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The Pros And Cons Of Nuclear Power Plants

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Recommended: Controversy over nuclear power

II) Ethical Issues

Like I stated earlier, “In today’s times anything with the word nuclear has become a huge ethical and political debate.” People are so scared of anything radioactive, and you can’t blame them. Many deaths were cause by them in the past, and most likely more deaths are going to happen in the future with nuclear radiation being the cause. Not only is the radiation harming people, it is also harming are environments as well. On top of all that, nuclear power plants are just cutting into the wealth of some countries due to the fact that they are ridiculously expensive to build and also expensive to run.

A. Economy

Now a day’s countries are beginning to use nuclear power plants for an efficient source of electrical energy, …show more content…

3 Average cost of electricity per Kilowatt hour

It’s true nuclear power plants are expensive to build, but have you ever thought of how much fuel it might cost to run the plant and how much that fuel costs. Power plants of this type use Uranium, a very expensive silvery metal. A non-renewable resource, the average cost to buy 1 kg of uranium for fuel is $2,000. You can compare that to rocket fuel, which when all the prices for each element are added up, 1 kg of the fuel is about $4.00. That’s a huge difference. On average, power plants use about 4,500 to 6,500 uranium rods every five to six years. Each Uranium rod is 20 kg so the average cost for fuel is:
(5500 * 20) / 5.5 ≈ $20,000 a year (Based on the average of both number of rods and years total). A good example to show for what might happen to countries in the future is the debt Canada is currently in because of their CANDU nuclear reactors. Canada has surpassed 10 billion dollars and is still growing with them using these reactors. Now about 1/3 of their reactors are closed down and are not making any income. Not a very profitable investment if you ask me. Another thing we have to be cautious about are the high cost repairs that countries have to spend on power plants and how much it costs for waste treatment. Since 1983 over $42 billion has been used just for treating the radioactive waste to make sure it’s clean to dispose of. That a lot of money put in just for …show more content…

Right now there are a few ways to store the waste, but the most common is to load the waste into metal barrels and put them into storage. The problem is that the waste that comes form the power plants stay radioactive for thousands of years, so until somebody finds a more efficient way to deal with all the waste then in will just keep building up. A method that has been used in the past to get rid of the unwanted radioactive waste is to dump it all into the oceans. A total of thirteen countries used this process to get rid of the waste. Thankfully in is not illegal to dump in the ocean, but did we stop it

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