Nuclear energy

Nuclear energy is the energy holds the nucleus in atoms together and once that energie is released by a process called nuclear fission, it can be used for electricity. Most used fuel for nuclear fission process is Uranium Uranium is most used for this process because the nucleus of the uranium atoms split relatively easily and is very common to find in rocks all over the world. However the isotope of uranium that is used to create nuclear energy is isotope U-235. This isotope is part of less than 1% of all the uranium atoms. Because of this a lot of countrys like the US have to import Uranium with this isotope eventhough they mine a lott of uranium themselves --> Transport of Uranium Uranium must be processed to be used for generating nuclear energy.

Is Nuclear energy green?

The pollutant of nuclear energy is radioactive energy and compared to other pollutants, radiacioactive material is easy to measured and therefor it is easy to test if something is contaminated compared to other pollutants that are also very dangerous.

Nuclear power does not directly produce carbon dioxide. The materials and construction does release carbon dioxide into the environment however so does almost everything. Building the power plants and mining the uranium and transporting it does release carbon dioxide. However after that the making of nuclear energy does not produce any carbon dioxide. There is a LCA calculation on different types of energy which include the construction.The type of energies are compaired in Minimum/Median/Maximum of carbon dioxide per KWh. Coal, natural gass and biomass score the highest and then solar energy scored the highest. Nuclear energy and wind enegry scored almost the same when it comes to minimum and mediam however, when it comes to maximum nuclear energy scored almost twice as high as wind energy. Therefor nuclear energy is agreen option but wind energy would be the greenest energie of all.

Uncertainty in nuclear energy

Because the isotope that is needed for nuclear energy is not very common on earth so we will so we will run out of very fast and therefor it is not a long term sollution to generate energy. Research showed that nuclear power would avoid at most annually 2-3% of total global GHG emission in years 2020-2040 so nuclear energy would not make that much of impact on making the energy industry. Nuclear energy is aslo a very expensive type of energy compared to the other types of energy and it will only become more expensive over time because uranium is a non renewable source. Economically Nuclear energy would not be a good option. Beside the economic and evironmental reasons why nuclear energy would not be the best main energy source there are also social reasons because of the fear many people have to live close to a nuclear energy plant however the amount of deaths of nuclear energy per TWh is 0.074 en for Natural gas is 2.821 and coal is 28.67. There are even estimations that fossil fuel is responsible for one million deaths per year and coal plants have sometimes an even higher raidactivity than nuclear power plants. Though the fear is invalid it still influence political choices.