The article written for the Washington Post “If the Japanese Can’t Build a Safe Nuclear Reactor, Who Can?” was written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Anne Applebaum. The article is about the author’s opinion regarding the use of nuclear power as the new source of energy. This comes after the earthquake of 2011 hit Japan and disrupted the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor. The author believes that if the “technologically brilliant” Japanese cannot construct a completely safe reactor, then no one else can. Although I do believe that Applebaum makes some good points, I do think that her fault is that she rationalizes her opinion solely based on her personal opinion of the Japanese people, and the fear of something going wrong. But she does not propose any new ideas or mention the harm that can come with the use of our current sources of energy. Anne …show more content…
Her reasoning for this is that bad things can happen anytime; and as shown by the Fukushima Daiichi reactor not even the “brilliant Japanese” can make them completely safe. Applebaum uses an emotional approach to try and convince her readers. She uses words like “annihilated,” “catastrophe,” and “disaster” to try and cause a state of alarm in the reader. When giving actual facts about the cost of nuclear power she points out how expensive the plants are to build but she does not compare it to other forms of energy plants. Therefore the reader has nothing to compare that example to. The author does not create a strong enough argument for her stance on nuclear energy, it is very emotional but lacks logic. In my opinion nuclear power is pretty amazing, and I doubt that people really believe otherwise. The amount of energy that it can produce compared to other sources of energy is huge. I believe that as long as it is done with the utmost care, nuclear power is the best source of energy we can
Nuclear power is a growing source of energy to most of the world for many benefits. People doubt the significant of nuclear power because of one accident. Due to this accident, the world has only seen the flaws in nuclear power and not the many benefits it has to offer. Nuclear power would benefit worldwide if people would let go of the past and look towards the future. Nuclear power is a better alternative energy because of its economic and environmental benefits.
The world has seen numerous engineering disasters and from each one, has gained insight to better prepare for future calamities. However, it is very difficult to fully foresee how an accident might occur just by looking back to past disasters. In addition, it is even harder to prepare for something that hasn’t even happened before. The Chernobyl accident is a prime example of an event that couldn’t be fully prevented just by looking to past disasters or even predicting this exact accident. Psychological biases, as well as other contributing factors such as human factors, and design flaws made the Chernobyl accident a catastrophe that no one could have anticipated.
Early in the morning of April 27, 1986, the world experienced its largest nuclear disaster ever (Gould 40). While violating safety protocol during a test, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl power plant was placed in a severely unstable state, and in a matter of seconds the reactor output shot up to 120 times the rated output (Flavin 8). The resulting steam explosion tossed aside the reactor’s 1,000 ton concrete covering and released radioactive particles up to one and a half miles into the sky (Gould 38). The explosion and resulting fires caused 31 immediate deaths and over a thousand injuries, including radiation poisoning (Flavin 5). After the accident more than 135,000 people were evacuated from their Ukrainian homes, but the major fallout occurred outside of the Soviet Union’s borders. Smaller radioactive particles were carried in the atmosphere until they returned to earth via precipitation (Gould 43). The Soviets quickly seeded clouds to prevent rainfall over their own land, so most of the radioactivity burdened Western Europe, Scandinavia, and the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans (Flavin 12). This truly international disaster had far reaching effects; some of these were on health, the environment, social standards, and politics.
Nuclear energy is a very powerful source of energy. Just a little bit is required to make large amounts of electricity, which powers 1 in 5 households in the U.S. Nuclear energy has been advanced over the years and has been relied on heavily by many countries today.
There are many sources of energy today, and the best source of it is constantly being sought after, one source stands out above the rest. Nuclear energy is simple in theory, yet it may be one of the most controversial sources of power. Nuclear energy works using reactors built to split the atoms (nuclear fission) of the fuel to produce heat. This heat evaporates the cooling agent (usually water) into steam which turns turbines to create electricity. Nuclear energy should be allowed, because it produces an abundance of electricity, as well as being a clean source of energy with no harmful emissions. Nuclear energy is the future of clean, environmentally friendly energy.
What he is essentially saying is that the nuclear reactors were properly managed during the event, and a major incident was avoided. He believes it is a testimony to the safety of nuclear power. The future of nuclear energy is still undecided. In its current state, it cannot survive. Fortunately, advancements in creating cheaper, safer nuclear reactors are in the works.
...nce World War II to the present day, the technology of nuclear power has increased significantly in terms of energy output and safety. The energy efficiency of nuclear power is far superior to its counterpart fossil fuel and renewable energy. Compared to fossil fuels, tiny amounts of fuel used by nuclear reactors is equivalent to a large sum of coal. This is a no brainer. Why mine a ton of coal when a little uranium can be used to gain the same amount of energy? Not only is it efficient, it’s safe to use. Used fuel is packed away in storage safely, so there isn’t any chance of radiation leaking out. In the present day, nuclear power incidents haven’t been occurring lately. Advancements in technology and equipment used have made nuclear energy a very reliable and safe source of energy. With today’s energy needs, nuclear power has the ability to keep up in the race.
