electricity to a large proportion of people and this energy was very efficient and was long lasting. This technology was also put to use into the medical field to treat cancer patient. The result had a positive and negative effect on the environment. It contaminated the oceans and river there by effecting the fishes and the corals, the radiation emitted had an effect on the human body and to animals. But this source of energy paved a way to greener way of generating electricity and to take an account of global warming and climatic change. In an open letter, more than 65 biologists supported the call to build more nuclear power plants as a global plan to protect the wildlife and the environment and the full gamut of the source (the energy) should put into effect to replace the other fossil fuel such as the oil, coal to cut the effect of severe climate change. Of the many technologies to generate electricity, nuclear power and wind have the highest chance to reduce major climatic effect caused by burning coal which is almost half the global carbon dioxide

Nuclear energy is the energy released by a nuclear reaction, it uses fuel made from mined and processed uranium to generate heat and electricity. It is the world’s largest emission free energy source. Nuclear energy also has the lowest impact on the environment than other energy sources. But it can still be very harmful because of the radiation is causes and the radioactive waste it produces. Radioactive wastes are the ruins of nuclear materials that are used in providing nuclear energy. These wastes contain high levels of radiation that can be very hazardous to humans and the environment. Some people accept and support the idea of using nuclear energy and others don’t. In the following paragraphs, some major nuclear accidents and the public acceptance of nuclear energy will be discussed.

Fukushima catastrophic is a warning to the world about the hazards of nuclear power and contained lessons for the other governments who plan new generation of nuclear power stations. First lesson is the full disclosure on potential risks and share creditable information with the public. Furthermore,

These are very connected ideas, especially after 9/11 when the idea of terrorists causing nuclear power plants to meltdown as another way to attack the United States hit the news. In the years since Chernobyl advances in policies and construction have decreased the chance of meltdowns, while also increasing the safety of surrounding areas in the event one does happen to occur. This has led to nuclear reactors around the world being built inside containment buildings, designed to contain any failure of the reactor. In the wake of 9/11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took it one step further in the US, requiring new nuclear power plants to be built in a way that reactor containment remains intact, cooling systems continue to function and spent fuel is protected even in the event of a direct airplane crash. (Washington Post) While these regulations only affect newer nuclear projects, ever improving procedures and knowledge of the nuclear process increase the safety of current reactors. This is evident in the fact that there hasn't been an incident at a nuclear power plant in the United States since the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. Worldwide the last incident with a nuclear power plant was Chernobyl in 1986. While Chernobyl was tragic, the years that have passed without a repeated event stand as a testament to the improved