Advantages and Disadvantages of Nuclear Energy, Article Review Example

Abstract

The core issues of the paper are assessment of environmental benefits of a potential development of nuclear power with regard to climate change, evaluation of the economic value of the political decision to keep the nuclear option open and determine whether the economic incentives of climate policies could foster a nuclear rebirth, and whether a development of nuclear power could lower costs of nuclear policies. The paper also gives an account of issues of nuclear power development and climate change. The possibility of altering the ecological biodiversity and productivity is also addressed in this paper. The paper also clearly elaborates on the potential advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power.

Implications of Nuclear Energy on Climate Change

Introduction

Centuries from now, the Earth’s climate will continue to experience changes analogous to the current changes brought about by emissions of green house gases if no action is undertaken to contain or reverse these changes. To mitigate climate changes, the use of a carbon free source of energy such as nuclear power would be a good idea. This would mean replacing the conventional fossil-fueled electricity generation technologies, which are currently leading in greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear power reduces the cost of emission leading to a sustainable environment. Nuclear power development and climate change is an issue that touches on three major aspects of the society: the environment, the politics and the economics.  There are three objectives to this thesis:

1. Assess the environmental benefits of a potential development of nuclear power with regard to climate change.
2. Evaluate the economic value of the political decision to keep the nuclear option open.
3. Determine whether the economic incentives of climate policies could foster a nuclear rebirth, and whether a development of nuclear power could lower costs of nuclear policies.

To achieve these goals, the cost of these nuclear technologies must be determined within an economic model framework. However, this article will restrict its content to detailing the issues of nuclear power development and climate change. To begin with, we shall address climate change concern together with those policies that could be used to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Next, we shall have a look at nuclear power technologies that can be used to generate carbon-free electricity and most importantly discuss their main advantages and disadvantages in relation to other power technologies. Finally, we shall define the focus of our thesis as well as the framework of analysis.

Emissions Reduction Policies and Climate Change

The United Nations Environmental Program and the World Meteorological Organization established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) in 1988 charged with the mandate of bringing experts together to assess the state of scientific knowledge on climate change. The 2007 IPPC 4^th assessment report showed a conclusion in its summary for policy makers that”….warming is now unambiguous, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global sea level…” (Ian, 2007). To settle doubts as to whether climate change is as a result of natural variations or human induced, the IPCC concluded that “..Most of the observed increase in temperatures since the middle of 20^th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (or human induced) greenhouse gas concentrations…”

To be precise, for the twelve warmest years since 1850, 11 have occurred in the last twelve years, and for the last hundred years, the global mean of the surface temperature has gone up by 0.74°C. In the Arctic, average temperatures has increased twice as fast as the global mean over the last hundred years, and since 1978, the arctic ice sheet has decreased by 2.7% per decade (Ian, 2007). There has also been a drastic increase in the frequency of heavy precipitation events, in the frequency of heat waves and in the length and intensity of droughts. Carbon is an example of anthropogenic greenhouse gas whose concentration has been going on unabated. It has gone up from 280 ppm before industrialization to 379 ppm in 2005 probably because of land-use changes and increase in fuel use (Douglas, 2006).

Climate change is expected to alter the ecological biodiversity and productivity, threaten human health, cause increased water shortages in many water-scarce areas and have negative impacts on the economy. There are only two options open in curbing the negative impacts of climate change: mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions or adaptation to climate change consequences. Adaptation to climate change should be compared to the cost of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions to establish the cost worthiness of climate change mitigation policies.

Nuclear Power

This encompasses two technologies: nuclear fission and fusion. The former involves breaking nuclei of high mass numbers e.g. plutonium or uranium into smaller nuclei. On the other hand nuclear fusion involves the process of gathering low mass number nuclei e.g. hydrogen into heavy nuclei. These processes release huge amounts of energy with regard to the fuel mass involved. Apart from being recent, Fusion power is unpopular in energy production in that it consumes more energy than the plants can consume, on the other hand fission power has now been in existence for half a century.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Nuclear Power

The essence of illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power is to determine its suitability in being part of the solution portfolio in mitigating climatic changes.

