Pros And Cons Of Uranium

711 Words3 Pages

When uranium was first discovered in 1789 by a German chemist named Martin Klaproth, it was a major breakthrough in scientific history.Ionising radiation was discovered by Wilhelm Rontgen in 1895, by passing an electric current through an evacuated glass tube and producing continuous X-rays. Then in 1896, Henri Becquerel found that pitchblende (an ore containing radium and uranium) caused a photographic plate to darken. Converting radiation was first done by Wilhelm Rontgen. By 1919 he had found out that nuclear rearrangement occurred whenever he would heat alpha particles from a radium source with O2. Frederick Soddy then discovered that naturally-radioactive elements had a number of different isotopes. In 1932 Cockcroft and Walton produced …show more content…

Generating electricity in nuclear reactors is cheaper than doing it with oil, gas, or coal. Nuclear power plants provide a stable base load of energy. Using nuclear energy has a much lower pollution rate than other methods. When we run out of uranium, we still have an alternative which is called thorium, an even greater solution. Also with nuclear fusion, we have practically unlimited energy. Because of breeder reactors and fusion nuclear energy is potentially sustainable. The nuclear energy released in a nuclear fission reaction is ten million times greater than the amount of fuel required in the burning of fossil fuel atom. But there are also the cons, like the mining, enrichment and waste management that causes air pollution. And also accident are porn to happen as history shows you can never be protected 100% from nuclear accidents. Lastly, that is also the fact the nuclear waste has half-lives that can last 10,000 of years and no civilization has ever lasted that …show more content…

There are 436 nuclear reactors in the users worldwide. In 2012 there were 271 pressurized water reactors commercially operating worldwide. The 2nd most used reactor is the boiling water reactor, there are 84 of these worldwide. Pressurized heavy water reactors, gas-cooled reactors, and fast neutron reactors all use something other than (H2O) as a coolant and isn't considered light water reactors. Four counties use fast neutron reactors - Russia, India, China, and Japan. The U.S. contains 3x10 to the 6th power metric tons of uranium, while there is 17.6x10 to the 6th power tons in the world, enough to power us for 990 years using nuclear breeder reactors. Although nuclear energy has been a resource potential to power the future, it is not expected to grow because of other fossil fuels. While uses in Natural gas and Renewables continue to grow, nuclear energy loses its market value by 19% to