Nuclear energy is a very controversial topic, especially among many scientists. The question is whether nuclear energy should be allowed or not. Many scientists side on that nuclear energy should be allowed for these following reasons. Nuclear energy releases very low amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Air pollution is a beginning to get out of control, and nuclear energy as opposed to coal releases very low amounts of pollution into the air. The second reason nuclear energy should be allowed is because once the nuclear reactor is built, it has a very low operating cost. Once a nuclear reactor is built it is pretty much maintenance free and doesn’t require very much money to keep it running smoothly. …show more content…
For every megawatt hour, certain advanced coal power plants can cost as much as 154 US Dollars, whereas nuclear plants can cost as little as 109 US Dollars (SkepticalScience.com). Since coal amounts for 44% of all energy, it creates 68,200,000,000,000 megawatts of energy (nei.org). For every megawatt of energy produced by nuclear power plants, you save nearly 50 dollars. If you were to replace all the energy produced by coal last year with nuclear energy, you would save about 20,000,000,000,000 US Dollars. With that much money, you would be able to build 2,222 nuclear power plants. America is planning to build 24 new power plants by 2020 (world-nuclear.org). By 2025, those 24 nuclear reactors will have saved 320,000,000 dollars (nei.org). The more plants that are built the more millions of dollars the world will save. In the long run, nuclear energy is the right choice for the most cost efficient energy source. Being environmentally friendly and cost-efficient are not even the only pros of nuclear energy. The energy-efficiency of nuclear energy could possibly be the most convincing factor of why nuclear plants should be built more commonly in the