Nuclear Energy or Nuclear Power is a way of generating electricity that involves the use of nuclear reactions that release nuclear energy to generate heat, which most frequently is then used in steam turbines to produce electricity in a nuclear power plant.
Benefits
- Nuclear energy can produce reliable, cheap and large amounts of electricity quickly.
- Nuclear energy emits little to no pollution.
- Nuclear energy has the lowest rate of death of any large-scale power source.
- Nuclear Power Plants use the least amount of land of any clean energy source. Solar power requires 75x more space and wind power requires 360x more space.[1]
Costs
- There is only enough nuclear fuel (mainly uranium) to power the world for a few hundred years. If human civilisation is to survive, it will run out eventually, and we will have to find alternatives.[2]
- It takes a lot of time, money and expertise to set up nuclear energy plants and decommissioning them (making them safe once they get too old) also
- Nuclear waste can take thousands of years to safely decompose and requires specially designed spaces to store, if it is exposed to people or the environment, it creates massive health and ecological problems.
- Nuclear accidents, while rare, create massive health and ecological crises that kill thousands of people.