The Pros And Cons Of Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy has contributed to the world very much, with supply energy to many things. Nuclear is not just used for electricity but can also be used to treat humans. Nuclear energy is a major source of energy that contributes to many functions and should be preferred over other sources of energy. Nuclear energy plays a huge role in supplying energy to the United States. It is the main source of energy that is used and is a safe source to get from because it doesn’t cause pollution. Nuclear energy produces no air pollution that many other sources of energy do. Nuclear energy is form with the use of uranium. The uranium in the power plant doesn’t transform into energy but supplies the plant with heat to make energy, “the power plant controls

Nuclear power plants cause radiation which is dangerous to people and the environment, “it can be dangerous. If radiation leaks, it can be deadly. If the reaction gets out of control, the process can be explosive” (Reilly 62). Controlling of the reactors are very important, they need to be kept under control to prevent any meltdowns from happening. There has been meltdowns that have caused many disasters to the place where it has happened. For example, there was a meltdown “in 1986, Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, workers shut down the regulating system in the core, and the chain reactions went out of control, leading to several explosions. The accident released radiation into the atmosphere. It killed 30 people initially, and more died from radiation as time progressed. The city is now a ghost town” (Cooke 34). The disasters that the nuclear power plants can cause are really devastating but don’t happened often. They are just accidents that are trying to be prevented as much as possible. The radiation from that disaster caused many problems to people killing them and causing some form of cancer to them, “estimates conclude that somewhere between 15 000 and 30 000 people lost their lifes in the Chernobyl aftermath and more than 2.5 million Ukrainians are still struggling with health problems related to nuclear waste” (Maehlum). These plants have still be thought of creating a lot of waste and

It produces a lot of the electricity in the United States, Nuclear power generates about 19 percent of the electricity used in the United States” (Reilly 62). Nuclear energy doesn’t cause air pollution because it doesn’t release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The nuclear power plants don’t rely on fossil fuel to power them so no carbon dioxide is made. Carbon dioxide is formed as a reaction of burning fossil fuel. Nuclear energy is very safe when handled correctly and with great precaution, “the process to generate nuclear energy is one of the cleanest processes, and makes lowest impact on the environment. It is due to the fact that nuclear plants do not emit any harmful gases like carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, produced from the conventional electricity power plants that threaten atmosphere by increasing global warming” (Gupta). These nuclear power plants can produce large amounts of energy with only a few resources being used. These power plants only require a little amount of fuel to power it and “it is estimated the amount of energy released in a nuclear fission reaction is ten million times greater than the amount released in burning a fossil fuel atom”(Maehlum). The uranium used to power the reactors in the plants produce way more energy than fossil fuel where “one ton of uranium can produce energy that is more than that of several million tons of coal and oil”