The world as we
know it is going through an energy and climate crisis and no one seems to have
a convincing argument of what to do. How long will conventional fossil fuels
last? Will renewable energy be able to plug the energy gap? How much of an
impact will fossil fuels have on the planet? When people talk about energy
production for the future, you always hear about wind, solar, and often a new
exploitation of fossil fuels, which for now is the fracking of shale gas. But
often not nuclear energy, which gets me thinking; why is nuclear energy
ignored?
Over the course of
the coming months through this blog, I shall be exploring the potential of nuclear
energy as an answer to our energy and climate crisis. Nuclear energy often goes
unmentioned in the news, unless something goes wrong. This has the potential to
create a negative stigma towards a theoretically lucrative energy source.
However, when nuclear power stations go wrong, they go badly wrong, with
disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima coming to mind. Perhaps the negative
reputation is well deserved? Or perhaps it is just a lack of proper public
awareness of nuclear power?
I
will be writing this blog from a neutral standpoint; as someone who
doesn’t really know the complete story about nuclear energy and is curious of
its potential benefits, along with the associated risks that come with it. In
secondary school, energy sources was a hotly contested issue in Geography
lessons with renewables vs fossil fuels being the majority of the discussion.
This has always made me think, what is wrong with nuclear power? Fossil fuels
use has increased linearly over the last few decades, with China’s and India’s
recently increased development of power grid infrastructure and vehicular usage
adding a recent surge since the year 2000. An increase of a particularly dirty fossil fuel, coal,
is seen; with it contributing a larger percentage of primary energy supply in
2014 (28.6%) compared to 1973 (24.5%). In the same time period, renewable
energy has increased only 1.3% (IEA - Key World Energy Statistics 2016).
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| Graph of World Energy Consumption (IEA - Key World Energy Statistics 2016) |
It
seems to me, that we are reaching a point where not exploring nuclear power as
a bigger source of energy will cause detrimental effects to our environment and
climate. Greenhouse gases have been rising steadily since fossil fuel burning
began in earnest and on May 9th 2013, CO₂ levels passed 400 ppm for the first time in
recorded history (NASA 2013). As a proclaimed low-carbon source of energy (niauk), maybe nuclear
power is the answer we’ve been looking for?
To see whether it
is the answer that we, as a world are looking for; I shall be researching and
discussing a number of topics, weighing up both sides of the arguments and
hopefully, by the end, reaching a conclusion that will have convinced you, as
well as myself, either for or against nuclear power.
A brief overview of topics, case studies and
questions (not a definitive list by any means) I aim to look at are below:
- What is Nuclear Fission?
- Nuclear energy use and its contribution to Climate Change
- The safety of nuclear energy
- Nuclear Disasters – Chernobyl and Fukushima
- Nuclear Success Stories – France
- Nuclear Fusion and the future of nuclear energy
My next post will
be about the processes that occur within a nuclear power plant. I’ll be briefly
discussing the fuel used and then the overall process of Nuclear Fission, which
is the driving force behind a nuclear power plant. Do not fear about it being
overly complicated! As someone who hasn’t touched Physics since GCSE, my aim is
to make the explanation as simple as possible, leaving the complicated nuclear
physics to the experts.
If you have any comments, questions or
suggestions on topics, don’t hesitate to ask down below!
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