Advantages and Disadvantages of Nuclear Energy - Shantanu

Advantages and Disadvantages of Nuclear Energy

Now many people think that our next most dependable energy source will be nuclear energy. It is clean and the fuel for it is also very available. This is very important for us to know about both the pros and cons about the nuclear energy. So I am going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy. To talk about the advantages first point should be the efficiency of nuclear energy. Nuclear plants are very efficient to produce a large amount of electricity, which can be up to 2GW. The second point should be reliability. Nuclear power plant runs on Uranium. Uranium is more easy to found and reliable than fossil fuel. It is not like any other renewable energy, which has to depend on the weather. Other fuel cycles also can be used like Thorium. So supply of this energy is also can be long as expected. The last advantages can be it is clean compared to fossil fuel emission. Though it has green house gas emission but compared to fossil fuels it is less. Now to talk about the disadvantages of nuclear power the first point has to be waste of nuclear energy. It has a green house gas emission and a high radioactive waste. It is so dangerous that it lasts for ten thousand years. This waste has to be managed in a very careful way. Second point should be there are some reactors produce “plutonium” which can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. So it can be a very good target for terrorist to get the plutonium or make blind a whole region by destroying the nuclear power station. The last point should be cost. It has a very high manufacturing cost but running cost is comparatively low.

Response:

This article is very well written with advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy. The writer of this article has come up with the thesis that supports nuclear energy. But I think it is more important to think about our environment. We have already taken our environment to a very vulnerable situation. In this situation we have to take every steps very carefully. We can not welcome radioactive waste instead of green house gas effect. We have to ignore both of them. Radioactive waste can be very dangerous. If a nuclear energy power station blasts out for some reason then a very big area will have to suffer the effect. Abnormal baby can be born, no crops will be there and many more. Moreover these waste take thousand of years to be neutralized. Where we are going to keep those wastes for ten thousand years? If we get the solutions of these problems then we can proceed with the nuclear energy. Till then we should improve the clean renewable energy.