Nuclear Energy And Producing Electrical Energy

As the need for electricity increases through time, it’s important to find options for future complications. Nuclear power has both negative and positive attributes in producing electrical energy. Despite the negative, I believe it’s a good choice to make for when we can no longer depend on other sources such as natural gas because it is cheaper and more “green”. Of course, there are other sources that could also be considered such as wind power, solar power, or coal. In my opinion, these are not as superior as nuclear power for several reasons.

As global warming becomes a bigger concern, options such as natural gas and coal are eliminated because of environmental hazards. This leaves wind power, solar power, and nuclear power. Wind power and solar power are not bad options. In fact, they are probably the smartest and most “green” inventions for producing electricity. Like most things, however, they have a few flaws. For example, in a CNBC news article, “Primer: Nuclear Power” it stated that wind power and solar power produces the least amount of energy for the highest price.

Another article, “Nuclear Power is Nuclear” said wind power is not only expensive but also dangerous to birds. The article said a proximately 75,000- 250,000 birds die each year by crashing into the spinning generator! With knowing that both wind power and solar power are cost-defective and knowing that coal and natural gas is harmful to the environment, what makes nuclear energy so great? Well, from an economic standpoint, nuclear energy is the cheapest to produce and produces the most.

Nuclear plants now produce electricity for 1. 76 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to 2. 47 cents for coal or 6. 78 cents for natural gas. ” (Primer: Nuclear Power). As for the environment and people, it is a very safe process (in most cases) and does not produce global warming. Some people, like me, might have corresponded nuclear weapons to nuclear energy, which might have put you to look at nuclear energy from a negative perspective. But knowing and understanding how it works, shows that it is safer then you may expect.

However, if an accident would occur it wouldn’t be very good because of radiation poisoning that could spread and can cause a lot of cancers and other defects and diseases. Although the chances of this happening are very small and hopefully through time safety will progress. With these facts and statistics, nuclear power shows a cleaner and cheaper way for producing electricity in the future. With nuclear energy only being 20% of our power, hopefully nuclear plants would increase as well as their safety.