The Promises of Nuclear Power

We all want to live in a world of clean air, clear water, and uncontaminated food. People want to live comfortably. But this requires energy - and lots of it. Electricity use continues to rise as more of the world gains access to energy; this trend will not stop anytime soon.

As the need for energy continues to grow, our methods for extracting and transporting it must evolve. Can you name one modern, industrialized country that exists without using massive amounts of energy?

Electricity powers technology, medicine, banking, and infrastructure, to name a few.

Everyone agrees that we need an efficient, safe, and economically sound method for producing electricity; yet we remain polarized by how to reach that goal. The solution has been staring us in the face for a century.

Nuclear energy is the answer to all of our energy problems - that is not hyperbole.

Let’s discuss why nuclear fission (the splitting of uranium atoms to generate heat) is objectively the greatest method of energy production available. It will soon be obvious that nuclear fission is far superior to all other current forms of energy production.

I make these claims confidently because nuclear energy, as we will see, is:

1. energy-dense
2. safe
3. reliable
4. clean

First, a quick glance at how people currently view this form of energy production.

The world hates nuclear power

Nuclear fission, despite its potential for unparalleled energy production, continues to endure abuse by Hollywood, the media, and the general public. Opponents of nuclear power appeal primarily to fear-mongering or offer up impossible fringe scenarios to justify their position because the reality and historical record of nuclear power is unquestionably superb.

Biased news reports and videos of Homer Simpson aimlessly trying to operate a nuclear plant flood our children’s screens. The only information or news we receive about nuclear power is negative; it’s no wonder why so many resent such a transformative solution to our energy demand problem. Television shows are wrong in their depictions of nuclear power - but that does not matter to the average person. Audiences ingest and accept these emotional messages before invoking any serious thought. The damage is done and their hatred of nuclear power is settled into their subconscious.

Media channels ignore the rational justifications for nuclear fission and continue to paint the industry with an apocalyptic brush while refusing to discuss core arguments.

Emotional manipulation is a powerful but dishonest tool of persuasion. Gone are the days where people discuss ideas or principles. He who shouts the loudest or cries the hardest wins, regardless of the content of his words.

Despite the obvious need for nuclear energy, America continues to distance itself from the technology. Nuclear reactors are the victim of costly regulations and of unfair competition with wind and solar power, which receive billions of dollars annually in subsidies in order to combat "climate change."

Climate change is a topic for another day. What’s important to remember is that opponents of nuclear power point to climate change as part of their rationale for opposing fission. Climate change is just one of many concerns Americans have regarding fission.

Some of those concerns are valid and legitimate - some are impossible. After analyzing the history and facts surrounding nuclear power, there is no question that it can provide cheap, safe, and reliable power. Severe government intervention into the nuclear sector is what truly prevents the industry from growing.

If set free from the suffocating grip of the federal government, nuclear power can provide a strong, stable, and affordable stream of electricity to the entire country.

Nuclear power is energy-dense

Nuclear fission is the most energy dense form of energy available.

A pellet of nuclear fuel (e.g. uranium) weighs approximately 6 grams - lighter than your stick of lip balm. Despite its size, a single uranium pellet yields the amount of energy equivalent to that generated by a ton of coal, ~120 gallons of oil or ~17,000 cubic feet of natural gas source. This means it takes significantly smaller amounts of nuclear fuel to produce the same amount of energy as fossil fuels.

Nuclear fission has the highest capacity factor of any fuel source available. Capacity factor is a measure of what percentage of the time a power plant actually produces energy. A higher value indicates that nuclear plants can supply power to people at higher rates than all other sources.

With nuclear power we do not have to worry about the reliability of electricity (more on reliability below).

Abhishek Shah describes the superiority of nuclear power in his article:

Nuclear Power Plants have one of the highest load factors in the power industry. Nuclear Power Plants do not suffer from fuel shortages (except exceptional cases) like thermal coal power plants (eg. India). Nuclear power plants account for about 11 percent of America’s total electricity generation capacity, but because they operate at high levels of efficiency and reliability, they produce nearly 20 percent of the country’s annual electricity supply. U.S. nuclear power plants have performed at an average industry capacity factor of more than 87 percent for the past seven years.

Natural gas and coal capacity factors are generally lower because they require maintenance and refueling at a higher frequency than nuclear plants. Nuclear plants do no suffer these frequent shutdowns due to uranium and thorium’s power densities. Because nuclear plants require far fewer raw material to create electricity, there is substantially less of a chance for something to go wrong.

Again, this is not to disparage fossil fuels. Oil and gas have served us well and continue to power millions of homes and businesses. But they should not be the only large-scale source of electricity production. Nuclear fission would be a wonderful compliment to fossil and non-fossil fuels, but public paranoia and misinformation continue to shackle the industry.

In summary, uranium and thorium fission are the most energy-dense forms of electricity production.

Nuclear power is safe

Nuclear fission is the safest form of energy available.

Nuclear fission plants reactors are among the safest, most efficient technologies mankind has ever created. This is because fission differs fundamentally from other energy sources as it yields power from splitting atoms rather than burning chemicals.

Generating, containing and transporting electricity is innately a dangerous and difficult task, but it is a necessary one. Everything we see and interact with depends on it. Modern life is impossible without continuous, reliable streams of electrons.