Nuclear power has the key advantage of extreme low greenhouse gas emissions, is less dependent on fuel prices, it is abundant in distribution and supply. Key disadvantages include, waste management crisis, safety and proliferation issues. The rising concern about climate change gives nuclear power an advantage of being an extremely low emitter of greenhouse gases throughout the lifetime of the plant. 40 % of greenhouse house gas emissions in US were as a result of electricity generation mostly using coal in 2004 (Andrew, 2008). Thus, anthropogenic emissions would be drastically reduced if coal power plants were replaced with nuclear technologies. In comparison to emissions of fossil fueled power technologies, tiny emissions from nuclear fuel extraction and nuclear storehouse construction are negligible.

Another advantage is in the distribution and the amount of uranium resources across the globe. Since countries such as the United States has significant uranium reserves, nuclear power is used as a way of improving on energy security. For countries which do not have natural resources such as gas or coal to produce electricity, they can secure uranium supply which would enable them to easily store large amounts of energy with a minimal volume of uranium (Joseph, 2007).

Similarly, nuclear power enjoys a cost advantage in that its cost does not depend on nuclear fuel prices due to a small share of fuel costs in the to cost. Variations in nuclear cost arise as a result of changes in regulations. The case for gas technologies in that variable fuel expenses account for about 70% of the total cost. This indicates that gas price determines the cost of gas power.

A major disadvantage with nuclear power is the increase of nuclear weapons. Materials required for nuclear weapons can be obtained from civilian nuclear facilities especially the highly enriched plutonium and uranium. To fabricate weapons, one cannot use nuclear fuel because it is not enriched enough to U-235 (Douglas, 2006). Highly enriched uranium can be produced in enrichment plants and reprocessing it produces plutonium. Existence of such plants and reprocessing facilities in dangerous countries can be a security threat. The Non-proliferation treaty forbids weapon countries from helping non-nuclear countries get access to nuclear weapons while promoting the use of civilian nuclear power. The IAEA conducts routine inspections to make sure materials are not diverted from civilian facilities with the intention of producing weapons. Terrorist groups might steal or buy existing highly enriched uranium or plutonium or existing nuclear stock piles.

The recent Japanese nuclear reactors fiasco and the previous major accidents mainly the Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island has contributed to significant fear for nuclear related disasters. However public risk perception tends to blow such fears out of proportion as opposed to the expert analysis concerning nuclear plants safety. This has led to inaccurate risk perception from the public.

Production of nuclear waste is another disadvantage. Waste generated from once-through fuel cycle remains more radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. Remedy to this is disposing the waste in geological repositories / deep borehole, separation and transmutation or reprocessing.

Lastly, nuclear power suffers from a disadvantage in that, nuclear power being capital intensive, the capital cost per unit of power generated rises significantly if they are not operating at full capacity.

The above advantages and disadvantages have several political implications. For instance, in waste management should the future generation be relied upon to deal with the consequences of the current power generation, once more economic resources or techniques are available. There also exists a political trade off in determining the amount of resources that should be allocated to non-nuclear proliferation between affordable nuclear power and national security concerns.

Conclusion

As stated earlier, climate change can have adverse effects on the environment such as through impact on biodiversity or increase in droughts and the number of storms. In mitigating climate change, there must be political willingness to support, design and implement global agreements as well as economic policies such as cap and trade systems and tax policies. Therefore there are three aspects to the issue of climate change: the politics, the economics and the environment.

Deployment of advanced nuclear technologies can have a positive effect on the environment through high power density i.e. ability to generate significant amounts of power on a small area and negatively through the nuclear waste. Since the different advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power have political and economical implications, economic and political considerations have to be made.

A political decision does influence economics of electricity generation through definition of standards e.g. nuclear safety standards and through subsidies. The opposite is also true where economics affect the politics of energy policy. For example countries requiring strong economic growth to fight poverty are unlikely to be concerned with climate change as developed countries. Politics can influence environment by putting in place laws that prohibit actions detrimental to the environment. Environment can influence politics in that politicians take into account environmental concerns in regard to nuclear waste to decide whether to expand the plant or not. World economy does respond to changes in environment. Finally, the environment is influenced by the economics of nuclear energy policies e.g. economic growth increases greenhouse gas emissions, or limiting of greenhouse gas emissions through the use of economic incentives of climate policies.

References

Andrew, R.J. (2008) Hiroshima: The Worlds Bomb. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Douglas, G. (2006). Physics: Principles with applications Prentice-Hall : USA.

Ian, G. (2007). Harnessing Nuclear Power.Stack-Vaughn.Austin:Stck-Vaughn.

Joseph, C. (2007). Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. New York, NY: Cambridge University press.