A Message In A Bottle · Page 30

Is using nuclear energy a good way to stop the earth getting warmer? (Climate change)

Here are 5 reasons why not:

1. The waste that is left over when they have finished making electricity has to be carefully stored as it remains dangerous for thousands of years. It takes huge amounts of energy to store this radioactive waste. No one knows where to put this waste as the containers will rust away long before the radioactive material which will then pollute the sea or ground where it has been stored. People have invented other uses for this waste or DEPLETED URANIUM such as making bombs; this leads to pollution in soils where the bombs are used (such as in the wars in Iraq and Kosovo) and many cases of radioactive poisoning have already been seen in children born in these places. It has been claimed by some scientists that it would be necessary to take 10 centimeters of soil off the whole land surface of these countries to make it possible to grow unpolluted crops for people there to eat. In the end it takes more energy to clean up the leftover radioactivity than can be produced by the nuclear reactors.
2. Nuclear energy is dangerous; so dangerous that insurance companies refuse to insure against its damage.
3. Uranium is a non-renewable resource which means that when humans have finished mining what is in the earth’s crust there is no more to be had. Some people think that there may be 30–60 years of this metal left if we continue to use it up at the speed we are doing at the moment. This may not seem like a long time but it’s long enough to do much damage to the environment we live in.
4. It takes almost twenty years and lots of resources to build a new nuclear energy plant; then it will work for another 20–30 years before it needs to be rebuilt for safety reasons.
5. Once a nuclear power plant is working it is very difficult to stop it; it requires huge amounts of energy to keep it cool and eventually to turn it off!!!