Nuclear fission chernobyl9/28/2023 ![]() Many of these communities suffer from birth defects, cancer, immune deficiencies, and other diseases as a result of contamination from uranium and its byproducts. In the United States and in most other parts of the world, uranium mines, mills, and enrichment plants are disproportionately located in indigenous peoples’ territories and communities of color. Most of this waste is in the form of rocks, dust, and uranium mill tailings that are primarily dumped on the ground or in ponds located at or near mines and mills. ![]() Uranium mining requires a lot of fossil fuels in order to extract uranium and process it.įor every pound of “enriched” uranium that goes into a nuclear reactor, there are, on average, over 5,000 pounds of radioactive waste is produced in the mining and processing of uranium. The mining of uranium is an extremely dirty process that isn’t immediately apparent when people think about nuclear power. Nuclear waste, also known as irradiated fuel, as produced by power plants, is only one piece of a very large chain of radioactive waste that nuclear power relies upon. Nuclear energy impacts the environment in a lot of ways. How does nuclear energy impact the environment? There are proposals by the nuclear industry and the federal government to create, essentially, parking lots for nuclear waste (“ Centralized Interim Storage” sites) in Texas, New Mexico, and possibly other locations where it would sit outside, in the same type of storage currently in use at most reactor sites, for undetermined periods of time awaiting an environmentally responsible solution that doesn’t yet exist. We take issue with both the security and the safety of nuclear waste’s location on reactor sites. As nuclear reactors in the United States have been running since 1942, waste has been piling up at nuclear facilities awaiting the government to find an environmental solution for it. ![]() There is no way to dispose of it in an environmentally safe or responsible way. Radioactive materials in the waste remain a threat to health, water, and the environment for over one-million years.Ĭurrently, there is no solution for radioactive waste. The used fuel remains extremely hot for hundreds of years. The splitting of atoms creates even more radioactive byproducts, but it is not consumed the way coal or natural gas do. But when it is removed to put in fresh fuel, the fuel rods are 100 million times more radioactive than before undergoing fission in the reactor. The nuclear waste has the same volume and mass when it comes out of the reactors as the nuclear fuel that went in several years earlier. When you put nuclear fuel into a reactor, that fuel doesn’t get “used up” in the same way as burning fossil fuel. Nuclear power plants produce vast amounts of radioactivity in nuclear waste, some of which is in the form of used fuel, which isn’t consumed in the way that one imagines burning fossil fuels. The biggest issues right now are radioactive waste and pollution, nuclear safety, environmental justice, and the costs of nuclear energy. What are the most contentious issues surrounding nuclear energy? Our position is that nuclear power should be phased out as quickly as possible and that the federal government should create energy policies that enable the transition to an energy system that i powered by 100% renewable energy-solar, wind, small hydropower, geothermal-and energy efficiency. What is NIRS’s position on nuclear power? For instance in Maryland, there are two nuclear reactors, located at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, and there are currently 93 reactors operating around the country. It accounts for fewer than 20% of our electricity supply in the United States and about 8% of our total energy consumption in the entire country if you consider transportation, heating, etc. Nuclear energy is used in about 30 states in the United States and in about as many countries around the world. The heat from that nuclear chain reaction, or fission (splitting of atoms), boils the water. Nuclear power makes electricity in exactly the same way as coal, natural gas, or oil except a nuclear chain reaction is used to create heat, instead of burning fossil fuel. The high pressure of the boiled water (steam) or gases is used to turn an electric turbine that generates electricity. Oil, coal, or natural gas is burned to boil water or to make hot gases. All of these power sources are referred to as “thermal” power sources. Generation of electricity from nuclear power is fundamentally similar to other kinds of traditional power generation like coal, natural gas, and oil. How is nuclear energy created? How does it work?
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