Peter H. Brothers’ “Japans Nuclear Nightmare” compares the movie Godzilla to a devastating period in Japan’s history: The Atomic Age. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States destroyed Japan. In this article, Brothers wants to educate the audience and accomplishes this by using ethos and pathos. He uses ethos by appealing to ethics and to show right and wrong to the Japanese culture and community. He also uses the rhetoric of pathos to appeal to the audience’s emotions. Pathos is one of the easier ways to capture the audience and the author does that by using imagery and symbols. Brothers’ connects
On the 26th of April, 1986 unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power station was taken off the electrical grid to perform an experiment in which the reactor would be run at low power. The Chernobyl power station, which is located in the present day Ukraine and is approximately 12 miles south of the border with Belarus, did not react as designed and unit 4 proceeded to spiral out of control. The unconstrained fission reaction which followed resulted in a steam explosion that poured radioactive material into the atmosphere. To this day Chernobyl is the largest and farthest reaching nuclear disaster in human history.
Many believe that nuclear power plants are a hazard to the people that live around them and the environment in which they are built. However, these assumptions are based mostly on the fact that the nuclear reactors and nuclear power plants of today are built to the same standards that the old nuclear plants from many years ago. Nuclear power today is designed to be much safer than outdated nuclear power plants and has a very minimal chance of causing a nuclear catastrophe. Nuclear power plants are a safe and viable option for generating electricity for the foreseeable future. One of the most common misconceptions about nuclear energy is that a nuclear power plant could explode like a nuclear bomb and cause a massive nuclear incident.
There is a range of safety concerns in regards to nuclear power with one of these being the effects of radiation resulting from a nuclear accident. Research shows that there is a link between exposure to radiation and the development of cancer (Zakaib 2011) whist Preston (2012) express’s concerns that people exposed to radiation may not be able to see the effects of radiation exposure for several years as was the case in Chernobyl. Furthermore, people are unable to move back into the vicinity of reactors that have been involved in an incident due to their fear of radiation as is the chase in Fukishima (Cyranoski & Brumfiel 2011) and in the areas surrounding Chernobyl (Berton 2006). Governments are increasingly becoming more stringent in the levels of radiation in which people are exposed to with this evident in Fukishma, where the Japanese government evacuated people living within a 30km radius of the plant (Evacuation Orders and Restricted Areas n.d.). As a result of nuclear accidents and the resulting radiation, support for nuclear power has diminished due to safety concerns.
Media coverage of such cases have made the public less comfortable with the idea of moving further towards nuclear power and they only opt for reducing human activities to reduce global warming. It is true that there have been some notable disasters involving nuclear power, but compared to other power systems, nuclear power has an impressive track record. First, it is less harmful and second, it will be able to cater for the growing world population. Nuclear power produces clean energy and it delivers it at a cost that is competitive in the energy market (Patterson). According to the US Energy Information Administration, there are currently 65 such plants in the Unite States (National Research Council). They produce 19 percent of the total US energy generation.
Something always curious and provoking happens in science writing. Gwyneth Cravens is an author of five novels and many publications, and one who studies a topic in great detail. She creates an enormous work about nuclear energy for the last decade. Cravens’s research in her last published book titled Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy has led her to do an about-face on the issue. In her article “Better Energy” which was published in May 2008 in Discover magazine, she disputes and claims that nuclear energy is currently best alternative and should be considered as our future energy source. At the beginning “Better Energy” she commences by introducing James Lovelock, who was greatly honored in the green movement for creating the Gaia hypothesis, which combines everything on earth as entirely organic. In the past Lovelock opposed nuclear energy. Unfortunately, to his fans, he changed his views beginning to support nuclear energy. Throughout the article Cravens goes with the explanation how the use of nuclear energy will be able to soft issue about global warming. Current fossil fuel power plants cause serious health problems in thousands of Americans, furthermore, continue to drive the warming. She tries to prove to the audience that currently there is no possibility that U.S. nation can use any of renewable energy sources such as the wind and sun (in which she looks to find common with public views about this case), and that nuclear energy is safe, and this is the best option to get the necessary amount of needed energy.
Nuclear energy has is an overall success and continues to be because it is a reliable, efficient energy source that produces minimal pollution. Although it is a efficient energy source, it is also a massive destructive force that has been used in the past and can be used in the future if not properly defended against. America today can learn from instances in the 20th century such as the atomic bomb drops, exploration of fusion reactions, the knowledge gained from the three mile island accident, and from espionage. Nuclear technology is basically that manipulation of atoms in their current state. Usually radioactive elements such as high-grade plutonium or uranium are used in order to create a massive radioactive reaction that have the potential to obliterate any object in its way leaving a lasting negative effect on the environment. Nuclear energy was mainly researched for the atomic bomb droppings that occurred in 1945 as a result of Japanese oppression during World War II. The science of atomic manipulation, atomic radiation, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion was first developed in 1895. Research began to significantly speed up when the government took a large interest in the destructive force that nuclear weapons had the potential to hold. The only reason that the world ever had the experience of nuclear energy was because of World War II and oppression. Nuclear Energy came with a price of thousands of lives, that were not rightfully taken, but without those lives lost, our world would be different today, and we continue to learn from the mistakes and from the successes that we have had with nuclear technology.
The use of nuclear power in the mid-1980s was not a popular idea on account of all the fears that it had presented. The public seemed to have rejected it because of the fear of radiation. The Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union in April of 1986 reinforced the fears, and gave them an international dimension (Cohen 1). Nevertheless, the public has to come to terms that one of the major requirements for sustaining human progress is an adequate source of energy. The current largest sources of energy are the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas. Fear of radiation may push nuclear power under the carpet but another fear of the unknown is how costly is this going to be? If we as the public have to overcome the fear of radiation and costly project, we first have to understand the details of nuclear energy. The known is a lot less scary then the unknown. If we could put away all the presumptions we have about this new energy source, then maybe we can understand that this would be a good decision for use in the near future.