"The US Should Avoid Becoming Too Reliant on Nuclear Power"

Imagine a power plant that billows seemingly clean steam rather than smoke, but harboring a silent danger that has the potential to outlive civilizations. Nuclear energy works by releasing heat and energy as a neutron collides into a uranium atom to split it apart into smaller particles. (“Nuclear Explained”) This energy is used to heat water into steam, which then runs a 

generator that will produce electricity (“Nuclear Explained”).However, nuclear energy creates waste, takes a long time to become beneficial, and has numerous safety risks involved. Due to the these negative factors and long term risks, the us should not rely on nuclear power as its main source of energy and should utilize alternative power sources. 

Firstly, nuclear power plants produce unwanted byproducts as they process the uranium fuel source. Ironically, although nuclear energy is often branded as a “clean” source of energy, it gnerates CO₂in order to process the fuel. 

“There is no such thing as a zero- or close-to-zero emission nuclear power plant. Even existing plants emit due to the continuous mining and refining of uranium needed for the plant. Emissions from new nuclear are 78 to 178 g-CO2/kWh, not close to 0.” (Jacobson) 

For context, 1 kWh,or 1000 Watt-hours,is roughly the equivalent amount of energy used to power an average dishwasher with a 1800 W rating for a little over 30 minutes. (“How Much Does It Cost to Run a Dishwasher?” ) The significant amounts of CO₂ produced during operation clearly illustrate that nuclear energy is not a clean source of power. In addition , radioactive

waste is also produced from the usage of the uranium fuel through the process of nuclear fission. Through nuclear fission, a neutron collides with an atom, which in this case is uranium (Galindo). This fission does 2 main things – it creates radioactive isotopes of lighter elements, and creates transuranic elements (elements that are heavier than uranium) – both of which are radioactive (“Backgrounder on Radioactive Waste”). Unlike fossil fuels, where a portion of the fuel's mass is removed in the form of smoke and gases, nuclear fuel is almost entirely converted into extremely radioactive waste or “high level” waste (“Backgrounder on Radioactive Waste). These high level nuclear wastes are created from “spent fuel removed from reactors after producing electricity”, and are extremely dangerous (“Backgrounder on Radioactive Waste”). On average, roughly 20 - 30 tons of “high-level nuclear waste” are created annually by a typical nuclear plant (“Nuclear Power Is Not Clean”). Furthermore, the United States doesn’t commercially reprocess these high-level wastes into reusable fuels, making it necessary for all of it to have to be stored safely (Processing of Used Nuclear Fuel). However, significantly more low-level than high-level nuclear waste is generated each year (Watson). This category includes any substance that becomes contaminated with radioactive material. These are still dangerous and must be stored separately for a few years until it is no longer radioactive and can be disposed of normally. Ultimately, the fuel source for nuclear power plants results in the production of “wastes” as it creates energy, in the forms of “invisible” CO₂ emissions and radioactive wastes. 

Next, nuclear power plants take an extremely long time to start producing energy and “become useful”. One metric to illustrate this is that it has an extremely long PTO (Planning to Operation) time (Park). The majority of nuclear power plants are created by private companies. In this case, an extremely long process has to be followed in which the creation of the plant has to be approved by the NRC, become built, and then be tested to see if it runs properly. (Park)

Taking all of these steps into consideration, “it takes about a decade or more to build one nuclear power plant” (Park). In addition to time, a nuclear power plant also requires a lot of resources to build, implying that the nuclear plant will also have a high ERT. A considerable amount of resources and energy has to be used in order to construct the plant in the first place. ERT, or energy recovery time, is the time it takes for the power station to start producing more energy than was used to create it. In the case of nuclear energy, ERT ranges from 10 to 18 years (“Nuclear Power Is Not Clean”). In comparison to some standard renewable energy sources, wind energy has a ERT of less than a year and solar energy has a ERT of less than 3 years. When considering the labor and materials needed to create the plant, nuclear energy has very high upfront costs that aren’t paid off for at least 20 to 30 years until the “planning” stage. 

The last primary drawback of nuclear energy is safety. Nuclear energy works with very dangerous and high-risk material, as even exposure to seemingly trivial amounts of radiation can lead to or increase the risk for adverse health issues. For example, there have been several indcidents regarding to the safety of nucealr pwoer plants, most notably Chernobyl in 1986, Fukishima in 2011, and Three-Mila Island in 1979 (Ghosh). In all of these incidents, radioactivity was released into the nearby environment, causing harm to exposed people; showing the dangers of a major nuclear failure. As evidenced from to the complexity of a nuclear power system and from past experiences, there is always a chance that of disaster may occur. Looking beyond the operational hazards, the mining of uranium fuel also poses safety issues. As uranium is extracted from the ore, most of the radioactivity is left behind in the separated rock (“Radioactive Waste”). This process is not only harmful to the nearby plants and animals, but also to the people that facilitate this process. Workers that mine uranium are exposed to radon decay (“Backgrounder on Nuclear Waste”). Furthermore, a CDC study found that uranium

miners are significantly more likely to die of lung cancer and other lung diseases than the average population (Jacobson). 

Although one might argue that nuclear energy is both energy efficient and land efficient, the usage of its fuel takes away from these two advantages. Any nuclear fuel that goes into the plant will become radioactive, and will ultimately have to be disposed of. This high-level waste will then have to stored specially in either “specially designed pools of water” or “dry storage casks” for years to come – both of which require land to store and resources to create ans properly store. (“Nuclear explained”) 

Despite high expectations for nuclear energy to resolve the world's energy challenges, it falls short of providing a complete and unproblematic answer. The operation of a nuclear power plant results in the emission of CO2 to process the fuel source, and the creation of toxic radioactive waste that has to be disposed of appropriately. It takes an extremely long time for a nuclear power plant to go into functional operation and then to produce net energy, especially when compared to typical renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy. The mining of uranium poses environmental risks to both the environment around it and to the people that work around it. 

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Works Cited 

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www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-is-nuclear-energy-the-science-of-nuclear-power. Ghosh, Padmaparna. “Nuclear Power 101.” NRDC, 5 Jan. 2022,

www.nrdc.org/stories/nuclear-power-101#problem. 

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www.oneearth.org/the-7-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-is-not-the-answer-to-solve-climate change/. 

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www.energy.gov/ne/articles/advantages-and-challenges-nuclear-energy. 

Park, KiJung. “Process of Building Nuclear Power Plant.” Large.stanford.edu, 26 Jan. 2018, large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/park-k2/. 

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