Implementation of Clean Energy: Nuclear Energy

Utilizing wood and other fossil fuels for energy leads to increased carbon dioxide emissions, which then leads to global warming. This can then negatively impact the environment with events such as the melting of ice, desertification, and rising sea levels. Additionally, as expressed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, fossil fuels can affect heart health, respiratory health, and lead to other negative health effects as well as contribute to increasing the amount of chemicals released into the atmosphere, of which can alter and harm ecosystems and decrease biodiversity. These harmful impacts have led to the search and implementation of other cleaner energy sources, such as nuclear energy and renewable energies including solar, wind, and hydroelectric energy, that can replace fossil fuels. This energy is considered clean as it produces very little carbon. Nuclear energy in particular has become increasingly popular, accounting for slightly under 10% of the world’s energy as stated by the International Energy Association. As a potential energy source that can combat fossil fuels, the factors contributing to nuclear energy as a clean alternative must be explored in order to evaluate the role nuclear energy should play in a sustainable energy future.

A large reason why nuclear energy is considered over fossil fuels and clean is because it does not produce much CO₂. However, there are other environmental factors to consider. For instance, researchers with expertise in maritime law argue that nuclear energy has the potential to effectively be used to power ships, however arguing that past and current usages of nuclear energies for ship fuel has many shortcomings. They explain how using nuclear energy to propel ships does not emit CO₂ or other particulate emissions, however emphasizing how the nuclear reactors of ships may emit low dosages of radiation into the environment, ultimately leading to increased mortality rates among fish and marine mammals. The authors describe how the radioactivity emitted negatively impacts the environment, concluding that nuclear energy as currently used in ships is not clean despite minimal particle emissions, therefore making it a less viable option as a clean energy source. Similar to the argument of radioactivity causing damage, MPH Eddy and medical PhD graduate Sase argue that current nuclear power plant regulations and safety precautions are inadequate in preventing disasters, such as with the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster, leading to harming the environment. They state that the Tokyo Electric Power Company reported that highly radioactive waters from the Fukushima Dai-ichi incident were continuously discharging into the Pacific Ocean. The assessment of radioactive waters and the overall assessment find that nuclear energy is not necessarily environmentally friendly aligns with that of the maritime law researchers, although it does not account for the benefits of nuclear energy in regard to CO₂. However, economic professors acknowledge that both renewable energy and nuclear energy lead to decreased CO₂ emissions, while fossil fuels lead to increased CO₂ emissions, although asserting that renewable energy decreases emissions more. This agrees with the maritime law researchers' brief assessment of nuclear energy releasing minimal CO₂ emissions, however emphasizes that renewable sources are better. Overall, while there are environmental benefits to nuclear energy, they appear to be outweighed by the detriments, suggesting nuclear energy should not contribute much to future energy usage.

Another factor that should be considered in choosing nuclear power long-term is technology that utilizes nuclear power, specifically technology’s ability to evolve. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, in nuclear reactors, the splitting of uranium provides energy that is controlled with rods, helping slow down neutrons. The heat generated turns water to steam, spinning a turbine to produce electricity. This is then cooled by a system connected to a water body, completing the nuclear power plant process. Researchers from China Nuclear Power Engineering Co. argue that advancing the technological structures of nuclear power plants is necessary for accelerating the safe and orderly usage of nuclear power and is essential for optimizing energy structure. One structure they analyzed is bubble-screen interception technology, which they determined can prevent marine animals from entering the cooling system of a nuclear power plant if built optimally. This demonstrates the ability of nuclear power plants to not only protect the marine life but also to improve technologically overall. Similar to how these researchers confirmed nuclear power plant production can be upgraded, nuclear science and technology researchers analyzed potential fault diagrams that may assist nuclear power plant usage, ultimately finding that while all models were helpful, their SSA-CNN-LSTM model was the most helpful. They found that it has a high accuracy of fault identification, with the ability to determine the type of accident in a nuclear power plant 0.22 seconds after the accident. In this way, safety in using nuclear power, which some may have considered a large issue previously, is able to be solved through technological advances. Although these researchers vary from the researchers from China Nuclear Power Engineering Co. in targeting potential safety precautions that nuclear power plants can take, they still address upgraded technology. However, researchers from the Department of Energy and Nuclear Engineering at Ontario Tech University found that the overall nuclear reactor could be changed. They argue that small modular reactors, of which use nuclear energy, are able to compete with other energy sources, evaluating how they have a lower financial risk, a load-following design, a simplified factory production and assembly, and are suitable for off-grid applications. Ultimately, all of these researchers find that technology surrounding nuclear power can make it more efficient, suggesting that nuclear energy should significantly be involved in future global energy production.

Nuclear energy usage can also be evaluated by cost. Researchers state that nuclear energy is economically stable as initial expenses in building nuclear power plants are high while operational expenses are low, making nuclear power costs predictable and cheap in the long run. However, while agreeing that nuclear energy is cheap, researchers from the National Research University, Moscow Power Engineering Institute emphasize how nuclear energy can be cheap compared to fossil fuels and renewable energy conditionally. They argue that small nuclear power plants with an installed capacity of 30 MW or more may be a more promising energy supply option at high prices for fossil fuels and low potential for renewable resources, stating that in the power range of 50–100 MW, SNPPs turn out to be comparable to STPs at fuel costs of 20 USD/MWh and 30 USD/MWh for SVBR-100 and RITM-200. Essentially, depending on the costs of fossil fuels and the state of renewable energy sources, small nuclear power plants are able to be cheaper. Although specifically comparing potential future fossil fuel plants to nuclear power plants, electrical engineering and applied computing professors mostly agree with the researchers on cheap nuclear energy as well as with a comparison to fossil fuels. They found in their study that in both their models of potential energy usage over 50 years and over 100 years, nuclear power plants would return significantly over double the investments fossil fuel plants would, making it cheaper overall. However, researchers with expertise in maritime law agree that nuclear energy as a power source is cheap overall, but operating ships using nuclear power is expensive, leading to various ships that utilized nuclear energy as a power source having to change power sources or be decommissioned as a result of high costs. Some of these ships include the German-built Otto Hahn and the US-built NS Savannah. These researchers agree that nuclear energy itself is cheap but disagree that it is cheap to use. Generally, nuclear power is shown to be inexpensive and is therefore a viable contender to play a role in a sustainable energy future.

In conclusion, the mixed environmental implications, the positive possible technological advances, and the generally cheap costs of nuclear energy suggest that nuclear energy should contribute moderately to a sustainable global energy future compared to other energy sources.

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