Why is nuclear energy power plants bad for the environment?

Question

Why is nuclear energy power plants bad for the environment?

Answer 1

Research Chernobyl. Watch this slideshow-it speaks for itself:

http://www.pixelpress.org/chernobyl

Answer 2

They're not in themselves. Many people worry that they could be targets for terrorists, but more people I think worry that their waste products are highly radioactive and remain so for thousands of years. It has to be stored in very secure locations or maybe deep underground. So the argument is that we've no right to burden future generations with the problems of storing and monitoring the waste.

Answer 3

Okay:

1.  Nuclear waste is an issue and this comes not just from the relatively small, but incredibly dangerous, amounts of high grade waste (spent fuel rods and the like), but also the many tons of low grade waste that needs to be disposed of and stored, including in the mining, fuel manufacture, energy production and waste handling, disposal and storage stages.

2.  Nuclear power is NOT greenhouse gas free.  The making of the fuel, it's transport, handling, disposal does create a high CO2 footprint.

3.  Power plants have an effective life of around 50 years, ofen less.  Nuclear plants are much more expensive to design, build, maintain and certify as environmentally safe than other sources of power, and what does one do with the deactivated reactor?:  It becomes a monument that needs to be protected against fire, flood, disaster, theft and security threats for centuries, probably millenia.

4.  Consider Chornobyl, April 1986.  One accident cause massive population shifts, regions of land to be abandoned, monitoring of thousands of people, and massive amounts of wildlife, food had to be quarantined until safe or disposed of as low grade waste.  There were many errors, mostly forseeable, that contributed to it, but it may happen again.

These are four points of contention against nuclear power.  There is more...research it!

Answer 4

They aren't.  The reason we have not added nuclear power plants the last 20+ years is bad publicity from 3 Mile Island problem.

  

The fuel can be reused for other things - they do this in Japan and France, which are both heavily depenent on Nuclear Power.

Answer 5

The others are right: Nuclear power isn't bad as such, in fact, it's more safe than many other energy sources..but what to do with the spent fuel? You can only dig it into the ground. It takes about 10000 years to decompose..then you had Chernobyl...

Answer 6

One essential thing that you have to differentiate about fuels used to product energy is there are fuels like coal and oil that produce green house gases as you burn them and there is no safe way break them down into there constituent elements. They are bound to create pollution. Now there is nuclear fuel, which creates almost zero pollution when you spent the fuel to produce energy. So nuclear power is essentially not bad for the environment. But there is this question of "potential" damage that might create if the waste is not being handled properly. What if scenarios could be infinite..you know in any situation whether its fossil fuels of nuclear. But one thing is for sure that  while producing energy nuclear plants do not produce any pollutants that are released in the atmosphere to create pollution.

Answer 7

Because of the expulsion of the waste.

Answer 8

What does one do with the spent fuel?

Answer 9

If you live close to one and it breaks, we'll use you as a glow in the dark nite light.

The only power plant you want next door is Renewable Energy.

Answer 10

IF IT WAS SAFE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT THEY WOULD NOT HAVE TO PUT THE WASTE FROM THE PLANTS INTO METAL DRUMS AND BURY THEM WHERE OUR CHILDREN & GRANDCHILDREN WILL EVENTUALLY STUMBLE ACROSS THEM (30 OR 40 YEARS DOWN THE ROAD). IF IT WERE SAFE THEY WOULD NOT HESITATE TO BUILD THE NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO OUR SCHOOLS. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU HEARD OF A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL BUYING A HOUSE NEXT TO A NUCLEAR PLANT? TRY NEVER!!!

HAVE-A-LOVING-DAY!

Answer 11

Well, it isn't so simple as saying that they aren't.  Properly run and maintained fission reactors are not particularly harmful to the environment.  However, one only has to look at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl to see what can happen when reactors are not properly run and maintained.  Chernobyl especially spread radioactive fallout all over northwestern Europe.  The environmental damage has yet to be properly estimated because many of the long term effects one might expect from an event like that have yet to fully materialize.  

Assuming no more accidents, there's still the issue of nuclear waste.  Fission reactors produce waste that remains highly radioactive for a very long time indeed, so proper disposal is a problem.

Answer 12

They arn't. Simple as.

Nuclear power produces clean cheap safe energy.

With newer reprocessing technology's, the amount of spent fuel has been reduced to minimalistic amounts...

Spent fuel = 96% Is reprocessed, 1% is plutonium (reprocessed also) and only 3% is a wasted product...

1Kg of enriched fuel produces the same amount of electricity as of 160 tonnes of coal... That means 30g of waste is produced instead of 160 tonnes of coal being burned uncleanly.

30g of containable waste is a good environmental trade off for not putting 160 tonnes worth of coal CO2 into the air. Nuclear power has POSITIVE environmental effects.

Answer 13

Not actually ,it is the alarmist that U could never satisfy with how safe. I have been in the deep salt mines near Hobbs NM. Whatever they put there may be safe longer than we have.

Answer 14

nuclear waste+ polution

Answer 15

because the rods that heat the water that turn the turbines are made out of enriched uranium. It creates radio active waste that has a half life of 500,000 years. when the rods have been used up, they ship them to Nevada to bury them thousands of feet beneath Yucca Mountain. Its a safe temporary solution, but the primary concern is that the trucks and trains shipping the rods have the potential for catostrophic desaster. If the radio active waste was spilled into a populated area, it would cause mass casualties, cancer and disease.

Answer 16

The uranium they use at the power plant give off (emmits) radiation and that can harm the environment