Nuclear energy can leads human
civilization to the next level.
Nuclear Power as a Basis for Future
Electricity Generation
- Nowadays, the world
is consuming ever-growing amounts of energy, and utilization is set for a
particularly intensive development in electricity. In the future, more
electricity is definitely highly required for the people as fossil fuels are
shifted. Also, more generation capacity will be required in this rapid
development, some of which will be nuclear. Great amount of
electrical energy is able to generate by a single nuclear plant. Based on the
research, around 10 percent of the total electricity is
generated by nuclear power around the world. This
varies sharply by country — in the U.S. the rate is about 20 percent, it is slightly
lower than that in Russia and Germany, and 40 and 50 percent of electricity is
generated from nuclear reactors for other European countries. Nuclear energy is also a climate-friendly energy source
which generates power by emitting comparatively low amounts of greenhouse gas",( CO2) .The contribution of nuclear power plants to global warming is
comparatively little as it releases small amount of green house. Therefore, nuclear
power is a suitable energy to use for future electricity generation as it is able
to generate large amount of energy and also is a climate-friendly energy source
as well.
Bar-chart graph regarding the emissions of CO2
in different energy sources.
There are safety concerns that associated with nuclear power. There is possibility
that radiation could accidentally released by a nuclear power plant into the
environment. In spite of nuclear plants having a mostly high security
standard, there will still have a small probability of failure and accidents are
still possible to occur. There is a condition that can happen in a nuclear reactor, it is called a meltdown. A meltdown is an accident
in which severe overheating of the nuclear reactor results in the melting of
the reactor's core. It is cause by a defection in the cooling system of the
reactor that one or more of the nuclear fuel elements are allowed to beyond its
melting point. Radiation could be released by a nuclear power
plant into the environment if a meltdown occurred. If this
accident happens, the consequences would be absolutely devastating both for
human being as for the nature. There will be higher probability of a disastrous
failure somewhere in the world as more nuclear power plants are constructed.
Nuclear
radiation can have negative effects to the human body by causing health
problems and diseases. For examples, the cells
in the body could be damaged and lead to cancer if a person are exposed to huge
amounts of radiation after a long time.
Other than that, nuclear
power generation may also cause environmental health. Radioactive waste is
disposed to the nature may cause problems. For example, water from lakes and
rivers is used by nuclear power plants for cooling and the excess water used to
cool the reactor is usually released back into the waterway at extremely high
temperatures. Not only that, the water released from it contain pollutants like
salts and heavy metals. This will definitely disrupt the aquatics and cause
water pollution.
