Climatic Change and Nuclear Energy (Essay Sample)

Climatic Change and Nuclear Power
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Introduction
The global demand for energy has exceeded the available energy resources thus leading to energy poverty around the world. High costs of energy required to run almost all the modern production systems has amounted to high costs of goods and services around the world. The world has for a long time relied on petroleum sources such as diesel ran generators and electricity sources that have led to high levels of greenhouse gas emissions around the world. The greenhouse gas emission consequently led to global warming that has resulted in climatic change. Global warming is a serious threat to global stability as it affects food production patterns and also constitutes to disasters such as the Tsunamis due to rising water levels in the oceans (Black & Weisel, 2010). From this; it can be observed, the extent to which energy plays a vital role in world economy. There is need for a stable source of energy that does not emit greenhouse gases. Nuclear power can be an alternative source of energy as it produces minimal amounts of greenhouse gases as and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and thus reduced global warming.
Limits to nuclear energy production
Nuclear power plants have been in existence for decades now and they have helped substitute energy sources. Nuclear power is yet to be fully exploited as the nuclear power plants are found in the developed countries like the US and Japan. The nuclear plants requires highly trained and experienced people to ran due to the sensitive nature of the nuclear plants that are highly susceptible to accidents such as nuclear melt downs. It is also expensive set up a nuclear plant due to the cost of technology and equipment required to run a plant making it arguably the most expensive source of energy; other sources of energy are cheaper and thus more popular around the world. Nuclear power plants also require large spaces to set up; as the radioactive materials used in the plants are considered harmful to human, animal and plant life. This means that human settlement around the nuclear power plants is discouraged and thus a lot of space may be left unused around the nuclear power plants. The nuclear power plants produce radioactive waste materials that have to be buried deep to the ground since they take ages to decompose and are harmful to plants and animals. This increases the risk of underground water contamination which may find its way to the people through boreholes; it also risks exposure through natural calamities such as earthquakes and active volcanoes. Nuclear weapons are a concern to the world due to the volatile nature of the world and fears of countries using nuclear weapons against each other are eminent. This creates a problem for nuclear power plants as the exploration of nuclear power has been used as a disguise to produce and explore on nuclear weapons.
Nuclear plant disasters
Nuclear power plants not been without disasters, some of the disasters include Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents. This are events that turned to be catastrophic after nuclear meltdowns occurred which led to contaminations and loss of life. The Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan occurred on 11th March 2011. This was largely blamed on a Tsunami and that damaged equipment and leading to coolant failure which constituted to a nuclear meltdown in one some of the reactors (Kuo, 2014). When the Tsunami hit Fukushima, there was loss of power in the plant and thus diesel generators automatically went on to run the coolants. The positioning of the generators in the lower sides of the power plant proved to be catastrophic as the water would settle on the lower sides. The Tsunami was reported to have 13 meters long waves that overrode the plant’s 10 meters perimeter wall and hit the generators leading to failure (Kuo, 2014). The diesel generator failure left the plant no power run coolants and thus the nuclear reactors meltdown releasing nuclear particles and materials into the atmosphere and surrounding environments. The Fukushima was among the worst nuclear disasters in the world and was rated 7 out of 7 on the international nuclear plant scale (Kuo, 2014). In US such a nuclear meltdown occurred on March 28th 1979 in the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. This is reportedly the worst nuclear accident in the US up to date (Moss, 1981). One of the two reactors in the Three Mile Island nuclear plant melted as a result of system failure, the secondary non- nuclear system failed and consequently affected one of the nuclear reactors in the plant (Moss, 1981). It was reported that the secondary system was computerized and the technicians on site were not able to effectively read the system and thus they overlooked a tear on the system. This went on burst a relief valve that allowed a lot of nuclear reactor coolant to escape. The loss of the coolant consequently led to a reactor meltdown and thus the disaster that was rated 4 out of 7 in the international nuclear plant event (Moss, 1981).
Another significant nuclear disaster was the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine in the former Soviet Union on 26th April 1986. The accident occurred during a system test when a power surge led to the rapturing of a nuclear vessel (Ingram, 2005). The power surge was unexpected and the fact that part of the plant had been shut down for the test meant that the surge hit only the active reactors at the time and thus the high impact. The reactor vessel raptured and consequently exposed the graphite moderator to air and it ignited causing the explosion (Ingram, 2005). The explosion resulted to a fire and released large quantities of radioactive particles to the atmosphere that spread to parts of the larger Soviet Union and Europe. The accident is rated as the worst nuclear accident in the world in terms of cost and casualties; more than 20 people lost their lives upon the explosion in the plant and up to 18 billion dollars has been spent up to date in the clean-up process (Ingram, 2005). Thousands of people had to relocate a result of the explosion whereas others suffered with health issues such as cancer as a result of the nuclear explosion. Investigations as to the effects of the Chernobyl accident are still on going as more people continue to suffer with the side effects up to date; governments are still spending money to clean-up the affected areas from time to time (Ingram, 2005).
Lessons learnt from the disasters
The three nuclear accidents provide us with examples of how disastrous nuclear plants can be as we seek to have them adopted globally as energy sources. They are susceptible to accidents that may arise from inadequate training of staff such as the Three Mile Island accident that happened as a result of human error due to lack proper understanding of the computerized system. The nuclear plants are also susceptible to natural disasters such as Tsunami that led to the Fukushima accident as well as technical failures such as the power surge that amounted to the Chernobyl accident. This shows that nuclear plants are indeed perilous and the world needs to take caution as we turn to nuclear energy. The world has however learnt from these accidents and preventive measures have been instilled from various researches. The world is thus ready to exploit nuclear energy at a large scale with the adoption of modern day technology and preventive measures brought forward.
Significance of focusing on nuclear energy
The importance of deriving power from nuclear energy revolves around the following factors, some that have been sensitized by the international atomic energy commission. One of the factors is the collective awareness of the energy deficient around the world, it is estimated that close to 3 billion people on the world lack adequate supply of energy which constitutes to a 75% need for energy growth in the world (Crawley, 2013). The common and convectional sources of energy currently exploited are not sufficient to meet this demand and thus we need to turn to Nuclear energy which provides a huge potential of energy production. Nuclear energy sources will be in line with the required sweeping policies that aim at recusing the amount of greenhouse gas and carbon-dioxide emissions. It is estimated that the current energy demand around the world constitutes to 96% of greenhouse and carbon-dioxide emissions by the year 2040 in the world if we continue to exploit the current sources of energy (Newton, 2012). This estimation further emphasizes on the importance of exploring nuclear energy at a large scale. Another factor is that nuclear power is among the available energy sources that can be able to sustain the climatic change. This is because the climatic change requires less greenhouse gasses emission and the nuclear plants release minimal greenhouse gases as well as carbon dioxide. The waste from the nuclear plant is manageable through the preventive measures provided and thus we have minimized environmental effects from the exploitation of nuclear power (Crawley, 2013). Nuclear power can thus be used to complement the other available sources of energy with minimal environmental effects such as wind energy and hydro energy.
Nuclear power can also help solve both the climatic and the non-climatic environmental concerns around the world. There is increased volatility in fossil fuels that demands for alternative sources of energy in the future. Oil mines are slowly drying and we need to come up with measures to ensure that we balance the energy sources. If we continue relying on oil mines, we will have exploited more than 90% of all the oil mines in the word in the next 50 years leaving the future generations with no oil (Newton, 2012). The need to complement oil based sources of energy suc...