Master Of Public Health: Future Sustainability Essay

Discuss about the Master of Public Health for Future Sustainability.

For the growth of human population, and to improve the quality of living and to lead the healthy life, electrical energy, and its production are most of the important facets. This electricity is very much needed in today’s life like televisions, lightless, computers, and other many countless items. With the rapid globalization, the living standard is increasing so the need for electricity is also getting in demand. It has been estimated that the increase in the energy now is 84% for the non-OCED countries and 14% for the OCED countries(Schmidt 2016). The urgent need for the electricity has been a concern globally and with this there has emerged the urgent need for the new technologies for the production of energy. The technology includes solar, geothermal, coal plant and nuclear power plant. Each technology comes with its advantages and disadvantages so a proper analysis has to b done as to which technology to choose which can less threat to the environment(Hore-Lacy 2015)

A detailed analysis was done between the coal mine and the nuclear plant by the costs, generation of energy, fuel, safety and concerns to environment.

Cost: For a power plant, the economics and cost are the most important factors to see its potential. Subsidies play a major role in the selection of power plant.The aspects which need to be considered for the cost management is the maintenance and operation which is regarding kWh. From the figure, it could be seen that costs of the nuclear plant were less per kWh as compared to coal, and this is due to the low cost use of fuel material uranium (Elliston et al. 2014.)

Fig: Graph showing the cost management between the coal mine and nuclear plant

Then the fuel of the power plant also determines the potential of the power plant. The fuel used in the nuclear is uranium whose production cost is much cheaper than the fuel used in the coal mine. This difference could be well understood from the graph.

Fig: Graph showing the fuel costs data

Generation Of Energy:

The coal mine and nuclear plant both has an advantage of very high relative energy density but the energy density for the latter one is higher. The nuclear plants produce 11000 kWh of electricity as compared to coal which produces 6150kWh (Dur?n and Rinc?n-Mej?a 2014)

Fig: Graph showing energy generation of coal mine and nuclear plant

Energy production is the important factor because it is for the future sustainability of energy. If the fuel material gets depleted then it would lead to the loss of the energy production

Impact On Environment:

The threat to the environment from the power plants is the major issue. It can serve as the pathway for pollution, greenhouse gasses and thus global warming (Brook and Bradshaw 2015) It has been estimated that the coal mine operation has released 750-900g of CO2/kWh-where as there were no emissions from the nuclear plant. According to EPA, it has been seen from the table that the key pollutants have critically evolved more from the coal plant and not from nuclear one

Fig: Table was showing the key pollutant emission from the power plants.

Fig: Image showing the overall emission from the coal mine and nuclear plant

Safety: It tops the priority list of the other issues. It refers to both workers safety and the safety of the population. It was a common belief that radiation from the nuclear plant causes the major threat to the environment but deep analysis revealed that it was the coal mine emission that posses the hazardous threat (Sovacool et al. 2013.) The radioactive material from the nuclear plant goes undetected in the natural environment as it gets entrapped by the particulate precipitator. In the coal mine, the wastes get leached into the ground thus affecting the cropland and the people living nearby (Mu 2015.)It has also been seen that people working in the nuclear plant get less harm because of the radiation shielding measures whereas there is no such protection in the coal mine

Fig: Graph showing the effect of radiation from the coal mine and nuclear plant

WHS Risk Management Tools:

In today globalized energy environment, the nuclear power plant managers need to consider many risk factors which may be associated with the nuclear plant. The goal of such management is to incorporate a systematic framework which could identify and manage the risk of the plant (Zhang et al. 2014)

The nuclear safety risk is the most sophisticated one for maintaining the areas of nuclear, industrial, radiological and environmental. The managers check the frequency of the emitted radioactive substances (Moore 2014.)

The financial analyst sees the risk of installing and operation of the system and also the investment cost if once gets destroyed could not be recovered even in the whole life.

The risk associated with the plant operation is the operational facilities which could be associated with the machine and also the operational benefits.

The manger also has to see that the projects that are on going or the one who is going to be done should come within the budget and be cost effective which if not seen could lead to the risks.

Conclusion:

Thus from the above facts and figures, it could be concluded that in every aspect nuclear power plant is the most accepted technology for the present as well as the future society when compared to a coal mine. If all the factors are taken into account, then it is seen that nuclear plant tops the list.

If the carbon emission is controlled by the government in the future, then the nuclear plant would become the most appropriate option(Hong et al. 2013) Due to the global energy crisis, coal power may be necessary but the nuclear plant would perform a much important role in the future

References:

Brook, B.W. and Bradshaw, C.J., 2015. Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation. Conservation Biology, 29(3), pp.702-712.

Dur?n, D. and Rinc?n-Mej?a, E.A., 2014. Energy: Defining the Future.Sustainability Science and Technology: An Introduction, p.127.

Elliston, B., MacGill, I. and Diesendorf, M., 2014. Comparing least cost scenarios for 100% renewable electricity with low emission fossil fuel scenarios in the Australian National Electricity Market. Renewable Energy,66, pp.196-204.

Hong, S., Bradshaw, C.J. and Brook, B.W., 2013. Evaluating options for the future energy mix of Japan after the Fukushima nuclear crisis. Energy Policy, 56, pp.418-424.

Hore-Lacy, I., 2015. World nuclear power in 2015. AusIMM Bulletin, (Aug 2015), p.32.

Moore, M., 2014. Public Health Association of Australia Submission on the Energy White Paper Issues paper.

Mu, R., Zuo, J. and Yuan, X., 2015. China's approach to nuclear safety—From the perspective of policy and institutional system. Energy Policy, 76, pp.161-172.

Schmidt, A.T., 2016. The Nuclear debate continues... Waste+ Water Management Australia, 42(5), p.2.

Sovacool, B.K., Parenteau, P., Ramana, M.V., Valentine, S.V., Jacobson, M.Z., Delucchi, and Diesendorf, M., 2013. Comment on “Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power”. Environmental science & technology, 47(12), pp.6715-6717.

Zhang, P., Lingard, H., Blismas, N., Wakefield, R. and Kleiner, B., 2014. Work-health and safety-risk perceptions of construction-industry stakeholders using photograph-based Q methodology. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 141(5), p.04014093.