What are disadvantages of using nuclear power plants?

Question

What are disadvantages of using nuclear power plants?

Answer 1

Hello, The cost of making one, Storage of waste, Security, Accidents

Answer 2

The technology is not the problem ,the problem is the environmentalist.

Answer 3

disadvantages? only one i can think of, and thats that we have to live to close to them for any kind of safety from accidents.

I mean really, the light and heat from the sun we depend on to live is from a sustained nuclear reaction. The difference being that it's 93 million miles away, give or take a couple of million.

Answer 4

Mostly the disadvantage is people. You have two parties- people who don't understand nuclear energy enough and fear it, and people who want to use nuclear by products to cause chaos.  

The waste is a negligible problem. Without nuclear power plants, most radioactive compounds sit underneath the soil, slowly poisoning people who build houses atop them. Nuclear power makes us find those compounds and sequester them, which keeps us from not knowing where they are.

Answer 5

accidents like chernobyl can happen..leaving the area unable to being populated and causing mutations on babies and defects on people

also then u have to safely deposit the waste like they plan to do in the yucca mt. in  nevada and like in 2000 itll still be radioactive and if they dig it up (cuz they wont know what it is) it will harm them

Answer 6

The disadvantage is that is hurts my oil sales, OIL OIL OIL, muhaahaahaa

Answer 7

Security, what to do with the waste, other than that it's a very viable power source.

Answer 8

There are only two; One is man-made chaos and the other is the waste.

Answer 9

The use of nuclear energy is at the moment a compelling option, in regards to the climatic changes we observe and predict for the future. There is no question that imediate changes need to be implemented asap to ensure the survival of our planet and for all life that reside here excepting maybe the cockroaches!!

How can anyone or any government guarentee the safe storage of nuclear waste for the next 100,00 years? It would only take a medium sized tremmer to crack any casing used to house this extreamly toxic waste. The result being catastropic, initially and for decades to come. There has been some recent talk of sending the plutonium into space or even sending it into the sun for incineration!! How smart we are....how little we understand!

Not assuming your question revolves around future clean energy, i believe the idea of using such a dangerous product is a fools game. Just look at the history of the cold war! We only just made it to 2007!

Answer 10

OK- Your answer comes in at least 4 parts.

1) Preparation- Uranium and thorium are pretty widely dispersed, even in the best ores. A lot of earth has to be disturbed to even get the elements to begin extraction. Besides the environmental degradation you have to burn a lot of fossil fuel even to get the ores and process them. Further, the waste material (tailings) still have residual radiation, mostly in radon gas.

2) Safety- The raw material has to go through an extensive separation and purification. These won't blow up, but they are prone to leak, breakdown, or to accidentally vent gases to the atmosphere All of this moving and processing uses huge amounts of fosssil fuel. Accidents (or sabatoge) are serious possibilities.

3) Operation- Researching for a Congressional study we found that the safety analyses the NRDC used were chains  events where 1 leads to the next; in reality it's a "web",each event is potentially linked 3-8 other events and on and on. The problem gets out of hand quickly. During operations spills, leaks and human error happen frequently. Sometimes the sub-contractor for materials may cut corners or make mistakes. Or, when you try to dispose of "spent" fuel rods where and how? No one wants a dump in their neigborhood that's going to  be radioactive for 10 thousand years. It takes a lot of fossil fuel to do all this-nuclear power can't do it.

4) Finally, maybe this should have been first, the Laws of Thermodynamics state (and have always be shown to be true)

"each change in the form of energy results in loss of much of the energy to entropy". Each time you manufacture, move and operate anything you lose more energy than you gain. You're talking about huge amounts of energy (and resources ) lost before you ever get a kilowatt of electricity.