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The Daily Utah Chronicle

The University of Utah's Independent Student Voice

The Daily Utah Chronicle

The University of Utah's Independent Student Voice

The Daily Utah Chronicle

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Want your voice to be heard? Submit a letter to the editor, send us an op-ed pitch or check out our open positions for the chance to be published by the Daily Utah Chronicle.
@TheChrony
Print Issues

Nuclear Power Provides Safe Alternative Energy Resource, Despite Public’s Fears

Nuclear Power Provides Safe Alternative Energy Resource, Despite Publics Fears

In the very near future we’re going to start relying on alternative forms of energy production. Tesla’s Gigafactory is slated to start producing batteries by 2017 with the goal of achieving net 0 energy consumption. But solar isn’t the only source we should be keeping our eye on. There was a reason the Climate Summit took place in Paris. France’s CO2 emissions are the second lowest among all developed nations. This achievement is almost entirely thanks to the country’s major conversion to nuclear power. As a result of the 1973 oil crisis, France changed its main power source from oil to nuclear. Now 75 percent of the energy produced in France is nuclear and it accounts for 40 percent of the country’s total energy use.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us if we start to see a greater focus on nuclear power here in the United States. The problem is that many of us have serious concerns when it comes to nuclear power. Nuclear power seems particularly dangerous when compared to burning fossil fuels. Sure, coal burning comes with drawbacks like acid rain erosion and increased air toxicity, but that’s much safer than radioactive waste in your backyard, right? Well, that’s not exactly the case. We hold some prejudiced views against nuclear power that need to be addressed.

Aren’t materials like Uranium very rare and hard to come by?

While high concentrations of Uranium alone are rare, it’s much more common than gold or silver. It can be found almost anywhere.

Well, isn’t Uranium radioactive?

Yes, but weakly so. Even after it’s been used in a reactor and turned into depleted Uranium, it’s really only dangerous if ingested. In fact, because of its high density it’s more often used for radiation shielding.

Don’t Nuclear Power plants produce dangerous radioactive waste?

Yes, but we have much greater control over that waste. The real difference in worries about nuclear energy compared to fossil fuels is how visible the waste is. The reason nuclear power plants produce no air pollution is because they produce a kind of ground pollution. Radioactive waste can remain extremely hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years. We feel safer pumping waste into the atmosphere where we can’t see it, as opposed to having to put it somewhere in the ground.

There are millions of acres of land that are unusable or uninhabitable in the U.S. Anyone who’s taken a drive to Colorado knows this. There’s plenty of room to bury radioactive waste so deep underground it wouldn’t even affect the plant life on the surface. In France, a significantly smaller country, the radioactive waste is carried into vast underground labs where they bury the substance an additional 100 meters into the earth. Even that wasn’t enough for most local communities in France, so the government took a different route. Small communities could choose to opt-in and in return receive millions of dollars in support.

Finally, can’t nuclear power plants be turned into atom bombs like that one time it happened in the Batman movie?

No, they cannot. Naturally-occurring Uranium is not explosive, nor is it turned into an explosive when used in nuclear power plants.

Natural Uranium is a mix of two isotopes, U-238 and U-235. A nuclear weapon relies on a very heavy concentration of U-235 in order to make a nuclear chain reaction possible. Anything less than 90 percent concentration and the detonation cannot occur. Natural Uranium is 99.3 percent U-238 and 0.7 percent U-235. At most, a nuclear reactor will use uranium enriched to 5 percent U-235. The same goes for plutonium. No matter how much is amassed at a single location, it would be impossible to replicate a nuclear explosion.

Many of our parents were raised to live in fear of the word “nuclear,” to the point where it’s become unclear what the word really means. We should not have to reciprocate this fear of a word simply because of what it once referenced. I think the future of power in the U.S. will be guided by what France has achieved.

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