Is Nuclear Energy Green?

Question

Britain is going to begin nuclear energy super-expansions to help power homes however is nuclear energy green, they say they wish to be green yet I am sure nuclear is red?

Daniel.

Answer 1

well: yes  it is according to "Other - Environment as Green

Earth has Protection for Wildllife's Natural Habbitat answers

Environment says think Conservation on Energy !

go towards http://www.conservation.forgreenearth.or...

Answer 2

Nuclear energy can be perceived as green, but in the big picture it is not.

Now why its perceived as green as the actual power plant does not release any carbon dioxide or other green house gasses. But this is the small picture here.

Now at the power plant there is still alot of waste materials. The most obvious is these uranium rods that have been used up. They are still radioactive and come out at high temperatures creating radioactive waste and thermal pollution. The rods need to be cooled down before containment so they are put into large vats of water to cool them down for some time. This water is after treatment released into the watershed again. The problem is its released at higher temperatures than it was brought into. Over time this can cause fish kills as the water bodies that get this thermal pollution increases and the fish can't cope.

Now someone said the storage problem has been worked out. This is incorrect. For short term possibly but long term no. They rods will still be radioactive long after we are gone and there is no real safe plan for proper disposal. The rods could be stored underground in pits but how do you keep it contained? There is no sound answer for that. The answer is we can contain if for today but we will worry about tomorrow... Tomorrow.

With the big picture in mind there is greenhouse gasses that are released when building these power plants. They create quite a bit of green house gasses, and are always going over budget and over the building time line as each plant is unique in its design.

Now to create the Uranium Rods and Mine it that's where alot of the environmental damage is caused. Uranium mines are not as safe as everyone thinks. They have issues with containment and can leach radioactive materials and heavy metals into nearby watersheds. Most Uranium is removed from Ore with strong acids. Your tailings are then acidic and from time to time leach into surrounding water bodies causing fish kills and other environmental damage.

So overall its not a clean source of energy, and it is not very well understood. The main thing is there hasn't been an issue with it for 10 - 15 years so its starting to look cleaner than a fossil fuel like Coal.

So really it comes down to how you want to perceive Nuclear energy. Do you want to focus on just the plant? Or the entire process?

Hope that helps

Answer 3

The only realistic problem nuclear has is peoples perceptions because of 50 years of inaccurate media propaganda about it. Nuclear waste is as recyclable as aluminum cans or cardboard are. Why is it being stored instead of being recycled, because President Jimmy Carter issued a presidential decree that can only be overturned by congress. And the democrats there refuse to do so and because it takes a 2/3rds vote to overturn and there are not enough republicans to do it on their own. Carter issued this decree to help his friends in the oil industry that helped him get elected and the democratic in congress are also oil company dependent like Obama is.

Answer 4

Using arbitrary colors to designate the environmental effects of a power source is very confusing.

Nuclear, like all power sources, has pros and cons.  It would take a long time to list them all, but in short:

Pro: Does not release CO2 or other airborne pollutants at the source.  A small amount of fuel produces a massive amount of energy.  The uranium ore can be produced domestically or imported from stable regions of the globe (australia among others).

Con: High-level radioactive waste that will not be safe to handle for millenia.  Risk of use as weapon or accidental meltdown.  Extremely expensive to decommision a plant at the end of it's life.

Please note when people say nuclear has no emissions, this is not entirely true.  The plant itself creates no emissions, but the mining and processing of the fuel do.  I know this is still far less than coal, but in the interest of accuracy it must be mentioned.

Answer 5

It is an excellent short term solution but the "greenies" don't like it.

France has got the right idea- reduce foriegn dependency on oil.

Answer 6

If I may talk from experience (I lived near a nuclear weapons

plant and power plant).  Nuclear anything right now is dangerous.  Why?  I grew up near a nuclear weapons plant

and a lot of people in our neighborhood were dying of different kinds of cancers and the children would have thyroid

problems. Why? Because radiation affects the thyroid gland

first in the body.  I had thyroid problems until I moved away

from there.  Also Barnwell, SC has been a nuclear dumping

ground for decades. NO, nuclear is not the way.  In Barnwell,

they were dumping barrels of nuclear waste just in the dirt!

