Japan's Situation

     As most of you know by now, an 8.9 magnitude earthquake cased a massive tsunami hit the island nation of Japan causing a major crisis in the northern half.  The earthquake hit the nation with such force that its nuclear power plants are on the verge of meltdown.  Due to the very dangerous bi-products that uranium gives off, areas around the nuclear plants have been evacuated in order to keep the public safe from the radiation.  Some products that come from nuclear plants include radioactive iodine, strontium, and cesium.  The human body reads radioactive iodine the same way that it would read regular iodine that is found in table salt throughout the United States; the iodine goes to the thyroid gland and prevents growths that occur on the neck called "goiers."  Radioactive iodine, however, causes thyroid cancer.  This, however, is kept away by taking potassium iodine capsules that prevents the radioactive iodine from entering the system; the excess iodine is simply flushed out of the body.  Strontium works in the same way that calcium does; it moves right to your bones.  The problem is that strontium, especially in the radioactive form, moves into the bones and causes leukemia.  This is solved by taking calcium tablets that would flush the strontium out of the system.  Cesium-137, the product that is now entering Japan's atmosphere along with radioactive iodine, effects the tissue and increases the risk of cancer.
     Although these products that are in Japan's atmosphere are causing huge problems, this is not something to let the public believe that nuclear power is all bad.  Think of where Japan is located; it is on a major fault line.  Although the power plants were made to be able to withstand an earthquake, no country is ever prepared for an earthquake of the magnitude that hit Japan.  This was an 8.9 magnitude earthquake on the Richter Scale; this was large enough to move the coast of Japan 8 inches and move the earth a few microseconds closed to the sun.  The buildings in Japan were, however, prepared for earthquakes, explaining the reason why the power plants were not destroyed.  This is also not any reason for the United States to give up on nuclear power movements.  Besides the west coast, there are no huge fault lines under the United States landmass.  The probability of an earthquake hitting somewhere along the east coast with such a magnitude as the one that hit Japan is low. 
     We should not let what happened in Japan deter us away from moving away from nuclear power.  Let us keep in mind that we are in an environmental and energy crisis.  We need a cleaner and more efficient form of energy that helps this country run.  Nuclear power produce no carbon dioxide or any other forms of greenhouse gases.  Yes, if a meltdown occurs then harmful bi-products can potentially enter the atmosphere, but this is only going to make people learn.  This will cause other countries to produce safer ways to get nuclear energy in order to make sure that events such as this will not happen.   

Nuclear Energy Worldwide

As I have said in recent blogs, the United States needs to realize that nuclear energy will help a country become self sufficient.  Take China for example; they are now becoming more self sufficient in the fuel cycle due to their rapid conversion to nuclear energy.  The recent conversion to nuclear power is due to their high population.  In 2006, China was much like the United States today having 80% of their energy come from fossil fuels.  Due to their high population and high energy demands, they have experienced power shortages have realized that they have too high air pollution.  The Chinese are now beginning to work towards more nuclear power plants and this is allowing them to have higher energy production.  France has also been a very large advocate of nuclear power.  The French's energy comes from about 3/4 nuclear power, far outreaching any other country.  USnews.com states that France is the "poster child" of nuclear energy, making them see an opportunity to build better generators in order to allow for better production of energy.  Japan comes in second with about 34% of their energy coming from nuclear power, being far out-passed by the French.  These are only three examples, but they make a clear idea that the United States needs to upgrade its output of nuclear energy.  All that is coming from these countries is good, less power shortages, more jobs, and healthier environments.  With the environmental that our country is seeing now, change is needed and should be embraced before it is too late.
http://www.usnews.com/news/energy/articles/2009/03/10/how-france-sees-its-nuclear-powered-future
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf63.html

So how much is this gonna cost me?

