Steven Kirby
Samantha Mudd
English 151
11 November 2010
The Time Is Now
According to a study done by The Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, The United States on average emitted more than 140 terra grams of carbon per month in 2008 (Gregg). For those of us who aren’t familiar with terra grams, that means that each month our country is releasing over 140 trillion grams of carbon. To make matters worse that number is rising by around 16.8 terra grams a year (Gregg). There are many reasons for these numbers being so high, but some are much more damaging than others. When you look at the research behind climate change you will always notice that coal and natural gas are two of the biggest contributors to the problem. In fact, these two greenhouse gasses account for almost 70% of the 140 terra grams of carbon emitted monthly in this country alone. This is obviously a huge problem, and in order to save our planet from the effects of global warming we need to give it our immediate and undivided attention. Over the past couple of years, many alternative energy sources have been developed in an effort to cut these greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear energy has been developed into a safe and efficient alternative to harmful fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. Once nuclear energy has been established in a particular country it becomes an economy stimulating juggernaut with the ability to combat climate change on a massive level.
There are many misconceptions when it comes to nuclear energy. Of these the most prominent is the idea that it cannot be controlled. The leaks and mistakes made in the past with relation to nuclear energy have made many hesitant to trust it so readily. What most people do not know is that many technological advancements have been made in recent years in an attempt to ensure proper containment of the harmful reactants involved in creating and storing nuclear energy. Matthew L. Wald, author of “What Now For Nuclear Waste”, has brought to light one such advancement. According to Wald, scientists have found and mined Permian age Rock Salt in the Chihuanhuan desert just outside Carlsbad, New Mexico. They have discovered that when water moves through these crystals it becomes trapped inside by the salt. Similarly, in an even bigger discovery, scientists found that nuclear waste can actually be stored inside these crystals much in the same way that the water gets trapped inside them. In 1989, Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was proposed as the original storage site for the United States’ nuclear waste, but almost exactly 20 years later President Barrack Obama apparently saw something he didn’t like in Yucca Mountain because he passed a law shutting down all operations on the site. More than $9 billion invested in the program were wasted. Seeing as finding a way to store nuclear waste safely has proven to be a near impossible task, this new finding could potentially jumpstart the nuclear industry. Given the proper funding and government approval, nuclear energy could finally be ready for its comeback, and incidentally it could also be the solution to our economy’s comeback.
In order to make nuclear energy become a main source of our energy, it is going to take the unified efforts of the majority of our population to make this dream a reality. Plants need to be built, maintained, and constantly checked for safety regulations. All of these things require labor, and seeing as the United States currently has an unemployment rate at of 9.6% (Bureau Labor Statistics) an increased investment in nuclear energy would translate into an economy stimulating boom. One nuclear plant can provide up to 500 well-paying jobs for the next half century (Christian). The construction of new plants could potentially cause the unemployment rate to sink below 6.2% where it was before numbers started to skyrocket in 2008. Nuclear energy’s ability to produce positive after effects is enormous. For anyone to ignore them any longer would be ignorant.
Critics of nuclear energy have pointed to its expensive costs as a reason for delaying initial investment in reactors. There is no denying that the reactors and new technology are extremely pricey. As of now, the cost is estimated to be above $8 billion per reactor (USA Today). While this steep initial price has made many hesitant to invest in a technology that’s future is unknown, nuclear energy’s popularity among most investors has continued to rise. Investors have trusted the new industry enough to make the construction of eight new plants possible (Davidson). These plants can be ready as soon as 2020, and the amount of energy generated per plant on average is enough to power 893,000 homes. To put that into perspective, the state of Rhode Island only has a little more than 452,000 homes. These numbers leave little doubt on the subject of nuclear energy’s effectiveness. As of 2008, there were 104 operating nuclear reactors in the United States, and on average those reactors generated 12.4 billion kilo watt hours of energy. If we as a country are able to add 20 – 30 more reactors by the year 2050, nuclear energy will be powering more than 40% of the country (U.S. Energy Information Administration). There would be large decreases in carbon dioxide emissions, and we would be making significant progress in the worldwide struggle with climate change.
You can compare the initial high costs of alternative energies to buying a hybrid car. While buying a hybrid may mean that you pay more up front than you would for a typical car, the amount of money you save getting 40+ mpg of gas instead of 25 mpg adds up quickly, to the point where the person who buys the hybrid made the much better economic decision than the person who buys the cheaper model. The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as a cheap alternative to fossil fuels. So, when you talk about any of the major proposed alternatives (Nuclear, Hydrogen, Geothermal, etc.) there is no way around the price factor, and no revolutionary cheap source is coming in the near future. The opposition to alternatives is very near-sighted when it comes to these things; if you look at the data behind these technologies you will see that long term the money saved by investing in these new technologies far outweighs the initial price. Just as the hybrid ended up being the better choice to the cheaper model, nuclear energy becomes the best choice when compared to the cheaper coal and gas models.
