Have you ever turned on the news and seen things about a nuclear plant explosion? Or new government costs to sustain a nuclear plant? About places evacuated because of harmful nuclear waste? If you’ve seen it or not, whether the news reported it or not, this is happening. We may need a energy source that does not produce greenhouse gases, but nuclear is not the way to go. It is just to dangerous. With high costs, high risk of explosions and endangering the environment, it is not worth it. Nuclear energy has some good qualities but it is just not worth the bad.
Nuclear energy is very expensive. It can cost billions of dollars to build, upgrade, maintain and clean and store nuclear waste. Imn the article “Waste, Families left behind as nuclear plants close.” by Frank Morris it says, “Brock Lindau has spent almost his whole career at Fort Calhoun power plant. He helped install almost $700 million worth of upgrades to the plant.” This means that at just one nuclear power plant they spent almost $700 million just on upgrades. This shows that nuclear power plants are extremely expensive. Also in the video “Nuclear Energy: Is Fission the Future.” by Flipside Science, Scientist Dan Kammen says, “...And nuclear is very expensive.” This shows that it has been proven and is not a secret that nuclear is a very expensive energy. When you look on the whole of the situation, all of the nuclear power plants could cost well over a trillion dollars if you add all of the costs together. All that money to produce 20% of the Earth’s energy. It’s just not a good deal.
Even though it is very expensive and has many risks, people still believe that it may be a good source of energy. People say that it is a way that we can efficiently produce lots of energy without producing greenhouse gases. In the article “Waste, Families left behind as nuclear plants close.” by it says “A decade ago, low-carbon nuclear power had a bright future, as a tool to fight climate change.” But just how much would you be willing to risk just to be able to get a carbon free energy. People have died because of issues that have happened with nuclear energy power plants.
Nuclear energy also has a very high risk. Producing more nuclear waste then we know how to handle and the ability to cause massive explosions. It is just to easy to go wrong. In the article “Water, Soil and Radiation. Why Fukushima will take decades to clean up.” by Geoff Brumfiel it says, “Five years after an earthquake and tsunami caused a series of meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan… But there are still some problems.” In that same article a man named Dale Klein, a former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commision, speaks. He says, “ Perhaps the biggest problem is water,” That same article also says, “It also says, “Groundwater from nearby mountains constantly seeps through the ruined building before spilling into the ocean...so far efforts to stop it have been only partially successful.” This means that sites like Fukushima that have exploded face a series of problems and some of them are really hard to fix. Another problem that Fukushima and pother exploded power plants are facing is soil. In the same article by Geoff Brumfiel a person named Azby Brown who is with the nonprofit organization Safecast says, “There are now about 9 million bags of decontamination waste from all over the prefecture that are being consolidated into these vast fields with these pyramids of radioactive waste,” This means that they have just piles upon piles of contaminated and decontaminated soil just sitting around and not being cleared. Explosions are really harmful to the environment and things around it. That’s not even including humans.
Nuclear power plant explosions can mean serious health issues and death for humans. In the article “What’s next for nuclear” by Gabriela Quiros it says “The worst one to date happened with a devastating explosion and fire at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine in 1986, which released radiation across Europe.Twenty-eight rescue workers died from radiation exposure. Other health effects started to show up a few years later.” In that same article Dr. Lydia Zablotska, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco says “The primary finding so far is an increased risk of thyroid cancer and other thyroid diseases in those who were children and adolescents at the time of the accident,” This means that not only does nuclear explosions affect the environment it affects the health of humans.
Humans do need a efficient source of energy that is clean. We need a good alternative to fossil fuels. But unfortunately nuclear energy just does not seem as though it would be to great of a substitution. It may not produce greenhouse gases, but it does produce nuclear waste and when you look at the big picture, nuclear waste can be much more harmful. Also it costs millions, billions and maybe even trillions of dollars just for a small amount of nuclear power plants, imagine if that number doubled. Plus with fossil fuels it is very inexpensive. On the whole, with the risks, expenses and environmental issues, we need a different alternative. Until that is made possible we need to stick to fossil fuels.
