Nuclear power greener/A Critique of Nuclear power the problems

(Review Paper) Cited in Nuclear power greener/A Critique of Nuclear power the problems

Nuclear Power Would Not Stop Climate Change

An analysis of the possible repercussions concerning the government's decision to build a new plant is outlined. The areas discussed are: climate change, energy, security, radioactive waste, terrorism, safety, reprocessing and nuclear proliferation and costs of building the plant.

New nuclear power stations would not stop climate change. With only 10 proposed reactors by 2024, there would only be a 4% decrease in carbon emissions which as this article states, far too little, far too late.

If we were to build ten new reactors the amount of highly radioactive waste would triple. There is still no safe disposal method for radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for up to a million years, and improper disposal can lead to contaminated water supplies.

Methods

There has been a strong financial analysis of the growth of the nuclear power industry. The analysis includes the amount of money that was used to create the nuclear power plant infrastructure and the amount of time spent on building it. They also investigated the disposal method of the nuclear power plants waste and the negative effects on the environment where greater then other forms of energy. This was then bench marked on the amount of renewable resources that cannot be developed due to the investment in nuclear power. .

Results

This article discusses that building nuclear plants can have negative results on the environment. Not only will it costly (upwards of 200 billion Euro’s), it also increases the changes of terrorist attacks, it is dangerous to dispose of, and the effects of climate change are very insignificant. In addition, the proposed new infrastructure of 10 new reactors is not only costly, but it also takes a long time to complete therefore rendering the development inefficient. The energy supply that the nuclear reactor produces does not assist with the growing need for hot water and central heating. Nuclear power only produces electricity which limits the use of the product. .