Question: Should America turn to nuclear energy?
What do you picture when you think of nuclear energy? Biohazard signs? Giant power plants billowing smoke into the atmosphere? Rusty barrels spilling glowing green goo into waterways filled with three-eyed fish and bestowing the occasional super power upon a mild-mannered onlooker?
Too many of the perceptions of the dangers of nuclear power are based on myths circulated by television shows and comic books. So here are the facts. Get ready to have your mind blown.
The United States currently maintains 104 operating nuclear reactors in 31 states. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute these plants produced 19.6 percent of the country’s total electricity in 2008, 100 percent of which was carbon-free.
Fans of the environment, rejoice — electricity generated by nuclear plants avoids almost 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year in the U.S. Fun fact: This is nearly as much carbon dioxide as is released from all American passenger cars each year.
Likewise, nuclear power plants have achieved lower operating and maintenance costs than coal, natural gas and oil plants since 2001, according to the NEI.
Despite public perceptions, nuclear power plants are also among the safest installations in terms of safety for workers and nearby residents. Since the first nuclear reactor was commissioned on 1954, there have only been two major accidents that have led to significant damage and deaths: Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Of these, the accident at Three Mile Island was contained without harm to anyone, and although a 2005 report by the Chernobyl Form allowed that there may be 4,000 extra cancer deaths among those most highly exposed to the Chernobyl radiation, the report only attributed 56 deaths that were a direct result of the disaster. In contrast, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration recorded more than 125 deaths in mines the same year. These are the only major accidents to have occurred in more than 55 years in 32 separate countries.
So we know that nuclear energy is safer for workers, cheaper to produce, and contributes no harmful greenhouse gasses. But nuclear power does have one downside: waste, radioactive and dangerous for thousands of years.
But what’s safer: waste that can be stored underground or waste that is emitted directly into our atmosphere?
The answer seems obvious, and luckily the government has already provided a handy solution: Yucca Mountain, the oft-maligned nuclear repository located in the Nevada desert 100 miles outside Las Vegas. Congress has invested more than $1 billion testing the site’s geological suitability since designating it as the permanent home of a large portion of the nation’s nuclear waste in 1987, and these studies have never revealed any viable scientific reason to reject Yucca.
What do all these facts tell us?
Before we make rash judgments condemning nuclear energy, we need to look at the science and facts behind its use. When all the misconceptions are stripped away, nuclear energy is the clear choice for cleaner, safer, more efficient electricity.
Zach was doused in nuclear waste as a child and was granted the ability to write amazingly persuasive columns. Share your super power at zfowle@asu.edu