Before anyone is going to trust nuclear energy, its advocates are going to need to be able to show that the safety of everything and everyone involved is not going to be a problem. “The Directive Establishing a Community Framework for Nuclear Safety on Nuclear Installations: the EU Approach to Nuclear Safety” is a journal published by the Nuclear Law Bulletin with the intent of answering the questions surrounding the safety of nuclear energy. The European Union is the main supporter and user of nuclear energy and in 2009 legislation was passed to ensure that all the proper precautions were being taken to prevent reactor leaks, manufacturing mistakes, and other general containment procedures. This new legislation is aimed to prevent the most common problems that arise with the production of nuclear energy. The first task that needs to be constantly supervised is radiation protection, or protecting workers and the facilities from radiation exposure and the effects of radiation. The second is maintaining control over the reactor at all times. Both of these tasks seem pretty obvious and were no doubt already being monitored, but now that there are laws to make sure that these precautions are taken into account the manner in which they are supervised will become considerably more stringent and the consequences for not following these new rules will be very unpleasant. Being able to regulate the operating of these facilities is paramount to ensuring the safety of nuclear energy, and this new legislation has paved the way for more safety regulations to come.
Technology has made many things possible that weren’t possible in the past with Nuclear energy. For instance a process has been developed to recycle the waste created in manufacturing nuclear energy. The process France uses in recycling waste is clearly shown in “Nuclear Energy: Promise or Peril?”. What France does is ship their waste to a reprocessing plant in Russia where the harmful Plutonium byproduct is removed from the Uranium. The Uranium is then sent back to France where it can be reused in the manufacturing process. Since France is considered by most to be the leader of this new nuclear age, it would seem that following their example would be the best option for any country trying to get serious about nuclear energy. Again the problem of price arises when recycling Uranium is talked about. Once again, though there are more long term benefits from using the more expensive process, a country choosing not to recycle their Uranium will just skip right to the process of storing the waste. This is where the non-recycling country will run into problems. As I previously stated, it has taken more than two decades for our government to decide not to use the Yucca Mountain for waste storage. When you skip the recycling process you send more waste to the repository, and the faster that repository will fill up. When you take into account the fact that it takes close to 80 years for the produced waste to lose its radioactivity, you will quickly realize that you need to use the repository space you have as conservatively as possible. Because the costs of finding, preparing, and using new repositories are all extremely high, money would again be saved in the long term to make up for the cost of recycling.
The safety of our planet’s great ecosystem is currently in jeopardy. As the United States we are constantly being looked to as the role model of the world. We have discovered the technology, and more importantly, we have been given the opportunity to save what we have left of our home here on Earth. Nuclear energy is here and ready to be used as a weapon in our struggle with Global Warming. If we as a society wait much longer to take action against this common world enemy, what kind of message are we sending to all the people trying to follow our example? Right now it is our responsibility to take action, and if we sit by and watch while God’s green Earth continues to be destroyed we will have failed. Not only will we have failed ourselves, but the rest of the world as well. Armed with all the necessary tools to correct the same crisis we created, there are no more excuses. Coal and Natural Gas emissions are decimating the environment with little to no resistance. Who are we to deny our children the opportunity to grow up in a world as beautiful as ours? Who are we to take the freedom away from them to decide for themselves how best to treat this planet? I am not saying that nuclear energy is going to make everything better because it is not. What I am saying is that it will be a huge step in the right direction. Every journey begins with a step. We are just lucky to have the opportunity to start this journey off in a dead sprint. A solution to this problem has been offered to us, so let’s take action before it is too late.
Works Cited (in MLA)
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of Applied Meteorology & Climatology 48.12 (2009). Web. 1 Nov. 2010.
Garriba, Massimo, Chirts, Amelia, Nauduzaite, Monika. “The Directive Establishing a
Community Framework for Nuclear Safety on Nuclear Installations: the EU Approach to
Nuclear Safety” Nuclear Law Bulletin (01 December 2009)
Mccombie, Charles. “Evaluating the solutions to the nuclear waste problem” Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists (November 2009): Vol. 65 issue 6 (pg 42 – 48) Print
Wald, L. Matthew. “What Now For Nuclear Waste?” Scientific American (August 2009): (pg 46
53) Print
Hill, Mechelynck, Ripka, Zwaan. “Nuclear Energy: Promise or Peril?” Singapore 1999. World
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U.S. Census Bureau. "Rhode Island QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau." State and County
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