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How Does Oregon's Electricity Get Produced?

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In today’s world, having access to electricity is imperative to perform many everyday tasks, such as watching the morning news, or making toast in the morning. Most people would say it is common knowledge that Oregon’s electricity is produced in some manner but aren’t aware of exactly how. In addition, many are probably not aware that Oregon is receiving electricity produced by nuclear power. Finally, many are more than likely not aware of what producing electricity from nuclear power entails, along with what the benefits and determinants of this production method are. Today, there is a plethora of methods in which electricity can be produced, so how does Oregon’s electricity get produced? There are two major methods in which electricity …show more content…

The first advantage of using nuclear power to produce our electricity is that it costs only 1.92 cents per kilowatt hour to produce electricity from nuclear power. Furthermore, nuclear power is a more efficient source of energy than other sources such as coal or natural gas (Figure 5). The two biggest advantages in terms of the wellbeing of planet earth of using nuclear power are that it creates very little to no greenhouse gases, such as CO2, and also it does not use our non-renewable resources. A typical nuclear reactor utilizes uranium-235 as its source of energy, but unfortunately, uranium-235 only makes up 0.72% of all of the uranium on earth. With that being said, the fact that nuclear power does not use un-renewable resources might be being questioned at the moment, but the truth is that even though uranium-235 is a non-renewable resource, a new form of reactor called a breeder reactor, makes this a harmless process in regard to our valuable resources. Briefly, a breeder reactor can convert uranium-238 to uranium-239, as the uranium-238 gains a neutron just by sitting in the reactor. The uranium-239 will in the end decay into plutonium-239, which can be used in a nuclear fission reactor just like uranium-235. On a final note, uranium-238 makes up 99.28 % of the uranium on earth, yet it can not undergo fission like uranium-235, thus the reason it is put through this process, so it does not go to waste, considering it’s the largest source of uranium on earth. At this point, several advantages of using nuclear power to produce Oregon’s electricity has been put forth, but the disadvantages have yet to be

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