Not encasing it in steel or concrete, but dirt!! And covering

it with dirt!!  Since scientists still have not come up with a practical way of disposing of nuclear waste safely, it's not

practical and is downright dangerous. This plant was always

"accidentally" releasing tritium into the atmosphere.  And

counties that are downstream from this place have found

tritium in their well water.  NO THANKS!  Why not solar or

wind power.  And people wonder why there is so much cancer

now?? Nuclear waste doesn't break down to a safe level for

THOUSANDS of years. I don't know what you mean by red

but its definately not a green way to produce energy because

of the WASTE.

Answer 7

Compared to other forms of energy, yes. The reasoning being is trade off.

Nuclear reactors do produce hazardous material and pose a risk of meltdown, but, when you divide the amount of energy they produce by their energy inputs and the impact of waste, they're actually one of the cleanest sources available. This is because one tiny bit of material produces a tremendous amount of energy that no other power plant can compare to.

Every source of energy has its impacts: windmills disrupt bird migrations and the thermal currents that larger birds use to soar. Photovolteics require complex materials to be produced and assembled. Clean coal isn't clean enough to outweigh the cost of cleaning itself.

20 years ago, I would have thought nuclear was a bad idea, but today we have learned to mine materials for it in a much cleaner way, make more energy out of them and more safely, and produce (even recycle!) nuclear waste. The threat of a melt down is also much lower in modern countries than it used to be (trust me, I live 20 min. away from 3 mile Island-TMI).

I say industrialized nations should begin developing more efficient electrical infrastructures so that we can convert our economies to electricity. This would prepare us with the experience and developments necessary for the future generation of nuclear, fusion, which is expected to come into production in 2035.

Answer 8

Are U well educated enough to determine weather it is green or red.

Answer 9

Nuclear energy is about as "green" as you can get.  where did you get the idea it wasn't.

Back in the 1970s-80s, environmentalists were concerned, especially in the wake of Chernobyl, about safety--for obvious reasons.  

A nuclear power plant produces no pollution--zero. Including zero carbon emissions and no discharges into the water supply. There is nuclear waste--and it is admittedly a royal pain in the a**. But we've had a half century of work and research on how to deal with it and we know how to do so reliably and safely--a point made obvious from the fact that there  has never been a serious problem with environmental contamination from nuclear waste disposal systems.

That concern no longer a factor. We have decades of experience and technology available now that did not exist at the time. The nuclear plants we build now are safe--and cheaper than fossil fueled power plants.

I don't know about Britain, but the only thing blocking the construction of new nuclear power plants in the US is our coal industry.  They are bribing (aka "campaign contributions") Republicans to continue to block resuming the authorization of new construction. They can't compete and they know it.  Other than a few extremists, environmentalists now largely support nuclear power--we realize that the problems that the safety issues have been addressed and dealt with.

Answer 10

It's a lot better than coal. A nuclear plant actually releases LESS radioactivity than a coal fired power plant. And the total lifecycle carbon footprint of nuclear, including mining, is about the same as wind power, and much less than photovoltaic solar.

Current nuclear technology has some environmental problems associated with long-lived high-level nuclear waste. However, the amount of waste is small and there are technical solutions to the problem.

There are also cleaner, safer nuclear technologies available, such as molten salt reactors, that produce 0.1% of the waste of current technology, and where the waste has a half-life of 30 years, making the problem even smaller.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluo...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt...

Answer 11

As far as I am concerned it is not Green.  Remember there is the problem of disposing of depleted nuclear materials which do NOT decompose or disappear within our lifetime or the lifetimes of many more generations.  The best solution they have found for disposal is to tranport it to some area they deem worthless and bury it.  Well that worthless land is part of Mother Earth, and right now the place they want to dump it is on Native American land.