Hello all! Thank you for reading this week’s Sunday Post. We decided to discuss nuclear energy in light of New York’s Indian Point reactor’s shutdown on Friday. Naturally in the move away from fossil fuels, solar and wind have the biggest focus, though they are limited by when the sun and wind are out and the current lack of batteries to store energy. Nuclear energy could fill in the energy gaps, but have had a series of mishaps in the past that have caused public mistrust. Is nuclear energy that bad? Let’s have a look. Reactor failures at Chernobyl and Fukushima, among others, have created the public perception that nuclear power plants are unreliable and dangerous. However, that is not the case. Nuclear accidents are quite rare because of the multiple redundant safety features and extensive maintenance checks. Obviously, there is also the issue of disposing of spent cores. The US currently stores it in the desert, while Japan has poured radioactive water back into the ocean. Recent studies show radionuclides, the radioactive particles released by the reactors, can cause DNA damage to mussels, though it's hard to tell the true effect until decades later. But for the most part, the waste is handled safely. All in all, the uncertainty around nuclear power plant safety is overblown. Nuclear’s carbon emissions are nonzero, but low. Nuclear produces 800 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, saving 470 million metric tons of carbon. But while electricity production itself has no carbon emissions, through the mining/refinement of uranium ores, production of building materials, and running of the building do use fossil fuels. So the problems with nuclear are not the safety issues towards the environment and people, but the negative reputation it has and the financial difficulties maintaining plants. Hopefully in the future, nuclear would become an energy source that complements solar and wind.
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March 2019
"There is nothing in which the birds differ more than man than the way that they can build and yet leave the landscape as it was before." |