Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Do the benefits of nuclear energy outweigh its potential harms?
No, the benefits of nuclear energy do not outweigh it's potential energy. The cons outweigh the pros. Nuclear energy can cause high risks, costs a lot of money, and the waste can last a long time.
First, Nuclear energy can cause high risks. When something goes wrong with nuclear energy, radiation is released into the environment causing people to die. There are many examples when nuclear energy has gone wrong. For example, just two years ago in Fukushima, Japan, a reactor shut down because of a tsunami and an earthquake. There was a failure in cooling it which caused an explosion. Similarly,according to http://www.guardian.co.uk there was a incident in Ukraine where there was a major accident which caused "Major release of radio active material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures." Because of such high risks nuclear energy outweights it's con.
Next, Nuclear energy costs a lot of money. A Nuclear infrastructure in can cost from 1.2 to 6.9 billion dollars while solar energy which uses solar panels only cost $2900 per year. With the amount of money that a nuclear infrastructure uses, we can buy 344 thousand solar panels. Not only will we have more solar panel but with 344 thousand solar panels, it would create more energy.
Last but not least, nuclear waste can last a long time. Nuclear wast can last between 50 to 10,000 years. According to http://www.whatisnuclear.com in 2002 there were "47,023.40 metric tonnes of high-level waste in the USA." Not only that, nuclear energy has so much radiation, it can lead to an environmental disaster.
In conclusion, Nuclear energy doesn't outweigh it's potential energy because it can cause high risks, cost a lot of money and the wastes can last longer.
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Although it's true that nuclear energy has the potential to put many people in high dangers and may cost a lot of money, the fact that our current society is so overdependent on the use of nuclear energy simply over weighs all of these conflicts, especially since many different sorts of nuclear energy conversions are now used in the creations of treatments of cancer.
ReplyDeleteAlso, ever since extremely severe occurances of nuclear accidents have passed, the amount of security that those who work around nuclear plants have increased to being almost as powerful as the shields used to protect our very own president. In other words, security and safety have been a high priority in the experimentation of nuclear energy, and, although there will still always be risks, the likely-hood of anything so severe as to the accident in Japan in pretty close to impossible.
As for the money, many countries around the world have dedicated their very own money sources to the production of nuclear energy, thus concluding that, even if it is expensive, we will always be in danger of being attacked by another country if they were to find out that we are weakened by not using nuclear energy.
Yes it is true that our society is overdependent when it comes to nuclear energy but being "overdependent" might just be the biggest problem,and yes the likely-hood of disasters happening is rare,but when it happens it destroys everything including innocent people who have nothing to do with nuclear energy.
ReplyDeleteAlso for the amount of money we spend on nuclear energy we can spend it on a form of energy which is far more efficient like hydro energy.
Hydro energy is actually not very reliable at all when it comes to energy sources. It's power sources can be very easily destroyed, and it's also very difficult to find areas in which it can be put. It's also much more expensive than nuclear energy, considering the amount of work that has to be done and paid for in order to build power sources for hydro-energy.
ReplyDeleteAs for risks, there are building that have been built in order to stop the ever-lasting effects of nuclear energy if there ever are accidents. As for the people who end up getting caught in the energy traps, well, sucks to suck.
This is jordan dokupil, i had to use my blogger account.
ReplyDeleteThe benefits that nuclear energy has outweighs its risks. Eevn though it could hurt us,we have radiation already in our bodies,so we would be only affected to high amounts. We would have clean eletricity that we would be able to use in the future to build new technology. Also it will clean the air pollution that affected with the energy that we use now. But with the nuclear energy, we could cause less air pollution. Other countries are already using it,so if they find out that we don't,then they would think that we are oppen for attacks. The cost would only to be on the construction and safety,it would cost a lot,instead of buying a ton of coal or oil from other countries like we do now. The country economy would be alot better,rather than being in a cession.
Yes,but I bought up Hydro energy in the context of more efficient than nuclear energy.
ReplyDeleteAs for building being built that didn't stop any disasters like the one in japan.
Also nuclear energy can also cause radioactive disaster which can lead to more vicious things.
That's completely off track from the building of hydro-energy plants. Also, nuclear energy is much more fluid than the use of hydro-energy. It is MUCH more efficient, and, as I said, if others are hurt in nuclear accidents, it sucks to suck.
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