First I will talk about basic chemistry so that everybody can have an understanding about nuclear energy, nuclear energy is usually produced by either one of two ways, the first way is called fission which occurs when the nuclei splits into several parts which results in the releasing of nuclear energy, the second way is quite the opposite of the first one, which is by fusion which occurs when the nuclei of different atoms fuse together. keep in mind that fusion generates and produce more nuclear energy than fission.
Fission unlike fusion does generate a lot of harmful radioactive energy when occurring, while fusion on the other hand, even though it generates a lot of nuclear energy, it doesn’t create or produce harmful radioactive energy.
Advantages of nuclear energy:
I would say that the main advantage and the main benefit of using nuclear energy is that it’s a clean energy source, it doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases and its considered to be one of the weapons to be used against climate change. When comparing with other energy sources for example fossil fuels, its considered much safer from a health perspective. It also produces and create a lot of job opportunities in this industry. More over its relatively cheap to produce energy and it has a low operating cost, it’s also more reliable than other power generation sources, for example wind and solar energy need the sun and wind to be operating, nuclear energy can be generated anytime during the day, so you won’t experience delays or any issues regarding generating energy. It also can play a huge factor in the development of technology Nuclear can be used in many ways as shown in the figure below:
Disadvantages of nuclear energy: Even though nuclear energy has numerous advantages, it also has its list of disadvantages, first of all when using nuclear energy, it produces radioactive waste which hazardous, and which if not dealt with properly could cause some serious problems effecting the human health and environment, the radioactive waste created by the production of nuclear energy could stay around for thousands of years, so the main issue here is to how get rid of it? And how to store it?
The second disadvantage is that its water intensive, which means that the processes of generating nuclear energy requires alt of water, in current conditions when water is becoming scarce in some places and with the climate change that is happening this will be a huge problem to deal with.
More over even though nuclear energy has low operating cost, the initial cost/build up cost is very expensive and needs a lot of time, it usually takes 5 to 10 years according to researches to build a new nuclear plant. And it’s not a renewable energy source, this is because the fuel used in the production of nuclear energy (uranium) is a finite source of fuel and it will finish sooner or later.
Last but not least one of the main disadvantages of nuclear energy is the risk of nuclear accidents, an example of that is the Chernobyl accident, and the use of nuclear energy in the weapons industry and using it for war purposes, a- example we know all about is the accident that happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in japan.
Can we really use nuclear energy in technology development for the long term?
in my opinion, as concluded from the above, nuclear energy can be very helpful if used efficiently and if used for the correct purposes, however this needs a lot of work and lot of capital, it could be a great weapon in facing greenhouse gases and in facing the climate change that is occurring and rapidly increasing very year, but can we really depend on it for the future? I don’t think so, because as mentioned earlier nuclear energy depends on uranium and uranium is a non-renewable energy source. So unless we find another source of uranium, I don’t think we can depend of nuclear energy for a lot of time and for the long future.
Resources:
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-incredible-ways-nuclear-powers-our-lives
Very solid blog. Quite destroyed my utopian dreams haha