Pollution And Reducing Dependence On Imported Oil

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

As the demand for electricity increasing, pollution caused by fossil fuel is become more serious. Half of the America’s air pollution happened due to the generation of gas, coal and oil burning power plants. Burning coal produces carbon dioxide, which depletes the ozone layer. The soft coal which burnt in many power plants, contains sulphur. Once the gaseous byproducts are absorbed in cloud, the precipitation becomes sulphuric. Therefore, nuclear energy is more environmental friendly compared to energy produced from burning the fossil fuels. When more soft coals are used, the amount of pollution will increase. Fossil fuels are estimated to be used up within fifty years. Whereas, for uranium, there are large reserves for it and they also used new breeder reactors that produce more fuel than the amount of usage. Unfortunately, this does not mean that we will have endless supply of fuel because breeder reactors need a feedstock of uranium and thorium. When these two fuels are running out, breeder reactors will ease to be useful. This is a more lengthy solution to the problem of burning of gas, coal, and oil.

Reliability

Nuclear power plants are less vulnerable to the problems of shortage caused by strikes or natural disasters as they need little fuel. Uranium is deposited evenly around the globe. Chemical residual left from chemical processing of the ore from uranium mining leads to radon exposure to the public. However, the mining of uranium out of the ground reduces future exposure of radon which is unlike the coal burning that leaves ashes to cause the increasing future radon exposure. Therefore, it is safer to use nuclear fuel than burning coal.

Safety

The human activities especially those which involved large amount of energy are risky. These involve transportation, construction, mining, oil well extraction and so on. The nuclear energy has attributed about one or two deaths per year in the half century of the Nuclear Energy Age. The examples include those happened in Three Mile Island (TMI) in year 1979 and Chernobyl in year 1986. At TMI, there were no deaths, no injured and no one were much irradiated off the site of the nuclear power station as more were killed probably in the traffic accidents while trying to escape in mistaken terror. About 50 people died from the accident happened at Chernobyl. They were firefighters and workers in the plant. There were about 1500 people infected with thyroid cancers as the results of eating food which contaminated with radio-iodine. However most of the cases were usually diagnosed with success and less than ten have died of the cancers. On the other hand, as compared to accidents that often occur in the coal mine area which involves tens to hundreds deaths in each accident, accidents occurred resulted from nuclear energy are said to be less severe. In addition, the next generation of nuclear power stations being developed in California and South Africa will be safer and more efficient.

Availability of Usable Uranium

Uranium is available at an abundance of two to three parts per million in the Earth’s crust which is about 600 times greater than gold and about the same as tin. The amount of available uranium is at the price that we are willing to pay for it. There have an impact on the cost of electricity generated from nuclear power if the price of uranium increase by over a factor of 3, then it would have an impact of the cost of electricity generated from nuclear power. This rise of price would stimulate an increase in the exploration activities which consequently increase the size of the resource. However, advanced technologies are developed in which are far more efficient in their use of Uranium or which utilizing thorium that is three times more abundant than uranium. These technologies make use of the fuel spent from current nuclear reactors and the depleted uranium stocks used for enrichment if perfected. Enough fuel for many thousands years of energy production would be provided if taken together. This will also mitigate the demand for newly mined uranium.

Reducing Dependence on Imported Oil

Besides, nuclear energy helps in solving one of our most urgent national problems which is the growing dependence on foreign countries for the energy that runs our economy. Over 40 percent of the oil we use at a cost of $1 billion per week is imported from the United States. That dependence would be far worse without nuclear energy. At the time of the 1973 oil embargo, oil accounted for about 17 percent of U.S. electric supply whereas nuclear energy was only about 5 percent. In 1990, oil represented only about 4 percent of U.S. electric supply whereas nuclear energy was about 21 percent. So, the increase in the usage of nuclear energy shows our drastic reduced on the dependence on imported oil.

Protecting Our Environment

Electricity is produced from the nuclear energy plants by the fissioning of uranium, and not the burning of fuels. As a result, nuclear plants do not emit pollutants like sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and dust or greenhouse gases that pollute the air. The emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced by 20 percent, or 128 trillion tons a year since the introduction of America’s nuclear energy plants. The electric utility emissions of sulphur dioxide would be 5 million tons a year higher without the utility of nuclear energy plant in generating electricity and the emissions of nitrogen oxides would be 2 million tons a year higher.

On the other hand, the progressive exhaustion of fossil resources and the worsening of the greenhouse effect are two important points which the essential energy questions at the beginning of the 21st century turn around. Significant quantities of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere due to the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas as one of the main gases responsible for the greenhouse effect. All scientists today agree that this increased concentration of greenhouse gases has a responsibility for the drastic climatic change, a change that is perhaps natural, but is certainly accelerated by human activity. The greenhouse gases discharges are mainly caused by transport vehicles. However, the use of fossil fuel in the generation of electricity is also contributing to the worsening situation. Fossil fuels currently are responsible for about 80 percent of the electricity generated and the electricity generation is responsible for about 40 percent of those discharges into the atmosphere that are involved in changes in the greenhouse effect. Nuclear energy therefore holds a considerable environmental advantage that is it allows the production of very significant quantities of energy, at the same time without atmospheric discharges and the emission of greenhouse gases.