Question

Which of the following is not a potential benefit of using more nuclear energy?

A. Proper control can ensure safe handling
B. The plant could melt down
C. Very little air pollution
D. Cost of fuel is very low

Answer 1

Short Answer:
Advantages:

High energy density. Much more energy results from a small piece of fuel.
Environment. No carbon dioxide emissions causing global warming (unlike fossil fuels). All waste (under under the vast majority of circumstances) is contained and removed from the environment.
A long fuel cycle. Military cores last 30 years before needing to be refueled. Civilian cores require refueling every 18-24 months.



Disadvantages:

The problem of how to transport and store the dangerous radioactive waste safely.
The risks of a dangerous accident or terrorist attack at the nuclear power plant.
The safety risks in mining and transporting the radioactive fuel.
The risks of theft of material, possibly for a nuclear bomb.
Very expensive to build. It can take many years to create a nuclear plant.



A Long Answer

Advantages:


Nuclear power produces fewer carbon emissions than most other
traditional energy sources. The production of energy does not come from burning molecules but from splitting atoms.

Nuclear plants provide baseload power. Under normal operation the plant produces power at a constant rate. Each reactor core typically provides 800-1200MW of power. Many sites have more than one reactor.

Nuclear power plants don't require a lot of space. As the reactor cores are very energy dense.

Nuclear plants do not produce smoke particles to pollute the atmosphere.

Nuclear energy is by far the most concentrated form of energy; a lot of energy is produced from a small mass of fuel.

The fission products (aka nuclear waste) created during a normal fuel cycle make up <10% of the mass of the fuel rods, 90% or more of it remaining 'fertile material'. This means that it is capable of producing fission events (aka making power). Newer core designs utilize this unused material, relieving transportation and mining concerns. However, it is currently cheaper to mine Uranium and the spent fuel rods currently requires offsite refinement.
Newer designs refine the fuel in-line with the power production core. This will greatly reduce the volume of waste and greatly increase the amount of power generated by mass.

Nuclear power produces a small volume of hazardous waste products per unit of energy created. Currently this waste is being held on-site in spent fuel pools.

The number of accident-free hours per Terrawatt/hour of energy produced is the highest of any known power source.

New reactor types have been designed to make it physically impossible to melt down. As the core gets hotter the reaction gets slower, hence a run-away reaction leading to a melt-down is not possible.

Radiation is easy to detect in very very small amounts. The same cannot be said for coal-ash pollutants such as mercury or arsenic. This means that leaks can be detected early on to minimize release of radioactive materials.

Disadvantages:

There is the possibility of environmental contamination for a variety of reasons. One is human malfeasance, such as happened at Chernobyl. Another is because radioactive metals cause pipes, vessels, and so on to weaken and eventually crack, potentially spilling radioactive materials into the environment.
There have been radiation leaks due, such as unanticipated natural conditions, such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011. The

The economic and environmental costs of catastrophic accident are overwhelming. The economic cost of the Chernobyl Disaster has been estimated as high as a trillion 1995 US dollars. The amount of land rendered unusable for at least several years was about a quarter of the size of New England. The area where there were agricultural losses of one sort or another was about an eighth of the size of the United States. The area left permanently uninhabitable was many square miles. Recent trips to the chernobyl exclusion zone has seen dramatic increases in local wildlife. Yet these species are hypothesized to have shorter life spans than normal populations.

Nuclear plants cannot be sited just anywhere. They must be sited where there are sufficient heat sinks. This means they must be sited where there is a lot of water, such as at a lake, river, or ocean. This, in turn, means that any radioactive materials that are released into the environment are dispersed into the water table. The plants, can also be subject to floods. The waste storage at some sites is only 3 inches above the 500 year flood level, and coastal plants could be subject to damage from tsunamis.

It is impossible for the private insurance industry to cover the cost of a catastrophic event at a nuclear site, so the risk is typically covered by governments, with some countries even owning the companies that run the plants.

Nuclear plants are very costly, so governments that want nuclear plants have to subsidize them by loans or direct payment. This means that reactors must be run longer, spanning multiple decades, raising concerns over maintenance and reliability.

Owners of nuclear plants cannot afford to dispose of the high level waste. It currently resides at the plant site. To date, there is no long term waste disposal program. Yucca mountain was projected to serve as a long term burial site. However, due to political infighting the site was delayed for decades and recently (2014) the plan was scrapped altogether.

The low level waste will be dangerous for over a million years. The time it takes for the waste to be reduced to the radioactivity of uranium ore (which is also toxic) is approximately six million years. This is a large multiple of the length of human history, and we do not know how to secure it for anything like that length of time. However, newer designs can use all of this low level waste as fuel leaving only the high level waste.

The high level waste is dangerous and can stay very radioactive for approximately 300-400 years before returning to normal background levels.

The cost of decommissioning a nuclear plant is enormous. The equipment is often not included as nuclear waste, but it has since become brittle and radioactive. It too must be considered nuclear waste.

Nuclear plants are significantly more expensive to build and maintain.

Proliferation concerns - breeder reactors are able to enrich uranium and produce plutonium. Both could potentially be stolen and turned into an atomic weapon.

There is presently no adequate safe long-term storage for radioactive and chemical waste produced from early reactors, such as those in Hanford, Washington, some of which will need to be safely sealed and stored for thousands of years. These designated 'super-fund' sites are maintained at the taxpayer's expense 'forever'.

Recently, for instance, underground contamination emanating from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State in the U.S. was discovered and threatens to contaminate the Columbia River (the largest river in North America west of the continental divide).

A lot of waste from early reactors was stored in containers meant for only a few decades, but is well past expiration with some resultant leaks furthering contamination.

There exist safety concerns if the plant is not operated correctly or conditions arise that were unforeseen when the plant was developed, as happened at the Fukishima plant in Japan; the core melted down following an earthquake and tsunami the plant was not designed to handle despite the world's strongest earthquake codes. Corporate failure to build a flood-wall higher than historical records for the tsunami lead to the disabling of the generators which in turn lead to the meltdown.

Many plants, including in the U.S., were designed with the assumption that "rare" events never actually occur, such as strong earthquakes on the east coast (the New Madrid quakes of the 1800s were much stronger than any east coast earthquake codes for nuclear reactors; a repeat of the New Madrid quakes would exceed the designed earthquake resiliency for nuclear reactors over a huge area), Atlantic tsunami (such as the 1755 Lisbon quake event, which sent significant tsunami that caused damage from Europe to the Caribbean) and strong hurricanes which could affect areas such as New York that are unaccustomed to them (rare, but possibly more likely with global warming). Making existing plants more durable adds huge cost to the lifetime operation of the plant.

Answer 2

B. A meltdown is NEVER a good thing.