The Drawbacks of Using Nuclear Energy

Many people know resource scarcity is a major problem we are facing today. According to the statistic, the world energy demand is projected to grow by 50% by 2030. The main question and debate is whether nuclear energy should be included as a major component of 21st century plans to combat global warming and to help us meet the growing energy demand?

Nuclear energy is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity by uranium. There are now over 440 commercial nuclear power reactors operating in 30 countries. France and Japan together account for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity. Nevertheless, there are many countries where still remain opposed to nuclear energy such as Australia, Denmark and Italy. In fact, nuclear energy is the source with many further problems such as the nuclear waste storage problem, the security of the nuclear plants and the supply of uranium.

Many people say that nuclear energy is a clean energy and emits relatively low amounts of carbon dioxide that has relatively little influence on global warming. However, they ignore the fact that nuclear energy will produce lots of radioactive waste which is still an unsolved problem. There is no complete reliable way to store radioactive materials. The radioactive waste is extremely dangerous to human health and remains for several thousand years. Whenever nuclear waste is buried, risks are created for future generations. Moreover, digging massive holes in mountains, transporting nuclear waste to these designated waste areas, and monitoring the waste areas for radiation leakages all cost significantly.

On the other hand, the truth is there are many nuclear plants in the world; most of them are in good safety record and being upgraded regularly. However, it is technically impossible to build a plant with 100% security. A small probability of failure will always last. For example, the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on April 26, 1986. It exhibited the failure of government planners, and an inherent danger of nuclear power. Some people may argue that the technology has been improved so as to the safety and security of the nuclear plants has been improved as well. However, despite a generally high security standard, accidents can still happen. Let look into a more recent case, the failure of cooling systems of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 is the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl. 140,000 residents within 20 km of the plant were evacuated. The total amount of radioactive material released is unclear, as the crisis is ongoing.Thus, the consequences of an accident would be absolutely devastating both for human being as for the nature. This disaster prompted a rethink of nuclear energy policy in many countries, such as Germany. The government of Germany has decided to abandon nuclear energy and take all nuclear reactors offline by 2022.

Some people may think that nuclear energy is an effective and efficient way to generate electricity because it can generate a high amount of electrical energy in one single plant. However, Uranium is also a scarce resource. Its supply is estimated to last only for the next 30 to 60 years depending on the actual demand. In fact, fossil fuel associates with Uranium mining and enrichment process also produce carbon dioxide that accelerate global warming. Apart from nuclear energy, there are more environmentally friendly methods to generate electricity, such as solar, wind, tidal and wave energy.

In a nutshell, if people want to reduce global warming and energy instability, nuclear energy might not be a good way as there are substantial drawbacks of the nuclear energy generation, such as the nuclear waste storage problem, the security of the nuclear plants and the supply of uranium. As there are many other environmentally friendly methods for supplying energy, nuclear energy is not the only way to solve the problem of resource scarcity.