The Pros And Cons Of Nuclear Fission Power

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Nuclear fission power has a disturbed history in the world at large, several power major plant failures in the recent past. Here’s a list for some of the larger ones going best to worst, the number’s meaning severity according to the International Nuclear Event Scale, Tokaimura Japan 1999 L4, Buenos Aires Argentina 1983 L4, Saint-Laurent France 1969 L4, Idaho USA 1961 L4, Goiania Brazil 1987 L5, Three-mile island USA 1979 L5, Sellafield UK 1957 L5, Kyshtym Russia 1957 L6, Fukushima Japan 2011 L7, Chernobyl Ukraine 1986 L7 (Wall, 2013). These events have caused massive effects on the view of nuclear power and on the earth where the plants stood. One of the biggest and most cliché example of this is the Chernobyl NPP (nuclear power plant) which …show more content…

It’s a sustainable energy source for a large amount of time relative to human time concerns. If the wind stops blowing or the sun stops shining for long enough period of time even with improvements to energy storage it can run out. In these circumstances fission might be one of or the best solutions for emergency power generation. Outside of initial emissions from the construction process fission produces little greenhouse gas from normal operation (Easton, 2012). The biggest greenhouse gas it emits is water from normal operation, as steam is what pushes the turbine to generate power. While water is one of worst offenders as far as heat capacity goes it has other features that make it a favorable exhaust. This allows water to absorb a lot of heat that would otherwise be cast off into space. Thereby increasing the overall thermal budget of the earth by large margin (Specific Heat Capacity of Water, 2016). However, H2O generally only stays in the atmosphere for about nine days, so with just water vapor the heat is only present in the atmosphere for a short time. Allowing the heat to dissipated quickly by either being absorbed onto the ocean, ground or glacier. Because humans can’t release enough steam to change the balance of atmospheric gases enough to have drastic effects (The Water Cycle,