Introduction
People have been debating clean energy and climate change for decades now and one of the major sub-topics under debate is nuclear energy. Nuclear energy has potential to significantly reduced fossil fuels used in the production of energy. However, it is extremely important to be careful with nuclear energy as the radioactive elements of it can be risky.
Advantages
The biggest advantage and most enticing thing about nuclear energy is that it is carbon free. Nuclear power burns completely clean meaning the only thing coming out of the smokestacks at the plant is water vapor. This meaning, nuclear energy is a viable candidate for replacing energy that is produced by fossil fuels which would be extremely helpful for helping to solve global warming.
Another big advantage to nuclear energy is that it is consistently becoming safer. Many people are scared about how dangerous the production of nuclear energy is. However, scientists are continuing to make technology that will make this process become safer. Additionally, nuclear power plants use Uranium to produce power and if we can find a way to recycle this Uranium than this source of energy would be even more helpful to the environment. Nuclear energy is also very reliable. Unlike solar and wind power, nuclear energy can be created rain or shine.
Disadvantages
Nuclear energy is produced using Uranium(U-235) and a byproduct of producing this nuclear energy is nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is extremely radioactive and continues to be for up to thousands of years. On top of this, as of now there are really only questionable disposal methods of this nuclear waste and one of them is actually sending radioactive waste into space. This is obviously very expensive to do but it does solve the issue of keeping nuclear waste on our planet.
Another large disadvantage to nuclear energy is that in the event of an accident or a terrorist attack at a nuclear power plant, thousands of people who happen to be near the power plant could lose their lives or be injured due to a radioactive explosion or leak. Nuclear power poses a major security risk as terrorists can target power plants considering how deadly this radioactivity can be.
The lack of nuclear energy power plants around the world is another issue with nuclear energy. At this time there isn’t nearly enough power plants to produce the amount of energy we would need to power our planet solely on nuclear energy. However, as more technology is developed, we will likely build more of these plants and rely more on this type of energy. There are other reasons why people do not fully support nuclear energy, but considering nuclear energy was discovered within the past 100 years it is reasonable that we are continuing to have to work out the knacks.
Conclusion
Nuclear power just like many other sources of energy has its ups and downs. However, with time it is safe to say that there is a lot of potential even over alternative sources of clean energy such as solar or wind energy considering nuclear power is significantly less expensive. So, what do you think, is nuclear energy worth it?