Nuclear Power Essay

Nuclear power

Since the start of the first commercial nuclear power plant in the 1950s, nothing good has come out of it but the fact that it is an effect and effective way of making electricity. Now there are more than four hundred and thirty commercial nuclear power reactors in thirty one different countries producing over three hundred and two thousand megawatts of total capacity. They provide about 13.5% of the world’s electricity where fossils fuels still provide the most percentage of electricity to the world, 80%.
Most importantly, nuclear waste is the double edge blade of modern technology. It’s a harmful and a radioactive substance produced by the left overs of nuclear technology. In short, it’s the type of waste which introduces the greatest leap into technology made by mankind. It also shows our trouble top deal with our advances as humans. Radioactive waste can last as little as a few hours to as long as hundreds of millennium. If stored improperly, radioactive waste can be devastating to the world and more importantly us. The reactors in nuclear power plants use fuel from metals rods filled with ceramic dioxide pellets. After the rods are used up, they need to be disposed of safely. Before they can be taken away to be disposed, the rods are kept under cool deep water pools near the plant. Write now there are over twenty nine thousand tons of spent fuel rods worldwide waiting disposal. Ten thousand tons of nuclear waste, including two thousand five hundred tons of high level waste (the most harmful and toxic waste) has been dumped into the oceans so far and counting.
Furthermore, nuclear waste is also being used to create weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear missiles and atomic bombs, which use the idea of fission from nuclear technology. The world has come to nuclear warfare in which the world could have become uninhabitable, leading to the extinction of the humankind. There are over six hundred nuclear missiles in the world awaiting launch but because of the world peace treaty signed in 1989 at the British alliance congress during the cold war; these missiles are decaying in their silos which will bring more problems for us in the future.
In the past, problems have occurred such as the Chernobyl disaster, reaching level seven (the highest possible level) on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), the most catastrophic disaster in nuclear history. 26 April 1986. Ukraine, Soviet Union (Now known as the USSR), destroying an entire town filled with more than ten thousand men, women and children. A small explosion leading to a fire and the release of radioactive particle in huge quantities into the atmosphere which than were measured in the west of France an hour later of the disaster. The reading on a Geiger Muller tube were high enough that the measuring could only be described to a person watching television for their entire life (80 years) straight without doing anything else. This also meant that the world’s climate was never the same.

In addition, on 11 March 2011 another incident, like Chernobyl, occurred. During the earthquake three cooling towers of six malfunctioned where the other number three was de-fuelled for cleaning and five and six were under cold shut down for maintenance caused the reactor two to malfunction and almost meltdown. The tsunami, following the earthquake, flooded the low lying rooms which contained the emergency coolers. The meltdown was maintained by bringing in water from the sea. This was the only other nuclear disaster to reach level seven on the International Nuclear Event Scale. Loss of power to the generation II reactor would have caused it to meltdown, a meltdown that could have destroyed half of the world and the population with it. The disaster is still going on but not as dangerous as before but recent events have put humankind and wildlife into danger. Workers at the plant had spotted leaks in the storage containers which have polluted the entire

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