My Blog for Physics in Film

I believe nuclear power is the transition energy source we need. It is efficient and a much cleaner source of energy than coal and less environmentally changing than hydroelectric. Plus, we can essentially put one anywhere unlike wind and solar. All those other renewables are nice and should be used when appropriate; but it will be hard to satisfy our thirsty demands with just those.

I believe clean energy and energy dependence outweigh the waste and safety concerns. The waste problem is exaggerated be media and activists in my opinion. We can control the waste of nuclear power plants. With coal, we cannot. Plus, not everyone knows the full extent to how deadly the waste really is. Are they gamma, beta or alpha emitters ect… Plus most do not know how much we actually produce. When I did a project about this for a philosophy class, a statistic I read stated that all the waste we every produced in the US can fit in a football field if stacked 5 meters high. Furthermore, the possibility exists that we can refine the spent rods into new fuels or use them in breeder reactors (although I am not that familiar with that, but I am sure possibilities exist). Uranium is cheap right now so that really is not necessary at the moment. As for safety, the worse accident we have ever had in the US was Three Mile Island where it was relatively under control and there were no deaths that I know of. The accident of Chernobyl was partially due to bad design by the Russians (according to me HS history teacher), kind of like the poor engineering in K13. I think energy independence is worth it, plus we need something reliable to hold us over until we perfect something better and with zero bad waste, like fusion or something. Coal kills far more and damages nature far more than nuclear.

Nuclear weapons are a concern. Refining uranium is not that easy to do in your backyard though so I am are concerned with rogue nations or people who could manage to steal fissile material or existing warheads. The government should regulate it…successfully. Tactile weapons sound like a compromise to use nukes more conventionally. It is like the government is like a small child that just wants JUST ONE cookie before dinner.

Nuclear winter is always a possibility; there exist a relatively large number of nukes, enough to kill us all. However, no human wins if there are none left so I feel that we keep them around so no one uses them, mutually assured destruction. I also think we don’t know how many actually exist anymore since the cold war and the Soviet Union wasn’t probably paying super close attention when it was splitting and I am sure our government knows where every last one is. Banning nukes is one of those bans that have to be enforced to the very last. Just one left could spell destruction if the owner is less than friendly. In short, I feel nuclear holocaust would likely be caused more because of an accident, like a cowboy pilot of a plane that lost its radio riding a nuke as it plummets to Earth. On the bright side, the nuclear winter will cancel out global warming.