Nuclear

From dKosopedia

1 Overview
2 Current Useage
3 Concerns
4 See Also
- 4.1 External Links
5 Alternatives

Overview

Nuclear power is one of the major sources of electricity and energy to keep modern society functioning. It is a nonrenewable energy source.

Nuclear power not used in a nuclear bomb is produced thorough nuclear fission which generates heat through the fission of heavy radioactive metals such as uranium and plutonium, which generates heat, which is generally then converted into steam, which is then run through turbines to generate electricity. This is generally done at fixed site power plants. The United States Navy also operates some submarines and large naval ships with nuclear generated electrical power.

The volume of fuel used to generate nuclear power is orders of magnitude less than that volume of fuel used in fossil fueled electrical power plants which usually burn coal, but sometimes burn oil or natural gas. Running a 1000 Megawatt power plant for a year requires 2,000 train cars of coal, 10 supertankers of oil or 12 cubic meters of uranium. This same plant, in a year, would generate 500,000 tons of waste per year from coal, 300,000 tons from oil, and 200,000 tons from natural gas. A nuclear power plant of that size, in contrast, would produce 30 tons of high level nuclear waste (spent fuel) and 800 tons of low and intermediate level nuclear waste (the volume of two automobiles once compressed). (Source: Foreign Affairs, Rhodes and Beller, The Need for Nuclear Power, January/February 2000).

Most nuclear reactors operate on uranium, which is less useful as a nuclear weapon. Some, however, use process spent uranium in a "breeder reactor" to generate plutonium, effectively recycling high level nuclear waste into a product which is useful for both nuclear power and nuclear weapons purposes. This can increase the amount of energy produced per unit of uranium by more than a factor of ten.

Nuclear power plants do not generate air pollution other than non-radioactive steam. They do not generate water pollution other than heat, and any leakage of nuclear waste awaiting permanent disposal but "temporarily" stored on site which leaks into ground water. Their low emissions of greenhouse gases is a major advantage of nuclear power.

Current Useage

About 20% of U.S. electricity is generated using nuclear power. In France 79% of electricity is generated with nuclear power, in Belgium 60%, in Switzerland 42%, in Sweden 39%, in Spain 37%, in Japan 34% and in the United Kingdom 21% of electricity is generated with nuclear power.

The percentage of electricity generated from nuclear power varies greatly from state to state within the U.S., on a percentage basis, from highest to lowest, the percentage of total net power generation from nuclear power by U.S. state is (with number of plants): Vermont(1) 85.3%, New Jersey(4) 74.5%, New Hampshire(1) 62.4%, Connecticut(2) 61.6%, South Carolina(7) 58.2%, Illinois(11) 54.4%, Pennsylvania(9) 44.0%, Virginia(4) 43.5%, New York(6) 38.2%, California(4) 37.2%, Arizona(3) 36.6%, North Carolina(5) 34.2%, Nebraska (2) 33.3%, Massachusetts(1) 31.2%, Minnesota(3) 30.2%, Arkansas(2) 29.3%, Georgia(4) 28.6%, Alabama(5) 27.1%, Maryland(2) 26.9%, Mississippi(1) 25.9%, Kansas(2) 21.8%, Wisconsin(3) 21.0%, Louisiana(2) 20.3%, Florida(5) 18.9%, Michigan(4) 16.6%, Texas(4) 12.7%, Missouri(1)11.7%, Ohio(2) 11.6%, Iowa(1) 9.8%, Washington(1) 5.4%.

The following states do not generate any electricity from nuclear power (with percentage of power from coal shown behind each listing): Alaska 3.7%, Colorado 87.5%, Delaware 80.2%, District of Columbia 0%, Hawaii 0%, Idaho 0%, Indiana 98.2%, Kentucky 96.6%, Maine 0%, Montana 4.9%, Nevada 64.5%, New Mexico 88.5%, North Dakota 93.0%, Oklahoma 63.9%, Oregon 8.2%, Rhode Island 0%, South Dakota 37.9%, Utah 95.0%, West Virginia 99.3% and Wyoming 97.2%.

Some states which use nuclear power use very little coal to generate electricity. California, Connecticut, and Vermont get less than 1% of their electricity from coal. New York gets 5.5% of its electricity from coal and Washington gets 3.4% of its electricity from coal.

In warm states, the percentage of electricity generated with nuclear power is lower in the summer, since nuclear power is better suited to baseline power needs than to meeting peak demands.

Concerns

The main concerns connnected with nuclear power are:

(1) Accidents The risk that there is a "meltdown". The Chernobyl nuclear disaster in what is now Ukraine, and the Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania disaster in the U.S. are the two main examples of this kind of possibility. Three Mile Island hurt no one who didn't work at the plant and only a few workers. Chernobyl, on the other hand, resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in Europe, suffering from dangerous exposure to radioactive materials and has contaminated the area for thousands of years to come. Nuclear power proponents say that accidents like Chernobyl can be prevented with better plant designs. Opponents feel that accidents, by their nature, are unpredictable.

Proponents of nuclear power also note that to generate enough fuel to produce a given amount of energy, that the number of deaths produced by in the form of illnesses aggrevated by air pollution, mining accidents, and industrial accidents at the power plant are far lower for nuclear power than for coal, its main alternative. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, per unit of energy generated, for each life lost due to nuclear power, natural gas results in 2 lost lives, oil results in 32 lost lives and coal results in 37 lost lives. In other words, while nuclear power deaths may be more "scary" there are actually a lot fewer of them than there are from fossil fuel sources when looking at the process from start to finish.

(2) The disposal of nuclear waste. Nuclear waste comes in two types -- high level nuclear waste (such as spent fuel rods) which remain dangerous for thousands of years, but comprise only a small percentage of all nuclear waste, and low level nuclear waste. Current plans in the United States are to dispose of all high level nuclear waste in the nation as the Yucca Mountain, Nevada site, but political and court opposition has held up this approach. (Mostly recently, a judge held that a plan to maintain the site for the next 10,000 years was not careful enough). Low level nuclear waste consists of just about anything, such as employee uniforms, which has had tangential exposure to radioactivity. This is far more voluminous, but remains dangerous for a far shorter period and presents a far lower risk to the public.

Opponents of Yucca Mountain are concerned that it is located so close to a major population center (Las Vegas), that transporting high level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain poses a serious risk, and that ground water could be contaminated in ways whose risk is underestimated by current plans. Proponents of Yucca Mountain would argue that, whatever its faults, it is a far better place to store high level nuclear waste than existing stopgap measures at the more than 100 nuclear power plants across the nation, which were often designed with only half-hearted environmental studies, if any. Contamination at sites such as Fernald, in Ohio, and the Hanford Site in Washington State, show the risks inherent in that approach.

(3) Weapons of Mass Destruction Risk. The risk that nuclear materials in reactors will be used by terrorists or rogue states to create nuclear weapons. This is a particular concern in the Soviet nuclear industry where a great deal of nuclear fuel is unaccounted for.

This concern is largely directed to the use of nuclear power in nations such as Iran and North Korea whom the United States does not trust.

(4) NIMBY. The "Not In My Backyard" syndrome drives much of the debate about nuclear power and nuclear waste. Many people are afraid of nuclear power and don't know the facts one way or the other, and hence don't want it anywhere near them.