The Troubled Future of Nuclear Energy

Joshua R. Staley        

Dr. Richard J. Fellinger

English 150

22 September 2016

The Troubled Future of Nuclear Energy

        On July 30, 1945, at a secret location in the deserts of New Mexico, a massive explosion, the largest in human history, rocketed through the desert sending awe and terror through the hearts and minds of the onlookers ("World's First Atomic Bomb").  The nuclear age was born in that one moment and nuclear weapons would go on to both plague governments and haunt the dreams of its citizens. As the chief scientist of the project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, later said, “I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds” (PlenilunePictures). Oppenheimer would lament having ever taken part in the project, which lead to his fall from grace in the scientific community and giving men such a horrible weapon.

        In the shadow of nuclear weapons and the Cold War, another nuclear technology was quickly emerging from its predecessor’s darkness. Nuclear reactors, which until this point had been just the abstractions of some physicists mind, quickly gained traction in both research and development. Early claims promised to provide both clean and efficient energy to everyone and the idea experienced large amounts of public enthusiasm and publicity. Skip ahead almost 60 years and that enthusiasm has waned, skepticism has increased, and global warming and climate change dominate global energy meetings.

It is in this period that nuclear energy is coming under fire as many have lost faith in it. Just as Oppenheimer fell out of favor, nuclear energy is now following in that his path with many people rabidly shouting about the technologies faults and potential to cause harm. More specifically, they have seized on the potential of meltdowns at nuclear power plants and the contamination of nuclear waste. While both are legitimate fears, they are not as common and as dangerous as the public is led to believe.

In 2011 in Fukushima, Japan, the worst fears of nuclear energy’s opponents were realized when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and knocked out some of the cooling systems which started a meltdown (“Fukushima Accident”). The meltdown was stopped momentarily by the backup systems and disaster would have been avoided if a large, 39-foot tsunami had not hit the plant and completely taken out the remaining cooling generators (“Fukushima Accident”). In the aftermath of the incident radiation was released into the surrounding area and sea. The fallout from the disaster brought about the latest talks on nuclear energy and anxiety over its future.

This disaster shook the world and seemed to show the grave dangers of nuclear power plants, yet not all is as it appears. Very few people were directly killed by this disaster and almost all of the radiation has been ejected harmlessly away from human populations. The tsunami, which triggered the event, killed upwards of 15,000 people in comparison (Sorkhabi).

The previous history of nuclear reactors is also surprising clean. The only other complete nuclear meltdown was in Chernobyl, Ukraine, which killed around 28 people (“Chernobyl Accident”). The Chernobyl disaster is the only nuclear meltdown that has caused more than 10 deaths in almost 65 years. It did cause cancer in around 4,000 people but the cancer was treated in almost of those victims (“Chernobyl Accident”). The total death toll from all nuclear reactors, both meltdowns and accidents, has been less than 1000 people. Let’s compare this record to another common source of energy, coal. Some statistics show that coal directly kills up to 12,000 people a year and can be indirectly linked to almost 13,000 deaths in the United States alone (Cunningham). Almost twelve times as many people are directly killed by coal every year than by nuclear energy in almost 65 years.

Nuclear waste and its disposal are another legitimate but misunderstood problem that anti-nuclear power proponents bring up when building an argument against nuclear energy. The issue mainly focuses around the possible contamination from mining nuclear material and dealing with the nuclear waste created during nuclear reactions.

Uranium mining, just like all other forms of mining, comes with some environmental risks, including polluting the local environment. Moreover, the amount of risk depends on how the mine is run. Uranium mining produces low level radioactive waste meaning that it is only minimally radioactive and is only harmful in large quantities. So long as proper precautions are taken and the mine are not created next to civilization the risk is minimal (“Radioactive Waste and Uranium Mines”).

Dealing with the waste produced by a nuclear plant is somewhat harder and deserves more attention. Standard procedure for dealing with nuclear waste is to seal it inside containers and store it far away from human cities and water sources. This minimalizes the risk of it causing any harm or damage. It has been found that such containment method makes this harmful substance relatively harmless.

These examples show that while nuclear power is not without its downsides and risks it is not as dangerous as some people have said and the risks involved are almost nonexistent when the proper precautions and guidelines are followed. The benefits of nuclear power are far greater than the risks, which makes nuclear energy incredibly valuable.

Nuclear reactors are one of the cleanest energy sources out there. They don’t produce CO2 or any other form of air pollutant and emit less radioactive material than a coal power plants because of the natural radioactive particles found in coal. They do not contribute in any significant way to global warming and air pollution. This makes them incredibly desirable in China, where air pollution from fossil fuels is so bad that it regularly causes health problems in millions of people. Annually, the 435 operating nuclear plants stop the production of over 2 billion tons of CO2. In contrast, coal-fired stations emit about 30 billion tons of CO2 around the world per year ("Why Nuclear Energy Is Sustainable").