Nuclear Power
"More and more companies are reaching out to their suppliers and contractors to work jointly on issues of sustainability, environmental responsibility, ethics, and compliance." ~Simon Mainwaring. Like any other source and form of energy, nuclear power has both its positive and negative attributes. However, the negative unfortunately outweigh the positive significantly. Nuclear waste; produced by the construction of nuclear power plants and nuclear energy production, is a highly contaminative substance , that severely harms the surrounding environment and presents itself as a health hazard to the public.
Producing nuclear energy is not only relatively expensive in regards to the environmental, social and economic costs, but also
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There are two categories that nuclear waste may fall under, low-level and high-level. As can be inferred by the names, low-level waste material is not very radioactive, and is equal in volume and radiation from radioactive trash produced in hospitals, colleges, and research laboratories. On the contrary, high-level waste material comes directly from nuclear reactors, making this the main issue. Many causes of cancerous diseases have been resulted due to exposure to nuclear waste. For example, in the United States, 1979, in Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, a nuclear power plant released enough radiation to cause five cancer deaths over the following thirty years (Lindsay, 2004). Overall, the production of nuclear energy is an issue because it poses as a tremendous environmental risk, risk to human health, national security and tax payers, but also is the ultimate link between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons (PSR, 2014). Furthermore, concerning …show more content…
By the same token, water discharges that contain heavy metals and salts, can impact the water quality and aquatic mammals. Considering waste materials produced from nuclear power plants also present as a big problem to the environment, people have insisted on the proper disposal methods to be taken. However, along with ethical ways comes time and money into place. In total, $41.2 billion is put in place for the nuclear waste fund (Nuclear Energy, 2015). In addition, about $300-$500 million is the estimated cost for decommissioning a plant, and about $300 million solely for restoring the site (Nuclear Energy, 2015). Moreover, while nuclear power plants are relatively cheap to operate, the construction of the plant itself is very expensive, in result of the need of special materials and integration of safety and backup systems. A part of the economics of nuclear energy and production, capital costs include the cost of site preparation, construction, manufacturing, commissioning and financing. Due to the EIAs (US Energy Information Administration) increase in rules and regulations, in the 2010