When scientists debate over nuclear energy, the radioactive waste plays an important role on both sides of the argument. Many say nuclear waste is in no way disposable. However what they might be overseeing is all the new studies on the subject. Aside from finding a safe place to dispose this radioactive mass, chemists believe by speeding up the decay of the atoms the problem will be solved. Since low level nuclear waste decays in "10-50 years", the high level nuclear waste is of most concern at 10000 years.
(2) And in the case of high level nuclear waste, with a few more years of extensive study, scientist will be able to turn the uranium into rapidly decaying isotopes which "could reduce the half life to only a minuscule fraction of the original radioactivity"
.
Furthermore, nuclear energy is both efficient and economic solution to energy shortages. In today's nuclear plants, the thermal efficiency (amount of work done off of heat/the amount of heat provided) is 35% which is nearly identical to that of a coal plant. But the nuclear plant creates 17MBTU(1) of energy from just one uranium pellet. (An equivalent of 1780lbs of coal!) With uranium costs at $100/kg coal prices appear quite expensive. With the crashing economies of the world nuclear energy could be the end of budget deficits and lack of energy sources.
(2) http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy99/phy99315.htm
More information: http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/where-is-coal-found/
Pictures:
http://amarillolocalnews.com/nuclear-waste http://blogspot.com/nuclearwaste http://corereaction.org/images/
I agree, everyone starts to think about the natural order of things and forget about the economic upside in building a nuclear power plant.
ReplyDeleteThanks, the economic advantages of nuclear energy are definitely noteworthy.
ReplyDelete