     As I have been advocating for the past couple of blogs, nuclear energy is affordable and cheaper than other forms of energy.  According to http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html, the amount that 1 kilogram of uranium in U.S. dollars is about $2555.  This may not make sense, but given that 1 Kg of uranium produces about 360,000 Kilowatt hours at about $0.71 an hour, not a bad deal.  Again, why nuclear power.  Well, about 1 Kg of uranium gives about 20,000 times more energy than the same amount of coal.  As the graph to the right shows, nuclear energy has always cost so little compared to all other forms of energy, which have all been on the rise.  It is also important to note that nuclear energy has always been at the lower points of graphs when it comes to fossil fuel emissions. 
     It is also possible that this cost could go down a bit.  If used nuclear fuel rods are recycled, then it is possible that we would be able to reuse these fuel rods, thus making more uranium available.  This would make some cost large, but would reduce costs in the long run because enrichment processes would not have to go again, because the uranium is already enriched and therefore ready to be used again.

Environmental Issues Right Now

     Going back to what I have been preaching in previous blogs, it is about time that we talk about the environment and what it is like right now.  No matter what other people may say about it, Global Warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it is going on right now and it is time for a change.  For the past 60 years, the atmosphere has had CO2 building up, and today we are looking at about 390 parts per million in our atmosphere.  That is to say that for every millionth of air in the atmosphere, 390 parts of that is CO2, not to mention other pollutants that are in the air along with CO2.  This in turn causes for higher temperatures and is heating up the planet.  In order for a healthy CO2 content in the atmosphere, we would want only about 350 ppm of CO2, the numbers back from 1990, 21 years ago.
     There is also the energy balance of the Earth that we must take into consideration.  Our planet takes in and also re-radiates the energy from the sun back out into space.  However, due to the Greenhouse effect that our planet has, more and more of this energy is being taken in instead of being either reflected or re-radiated.  If this radiation process works the correct way, then the Earth should only be at about -18 degrees Celsius, but in fact our planets heat is at about 15 degrees Celsius. (when i use these numbers, I am talking from 0 degrees Celsius being just the zero point for the temperature.  I am not implying that the Earth should be below the freezing point, just that the earth should be at about -18 degrees Celsius below the zero point for determining Global Warming.)
     So what does this have to do with nuclear energy?  Well, despite what people think, it is actually utilities from the production of electricity that produce the most CO2 (35% globally), not from automobiles.  As I have pointed out before, this country gets about 80% of its electricity from coal, which is the most pollutant causing form of energy.  Nuclear energy, the most efficient and clean form of energy (at the same time) only amounts for about 20% of the electricity that this country produces.  Again, if we reverse those numbers, the pollution in our atmosphere would drop immensely.  I would also like to point out that our country is also the largest producer of CO2 in the world. 
     As you can see, our planet is in great danger, despite what some politicians might say.  CO2 is rising and will only continue to rise at the pace that we are producing it at.  One way to bring down the production of CO2 would be to move out of our comfort zone of coal produced electricity to the more environmentally friendly nuclear energy that produces exponentially less pollutants than coal does.

