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The Pros And Cons Of Nuclear Power

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Nuclear Power
Have you ever wondered about how nuclear fusion and fission works? Nuclear power is very efficient, but creates radioactive waste. Control rods absorb neutrons, yet Chernobyl’s control rods didn’t. Nuclear power releases radiation, and has harmful gamma rays. Nuclear power works by using fission and uranium.
Nuclear power is a very efficient energy. A nuclear fission reactor creates steam that moves turbines to create self-sustaining electricity. Instead of burning coal, or fossil fuels they use uranium in which generates neutrons. When fissioned. There are many isotopes of uranium but the most common they use is U-238 and U-235. When they use U-235 it is unstable so when the the atom is fissioned it creates neutrons in which …show more content…

To get rid of the waste created after the intense radioactive process they go through a series of steps to make sure of safe underground disposal. First they must solidify the liquid into a borosilicate (Pyrex Glass) glass. Pyrex means heat resistant. They store it until it cools down and is stored for eventual underground disposal. Chernobyl control rods did not control the speed correctly, which caused an unstable amount of speed between the neutron flux. The elements in the control rods could only absorb so much. Also The people at the job sight were also not qualified for the job. They technically weren't fully educated. Due to this incident it has spread a chain around Russia. The radioactivity affects the soil. Which affects a huge amount of things such as water, livestock, and crops. Then harms us. This can be absorbed directly from gamma rays or indirectly such as eating a burger from a radioactive cow.
Mining uranium is very simple. They use a meter to measure the radioactivity in the area. Usually when they find the orebodies they take it to a plant. They then pulverize the rock into tiny fragments and process it in sulfuric acid so the U- Oxides can dissolve leaving only the

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However, mostly due to fear and the lack of knowledge, many are adverse to the use of nuclear power. Nuclear energy comes from two methods, fusion and fission. Fusion brings together tritium and deuterium to create heat energy, helium, and a neutron (Duke Energy, 2013). Nuclear fusion releases more heat energy than fission, however it is more difficult to control, so it is not currently a viable energy process (Duke Energy, 2013). However, the sun is an example of nuclear fusion, in how it produces heat.

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Over 20 percent of the energy in the United States comes from nuclear energy power plants. (Rinkesh, 2018) They so their best to get as much energy to the country as possible, but there are those out there who don’t agree with them. While there are downsides to nuclear energy, the pros vastly outweigh the cons. Nuclear power plants are a great way to get energy because they don’t let out much pollution, are very efficient, and are very safe.

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The first advantage of using nuclear power to produce our electricity is that it costs only 1.92 cents per kilowatt hour to produce electricity from nuclear power. Furthermore, nuclear power is a more efficient source of energy than other sources such as coal or natural gas (Figure 5). The two biggest advantages in terms of the wellbeing of planet earth of using nuclear power are that it creates very little to no greenhouse gases, such as CO2, and also it does not use our non-renewable resources. A typical nuclear reactor utilizes uranium-235 as its source of energy, but unfortunately, uranium-235 only makes up 0.72% of all of the uranium on earth. With that being said, the fact that nuclear power does not use un-renewable resources might be being questioned at the moment, but the truth is that even though uranium-235 is a non-renewable resource, a new form of reactor called a breeder reactor, makes this a harmless process in regard to our valuable resources.

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When used in reactors unsafely U 235 could cause an explosion similar to that of the Chernobyl incident, leading to a substantial effect on the environment. To counteract this risk, containment structures designed to contain U235 and other radioisotopes have been

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Nuclear power is the world’s most efficient source of electricity. Nuclear power plants are unique. Other power plants use coal, oil, or natural gas to create heat that creates steam. That steam turns a turbine, which creates electricity. A nuclear power plant has the same process, but creates the steam a different way.

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The heat then boils water, which creates steam that is needed to move the blades of a machine called the turbine. The turbine is connected to a power generator, which produces electricity. Also, a condenser cools down the boiling water inside the reactor so it can be recycled. One benefit of using nuclear power is the fact that nuclear power is 10% of our global energy.

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The second most common energy source in US is nuclear power, after fossil fuels. What is nuclear power? Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions that release nuclear energy to generate heat which is used mostly in steam turbines to give us energy in a nuclear power plant. About 10% of US's electricity comes from nuclear power, but in some countries, like Germany, closed down all their nuclear power plants because people didn’t like the idea of it. But the real problem is that if the nuclear power runs well, it is very safe.

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Nuclear power plants provide cheap, clean, and efficient energy and new technology might soon overcome the current drawbacks. Disasters like the ones at Chernobyl and Fukushima have long given nuclear energy an ill-deserved reputation. It produces no greenhouse gases and only trace amounts of radiation at a comparable price to coal power. However, the large initial cost and the potential for meltdowns has prevented nuclear energy from growing to supply a significant portion of the world’s electricity. Safety features on current nuclear reactors make a nuclear disaster highly unlikely, but technological advances could soon negate those risks completely.

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Nuclear Power Nuclear power is one of the cleanest and most cost effective form of producing energy. Around fourteen percent of the world’s electricity is powered by nuclear energy. During the 1950s the idea of nuclear power was to generate power for very cheap. At the time, President Eisenhower announced nuclear power’s birth during his “Atoms for Peace” speech in 1953. After that, the first nuclear reactor came online in 1957 and a quite of few more came along as well.

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In nuclear power plants there are machines called nuclear reactors. This is where elements undergo fission. In nuclear reactors, certain changes happen, and the particles that are left over from these changes are very radioactive. This causes great danger to humans because certain radiation can penetrate the skin and damage living cells, possibly causing them to become cancerous which leads to serious health problems.

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They are rare but when they do happen things get out of hand fast. They could also be a prime target for a terrorist attack. Destroying or damaging the control center could leave the population in danger of radiation. The places in which the uranium ore is mined are Canada, Australia, Niger, and Kazakhstan. The ways that they extract the uranium ore from earths crust are the following: surface, or sub-surface.

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Nuclear power plants operate at about 91% capacity, compared to natural gas at 50.3% capacity, coal at 58.9% capacity, and wind at 32.2% capacity (Nuclear Energy Institute, July 2014). The capacity efficiency value is calculated as the actual energy output divided by the theoretical energy output. Using Uranium as fuel is better than using coal as fuel. One fuel pellet of Uranium is equal in energy to one ton of coal (Nuclear Energy Institute, 2014 July). Nuclear energy is a clean-air energy, which means that it doesn’t produce any greenhouse gases.

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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).

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One cannot deny that some nuclear waste is produced and that it is radioactive. However, according to the World Nuclear Association in many countries, nuclear waste accounts for just 1% of all toxic wastes. This means that only a small amount of waste is produced and it would be easy to contain. Furthermore, the BBC states that you are able to reprocess nuclear waste and reuse up to 97% of it. This means that waste can be reduced even further and that that supplies of Uranium can be sustained for longer.

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My small group experience was back in Secondary School where I was part of my school’s National Police Cadet Corps (NPCC) Cadet Leaders’ committee. The group lasted for approximately two years. Within the two years, we have meetings every fortnightly. This committee is a task group in which all members worked together to carry out activities for the school’s NPCC unit. The Cadet Leaders’ committee comprises of 10 members.

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