Nuclear Energy

Nuclear Energy

  • Submitted By: demena
  • Date Submitted: 05/22/2013 8:10 PM
  • Category: Technology
  • Words: 654
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 132

As the world grows more concerned with the effects of global warming, the need to find alternative energy sources has gained a sense of urgency. For many decades the world has known that we were depleting our natural resources and causing environmental damage. As attempts are made to meet the ever increasing need for electricity by the world’s population, many alternative energy sources have been explored. Nuclear power proves to be the cheapest source with the least environmental setbacks.

When compared to other energy sources, nuclear power significantly beats out any other. Coal stores twice the energy of wood. Oil produces the same amount of energy as coal, but weighs less and takes up less space. But one gram of uranium produces four times the energy of coal.

No matter how many good points are given in the argument for nuclear energy, the American public recalls such incidents as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and most recently, China. With disasters like these, it is hard for people to muster up excitement about nuclear energy.

As the media swarmed to provide coverage of these unfortunate incidents, they left the public fearful of the large concrete monster that lay in wait to do their families and communities great harm. These unsightly concrete giants serve the most important purpose in nuclear power plants. When all else fails, they contain the radiation to keep it from harming people in the vicinity of the power plant. In 1979, at Three Mile Island, they did just that. The concrete containment structures did their job and ensured that no radiation leaked out to harm the citizens of nearby Harrisburg, PA. The fact of the matter is, no one was killed, and no one was injured. Besides the scary sound of a partial core melt down, no one was harmed in any way (Schulz, 2006). The incident in Chernobyl, in 1986, was different. There was human error involved and the reactor did not have the concrete containment structure that is...

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