Argumentative Essay: Should We Use Nuclear Energy?

Depicted in Bethesda’s game series, Fallout, we see how our future plays out. They have cars, buses, and locomotives all powered by nuclear energy. What if I told you that this could become a reality? As oil prices go up and the looming danger of greenhouse gasses and global warming increases, many people are looking for an environmentally safe option to produce power without having to expel greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Some say that we should use hydroelectric power because we have a large amount of water. Some say that we should use wind power because we can’t run out of wind. And other’s believe that we should depend on solar power to power and fuel our cars and houses. But I believe that we should use nuclear power for many reasons.

First we’ll start with the fact that nuclear power releases no greenhouse gasses. It has been stated by the U.S. department of energy that, "CO2 emmitions can be reduced through the greater use of nuclear energy for electronic generation." From this statement we can draw out that if we were to start using nuclear energy more we could help reduce that amount of greenhouse gasses released into the environment. Some who opposes nuclear energy may say that although this is true, but it will hurt the environment in other ways. To that I’d say that nuclear power has not done as much damage to the environment as fracking and off shore oil rigs, only when major accidents occur, which are very uncommon. Another benefit of nuclear energy is that it does not take up as much space as other sources of energy to produce the same amount of energy. A Newsweek article by George Will has stated that, "To produce 20% of America’s energy by wind... would require 186,000 tall turbines 40 stories tall... covering an area the size of West Virginia. This same amount of energy could be produced by 4 nuclear reactors occupying only 4 square miles of land". This claim states that, to produce the same amount of power, nuclear power can do it in a much smaller place than wind power. And finally the U.S. navy has already started to use nuclear energy to power some of its ships. An article on Nuclear.org states that, "Nuclear power is ... suitable for

Let’s first discuss why nuclear power is a better substitute than wind power using wind turbines. Those who oppose nuclear power tend to bring up the fact that nuclear power is bad for the environment. But the amount of CO2 to make a single turbine is astronomical. According to a discussion on stop these things.com a main contributor named “randy” stated that. “It’s carbon footprint is massive – try 241.85 tons of CO2.” Now let’s move on to solar power. For someone to build a fully functional nuclear power plant it would cost only a couple million dollars. According to The Union of Concerned scientists’ website it costs, “between $2 billion and $4 billion per unit.” When looking for how much it costs to make a solar panel we see that it’s significantly smaller than building than a nuclear power plant. According to Solar Power Authority’s website, each panel fully installed costs about, “A 5 kW system would cost around $25,000-$35,000”. But we then have to take into account the amount of energy produced by each one in a year. According to solar power rocks.com, in North Dakota “a single solar panel will produce only 360 kWh per year.” And according to the U.S. energy information administration, for 24 hours [a nuclear reactor] will generate 13,968,000 kilowatt-hours.” And if we times that by 365 we get the astronomical number of 5,098,320,000 kilowatt-hours produced by a single