Nuclear Power Argumentative Essay

Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions that release nuclear energy to generate heat, which is most used in steam turbines to produce electricity in a nuclear power reactors. There are 99 commercial nuclear reactors in operation in US now and two-thirds of the reactors are pressurized water reactors. ("How Nuclear Power Works.") In the pressurized water reactors, the core water is held under pressure and the heat is transferred to water outside the core, boiling the outside water, generating steam, and powering a turbine. After the steam is used to power the turbine, it is cooled off to make it condense back into water. ("How Nuclear Power Works.") However, for every unit of electricity produced by a nuclear power plant, there are about two units of waste heat are released to the environment. By

("Nuclear Waste." ) And the common solution is to store it in spent fuel cooling pools. ("Nuclear Waste." ) Spent fuel pool is a near-term solution for the nuclear waste. As these pools fill up, some fuel rods are being transferred to large steel and concrete casks, which are considered safer for our environment. ("How Nuclear Power Works.") The negative effect is if a natural disaster or a terrorist attack causes the water to split from the pool, the rods will begin to heat the remaining water in the pool, eventually causing it to boil and evaporate. Then the water level will exposing the fuel rods and it could become hot enough to catch a fire and cause damage to the environment. ("Safer Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel.") Moreover, there are no permanent repository for spent fuel exists in the United States, so reactor owners have kept spent fuel at the reactor sites. The spent rods must remain in cooling pools for five to ten years under least 20 feet of actively circulating water. Loss of cooling water to a cooling pool is