What they say about Nuclear Energy

     Past blogs I have posted have been about how great nuclear power is and its benefits, but now it is time to see what other people have to say about nuclear power. Mr. Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth" does not believe nuclear energy is what the United States needs to climb out of the energy crisis we are facing. In an article he wrote on "commondreams.com" titled, "Nuclear Energy: Still a Bad Idea," he contends that "nuclear power plants are 50% more expensive than putting coal-fired power plants online, and they are far more expensive than new gas-fired power plants."  Rifkin is arguing that our country is already in a bad economic state and that building new nuclear power plants we will go deeper into debt.  However, what Rifkin fails to acknowledge is the amount of energy that nuclear energy can produce compared to coal.  Studies have shown that about one gram of uranium is equal to about one ton of coal; the amount of money of one gram of uranium compared to one ton of coal would save the United States thousands of dollars to save.  So yes, creating new nuclear power plants would be expensive, but in the long run, less money would be spent on obtaining uranium than obtaining coal.
     Rifkin also questions how nuclear waste and spent nuclear rods could safely be disposed of.  "60 years into the nuclear era, our scientists still don't know how to safely transport, dispose of or store nuclear waste. Spent nuclear rods are piling up all over the world."  Rifkin believes that even after all this time and research that today's scientists do not know how to safely dispose nuclear waste or what to do with the nuclear rods, since the half-life of uranium is such a long time.  Again, Rifkin does not realize that Congress actually passed a bill that allows nuclear plants to reuse nuclear rods and recycle uranium to be used again for power.  This in turn would allow for less nuclear waste to be produced and less nuclear rods to be "piling up," and only pumping out more energy for the country.
     One thing that Rifkin does support is the need for cleaner energy in this country.  "...we should pursue an aggressive effort to bring the full range of decentralized renewable technologies online: solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and biomass."  These forms of energy are all reusable resources of energy and pump out clean and efficient energy that powers the homes of Americans and also keeps our environment clean.  Although these means of energy help the environment and bring energy, Rifkin does not look into the reliability of these energy forms.  Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are all variable forms of energy, i.e., that they can change at any given moment.  Some days it is cloudy (less solar energy), days can be less windy than others (less wind energy), and flows of rivers are changing from fast to slow (less or more hydro).  These forms of energy can help the energy crisis, but they cannot but cannot be primary forms of energy, the energy for people would be too unreliable.  Rifkin also talks about how much these plants would cost for nuclear power.  The amount of turbines, solar panels, or windmills needed to create enough energy to supply the entire country would have to cost money and that is a very large amount of money. 
     Nuclear energy, although it does have some problems, is reliable, clean, and safe for the environment and the people who use it.  It allows for constant energy flow at an inexpensive rate and has become safer than ever.  People need to realize that nuclear power can and will help the United States out of this energy crisis and have surpluses of energy for generations to come.

Washington Post-Why Nuclear Energy Can Save the Environment

     Patrick Moore, author of the article below, helped found Greenpeace in the 1970s.  In the article, Mr. Moore begins to talk about how he was skeptical of nuclear energy due to "all the bad that can come from it."  He then states how nuclear energy can save the environment and is a controllable natural and reusable resource.  Yes, this article was written in 2006, but the point he is making here is that nuclear energy is not all about the bad myths that people are always concerned with.  For example:  Moore states the argument that nuclear energy is not safe.  He then goes into talking about how nuclear energy is a lot more safe than coal and how the two nuclear power plant disasters were not all that they were cracked up to be.  He states that coal mining attributes for about 5000 deaths every year and that all nuclear radiation deaths from mining uranium is a problem that has been long solved.  Moore states that Chernobyl was a disaster waiting to happen because the plant was a failure from the start and that "its operators literally blew it up."  He also makes the point that there are other means of fuel (car bombs that use diesel oil) to blow up and kill people.  Moore says that if people were to ban all means of  energy used to kill people "we would not have harnessed fire."  Moore makes the argument that nuclear energy does have its downsides, but its positives greatly outweigh the negatives and is a use of energy that all "responsible environmentalists should support a move in that (nuclear energy) direction."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209_2.html

Why I am interested in Nuclear Energy

I am a declared ISAT major, and one of the fields of interest I have been looking into is alternative forms of energy.  Let's be honest, this country and the world are in an energy crisis.  As the population goes up, the pollution caused by fossil fuels will go up along with the price of energy production.  I have been interested in wanting a new form of energy and that is why I am interested in nuclear energy.  I believe that nuclear energy is a safe and affordable form of energy that would help satisfy future energy needs and help bring down pollutants.  For those of you who do not know how nuclear fission works (the process by which nuclear energy is created), it basically has to do with taking a stray neutron being absorbed by Uranium 235, thereby creating unstable Uranium 236.  U236 will then split creating two new compounds (such as Krypton 92 and Beryllium 142) which then release two more neutrons.  As U236 splits, energy is created in the form of heat.  This heat would be used to boil water, which creates steam which would then power turbines, creating electricity.  The products from the nuclear energy is pure electricity and produces no green house gases.  This is why I am interested in nuclear energy and am spreading the word.  I believe it is, again, safe, affordable, and much better than any other form of energy and would like to get to know more about it.  I believe that everyone should be informed about nuclear energy in order for it to become a more widely used form of energy.