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Our world consumes a lot of energy – 19,710 billion kilowatt-hours in 2012, according to “The Environmental Toll of a Netflix Binge” by Ingrid Burrington of the The Atlantic. To satiate the world’s ravenous appetite for energy, we use a variety of renewable and nonrenewable resources. Obviously there is a limit to what we can produce from our finite supply of nonrenewable resources, but that limit may actually be much higher than we currently believe. This is due to one method of producing energy that is often overlooked because of certain stigmas – nuclear energy.
Nuclear energy is an excellent source of power because it takes relatively little fissionable material to produce a stupendous amount of energy. Furthermore, it is surprisingly safe. Very few workers have ever died in accidents at nuclear power plants, especially when compared to deaths at coal mines and oil rigs. Additionally, fears of nuclear power plants exploding like a nuclear bomb are completely unfounded because nuclear power plants cannot explode. While the uranium used to produce nuclear power is only about 4-5% enriched, nuclear bombs require uranium that is 90% enriched. This means that the uranium used by nuclear power plants cannot sustain a chain reaction, and will not explode in the manner that nuclear bombs do.
The last major argument for nuclear power is the possibility of nuclear fusion power, which would produce a virtually unlimited source of energy. Nuclear fusion is idea because it uses heavy hydrogen isotopes abundantly found in seawater and does not produce radioactive waste. The only problem is we haven’t been able to produce and contain the extreme conditions necessary to facilitate its production. However, nuclear fusion represents the potential for virtually unlimited, clean (though nonrenewable) energy.
Posted from DIG101 Blog by Noah R.