Nonetheless, opponents of nuclear power consistently argue that it is far too dangerous for a civilized society to use.

We hear that "a spill of radioactive waste can destroy an entire city!" There is no evidence that this scenario is remotely possible. A nuclear power plant blowing up like a nuclear bomb is physically impossible. Not just unlikely, but impossible. Laws of physics would have to be broken for such a situation to occur.

Not only are nuclear explosions impossible, but not a single death or serious illness has been directly attributed to nuclear fission in America’s history - a tremendous testament to the safety and reliability of nuclear fission.

For nuclear power to reach such life-threatening levels of coal burning, University of Pittsburgh professor Bernard Cohen estimates that there would need to be 25 reactor meltdowns per year. Since there hasn’t been a single complete meltdown in America’s history, 25 incidences per year is nothing but a fairy tale.

Historically, three major accidents have occurred in over 17,000 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation in 33 countries. One such accident occurred in the United States, where nobody was killed or injured. Chernobyl is the incident all opponents point to as proof of nuclear power’s lack of safety. Authors have written books about this accident so I will not go into detail here. The Chernobyl disaster is a result of the oppressive government ownership of a country’s power supply.

Such a disaster is nearly impossible at a free, privately-owned nuclear power plant. As with any industry, private businesses have an incentive to provide high-quality, safe, and effective products to their customers; that is how they profit. Nuclear power is no different. Every company would take the requisite safety precautions and keep their power plants up-to-date because that is the only way they would attract customers and make money.

The types of reactors that exist today cannot experience a meltdown like the one at Chernobyl. In short, another Chernobyl will not happen in a free society that uses nuclear power.

Opponents of nuclear power often point to “nuclear accidents” in an attempt to instill fear on their audience, despite the fact that all of these incidences (except for Chernobyl and Fukushima) resulted in no deaths or serious injury.

Many refer to the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 as a core argument against the safety in nuclear power. The “incident” resulted in no injury or lives lost.

In fact, here is part of what the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission says about the health effects of the event:

The approximately 2 million people around TMI-2 during the accident are estimated to have received an average radiation dose of only about 1 millirem above the usual background dose. To put this into context, exposure from a chest X-ray is about 6 millirem and the area’s natural radioactive background dose is about 100-125 millirem per year… In spite of serious damage to the reactor, the actual release had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment.

We could spend all day looking at each historical event. But the case is clear: nuclear power is safe.

Not only is it safe, but nuclear power is the safest form of major energy production.

Nuclear power is reliable

Nuclear fission is the most reliable form of energy available.

Engineers design nuclear power plants to operate for long stretches before refueling compared to fossil fuels - typically every 1 or 2 years.

Nuclear plants are far more reliable than fossil fuel generation facilities. In 2019, nuclear plants worked at full capacity 93% of the time. For comparison, consider the operating times for other energy-generating sources: coal plants (54%), natural gas plants (55%), hydroelectric (38.2%), wind generators (37%) and solar plants (27%). No other fuel source is remotely as reliable as nuclear fission.

Despite the cultural popularity of renewable sources such as solar and wind, they are among the least reliable sources of electricity due to the intermittent nature of their energy sources - the sun and wind.

Renewable plants are intermittent (i.e. unreliable) and are limited by a lack of fuel (for example the wind and sun do not provide continuous power). Therefore, these plants require a backup power source; often these backup sources are, ironically, fossil fuel plants.

Reliability is an inescapable problem; if a fuel source can not consistently provide power to the people, that grow will only be able to operate and grow while the power is on. In the case of nuclear fission, the power is on almost all of the time.

In essence, nuclear power is the most reliable form of major energy production available.

Nuclear power is clean

Nuclear fission is the cleanest form of energy available.

Nuclear reactors emit minimal carbon emissions. Although mining for and transporting uranium do involve burning fossil fuels (transportation the fuel from mine to power plant via trucks), nuclear fission requires no burning, hence no CO2.

Nuclear power releases less radiation into the air than any other major energy source.

In fact, nuclear waste is far cleaner and less radioactive than coal ash. Hardly anyone bats an eye when ash is spewed into the atmosphere because we are used to seeing it. But people cringe when they heard the words “nuclear waste.” In reality, waste from a nuclea plant is well contained and less dangerous than the ash produced from the thousands of coal plants in this country.

As we discussed above, a major benefit of uranium’s energy density is the decrease in waste from a nuclear plant as opposed to fossil fuel plants that require far greater volumes of raw material to produce equivalent levels of energy.

Most U.S. spent fuel, more than 90 percent of which could be recycled to extend nuclear power production by hundreds of years, is stored at present safely in impenetrable concrete-and-steel dry casks on the grounds of operating reactors, its radiation slowly declining.

The U.S. Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico currently stores low-level and transuranic military waste and could store commercial nuclear waste in a 2-kilometer thick bed of crystalline salt, the remains of an ancient sea. The salt formation extends from southern New Mexico all the way northeast to southwestern Kansas. It can accommodate the entire world’s nuclear waste for the next thousand years. Only politics stands in the way.

In essence, nuclear power is the cleanest form of major energy production available.