[Safe-Keeper]

Drawing on what little I know about nuclear power...

Originally Posted by Seth8530

Hi, when i applied at The University of Tennessee

Best of luck! This your first time you apply at a college or university?

[Nuclear energy is the power source of the future.

Well, one of them. In my eyes, hydroelectric, solar and wind and even for a time petroleum/gas will all see widespread usage (though solar and wind power are largely inefficient at the moment, as I understand them). Which energy source is right for a region depends just as much on climate and such. For example, Norway has a lot of waterfalls and thus has a large number of hydroelectric power plants. Sweden, our neighbour, doesn't have this luxury and has elected to building nuclear plants. Both of us seem to be doing just fine.

The cost for building a new nuclear power plant is approximately eight billion dollars. If there were to be sixty new nuclear plants constructed across thirty developing nations,the cost would be close to 500 billion dollars.

Far as I know, a large part of the start-up costs, at least in the US, is to combat activists and lobbyists seeking to shut the project down. The start-up cost argument used by the anti-nuclear people isn't a bad one, but it's one they have created all by themselves and which would in part go away if they would just not do any lobbying work.

The mass implementation of nuclear energy would come with many green benefits. The fact that nuclear power plants require little space means that they can be built nearly anywhere that a traditional fossil fuel plant can. They are not nearly as intrusive as hydroelectric dams are in that they do not force entire cities to vacate or face being washed away. Nuclear energy is extremely efficient; one kilogram of uranium could provide the same amount of energy that two-hundred barrels of oil can. Combine that with the fact that nuclear energy emits relatively little Carbon dioxide and we would all be well on our way to a greener world.

All very good points. Far as I know, our "Cute Brother" Sweden has only a few plants, but these few plants cover a large part of its energy needs. I don't know how many wind turbines and solar panels you would have to erect to generate the same amount of electricity, but it would be a lot, and the construction, maintenance and demolishing (wind turbines last only 40 years, shorter than a nuclear plant) would probably be just as harmful to nature as that of a nuclear plant. Consider all the CO2 ships emit when they service offshore wind turbines.

Compared to other energy sources nuclear energy is safe. There have been only two major accidents in 12,700 cumulative reactor-years of commercial operation in 32 countries. In a thirty-two year period, stretching from 1970 to 1992 there were only thirty-one deaths directly related to nuclear energy production. The next lowest was natural gas with 1200 fatalities. Coming in third was hydroelectric with a staggering 4,000 fatalities. Finally, coming in last with an inexcusable with 6,400 hundred casualties was coal-produced energy.

Not to mention all the people who indirectly from coal plants -- inhaling large quantities of smog isn't good for you.

I feel you should address Chernobyl specifically, too, since it's brought up by so many people. Point out how it had an archaic safety system and melted down because the workers shut her cooling system down as part of a ridiculously stupid and dangerous experiment to test the safety systems (). You could contrast this with Three Mile Island, a plant that suffered a coolant leak (I think) and demonstrated nuclear power's safety systems perfectly. Zero deaths, zero cases of illness.

You could also point out that it is only a small fraction of the waste fuel that is the truly dangerous kind that has to be stored for thousands of years, and power plants produce less and less of this kind of waste.

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