The Promise of Nuclear Energy

In the ongoing discourse on energy sources and their environmental, economic and social implications, the role of nuclear power is emerging as a complex issue, according to Yale University Professor John F. Kennedy. Drawing on insights from human ecological risk assessments alongside the views of experts such as Richard Rhodes, this discussion emphasizes the reliability of nuclear energy relative to other forms of energy. To elaborate, we must delve into things like enablers, emphasizing how nuclear power plants continue to operate. In addition, the sustainable economic impact of fossil fuels, particularly coal and oil, is examined, emphasizing the high costs associated with their development and maintenance. The looming specter of global warming and its economic burden, and well as staggering annual costs of fossil fuel use , as reported by the International Monetary Fund, these far-reaching projections accelerate calls for nuclear energy reform and create profit-seeking, challenges, and delves into its important possibilities in a sustainable energy future.

According to the Human and Ecological Risk Assessment that oil, coal, hydroelectric, and petroleum have the highest risk of disaster. They also cost substantially more than nuclear power plants. Also, Dr. Richard Rhodes, a professor at Yale University, says nuclear power plants operate at much higher capacity factors than renewable energy sources or fossil fuels. Capacity factor is a measure of what percentage of the time a power plant actually produces energy. It’s a problem for all intermittent energy sources. In the United States in 2016, nuclear power plants, which generated almost 20 percent of U.S. electricity, had an average capacity factor of 92.3 percent, meaning they operated at full power on 336 out of 365 days per year. (The other 29 days they were taken off the grid for maintenance.) In contrast, U.S. hydroelectric systems delivered power 38.2 percent of the time (138 days per year), wind turbines 34.5 percent of the time (127 days per year) and solar electricity arrays only 25.1 percent of the time (92 days per year). Even plants powered with coal or natural gas only generate electricity about half the time for reasons such as fuel costs and seasonal and nocturnal variations in demand. Nuclear is a clear winner of reliability. Third, nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source. This statement will seem paradoxical to many readers since it’s not commonly known that non-nuclear energy sources release any radiation into the environment. They do. The worst offender is coal, a mineral of the earth’s crust that contains a substantial volume of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. Burning coal gasifies its organic materials, concentrating its mineral components into the remaining waste, called fly ash. So much coal is burned in the world and so much fly ash produced that coal is actually the major source of radioactive releases into the environment.

To add coal and oil cost a lot of money. To develop, According to the Center of Sustainable systems of the University of Michigan, the US spends over 1.1 trillion (5.3 trillion globally) on coal plants and natural gases both of which release carbon emissions and gases. So we could drastically slow down global warming by getting rid of these and completely switching to nuclear energy. Plus we would save potential trillions of dollars. Also, According to Duke Energy, coal power plants cost is reached per kilowatt. So in some cases, the cost can reach highs of 3 billion dollars per plant. That is the cost to build the plant then you have to spend billions of dollars running and supplying these plants. This is our main source of energy. The costs will continue to skyrocket as the national debt will rise faster. The national debt is higher than our GDP. We will not be able to pay it off as the debt gets worse every year. As our growing population increases energy usage will rise to need more plants and then further raising our costs. Even in the worst-case scenario, these costs may hurt America, but you can’t put a price on the climate. Global warming will destroy the earth by 2050.

Furthermore, A new report from the International Monetary Fund says global use of fossil fuels costs taxpayers and consumers $5.3 trillion a year. The report comes amid a rising call for companies and pension funds to divest themselves of fossil fuels. On Friday, Norway's Parliament declared it would begin divesting the nation's $890 billion pension fund from coal. The IMF report calls this huge figure a “subsidy,” a term some economists take issue with. A subsidy typically refers to direct financial governmental support or specific policies, like tax breaks, that underwrite the production and consumption of a certain product — in this case, fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and gas. But the IMF report looked at the overall benefits and harms of fossil fuel use, factors that economists typically put into a separate category called "externalities," and classified these, too, as subsidies. These include such things as increased economic activity, damage to public health and the environment, and the amount of money unavailable for investment in other community goods due to hidden costs. “A number of people will argue maybe we should not add these things up,” says David Coady, a division chief at the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF and one of the authors of the report. “But from an economic perspective, we say, conceptually, the true cost is the true cost. The reason we don't face the true cost is there's no market for these damages.” The main focus of the report, Coady says, is to compare the cost that people pay for fossil fuel-based energy to the cost that they would pay if they calculated the true cost of the damage done by their consumption — for example, the local damages related to having particles in the air, breathing problems, health-related problems that are believed to increase the mortality rate or just lower quality of life.