what are the disadvantages of the using of nuclear energy?

Question

negative effect of nuclear

Answer 1

What are the disadvantages of the using of nuclear energy?

When the power goes out it gets dark.
Then it gets bright.
Then it gets real dark.
Then it dont matter.

Answer 2

Nuclear reactions create nuclear waste. The waste, after it has been used, and is no longer effective in creating energy still continues to emit radiation. It takes somewhere near 50,000 years for it to stabilize and no longer emit radiation, for starters. Number two, the chance of a contamination leak, where a part of the plant breaks down, and we have a Chernobyl on our hands.

These two items are great risks to the environment.

As for startup costs, and plant construction, it is essentially cheaper to build and maintain over say fossil fuel plants, but the environmental risks are much greater in nuclear energy, if a problem arises.

Answer 3

Public perception. Monsters under the bed in the dark. A lot more emotion than reason or fact. Much opinion, few knowledgeable. Test question: Do you know the exact number of fatalities from the reactor accident at Three Mile Island? By that, I do not mean hypothetical future injuries. I mean countable headstones. Real people, really dead. Know the number? Well, it is zero. Get out your flashlight and see what is really under your bed. If you want a hard fact, look at what has happened at Glacier National Park. Nuclear power is a good solution to that situation. Solar, I regret, belongs to the tooth fairy.

Answer 4

It creates radioactive waste which must be disposed of in a way so it can't get out. Not easy.

It is a target for terrorists.

It can be used to produce material for nuclear weapons.

A small chance of an accident releasing radioactivity.

Hard problems, not unsolvable. We'll need at least some more nuclear to help fight global warming.

Answer 5

Several, however none of these are likely. Certainly for people who work in the industry, such as myself (I just got off a 12 hour shift at Browns Ferry Nuclear Power station in Athens AL), there is an increased risk of cancer. But this effect is very slight. OSHA limits the allowable exposure to such a level that there is less than a 1% increased risk of developing cancer.

The most commonly cited concern is what to do with the nuclear waste? There are two categories of waste, low level and high level. Low level waste is hardly as dangerous as many people think. It mostly consists of trash such as tape and rope, or protective clothing that is worn out. This waste usually emits the amount of radiation equivalent to 1 or 2 chest x-rays an hour, and that is only if you are in direct contact with it. Low level waste is processed in what is called glass vitrification. First it is burned and the smoke if filtered to that no radio isotopes escape there. Then the ashes are combined with silica and heated to make a solid. This process prevents water from dispersing radio isotopes as well because it makes it completely sealed in glass. This glass is then put into large, shielded casks which are buried or entombed in concrete. Low level waste typically degrades in less than 50 years.

High level waste is a little more problematic. It consists mostly of spent nuclear fuel bundles. Currently all this spent fuel is stored underwater on site in what is called a spent fuel pool, or it is put into a large lead, steel, and concrete cask and stored on site. However this is mainly in the US. France has developed a technology to allow them to reprocess this spent fuel into useable fuel that can be loaded back into the reactor. Most of Europe uses this reprocessed fuel know as MOX or mixed oxide fuel. If the US adopts this process it will greatly reduce the amount of high level nuclear waste that has to be dealt with.

Many also cite the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island as further concern about nuclear energy. These two accidents were not accidents at all but willful disregard of safety procedures. At Chernobyl Soviet high command ordered a simulation of what would happen if a reactor was attacked when it was ran at extremely low power. In order to run this test Soviet technicians had to disable some 22 automatic safety systems in order to get the reactor to even get it to run at that low of a power setting. Essentially the reactor and its coolant systems stalled causing a melt down and subsequent steam explosion and hydrogen explosion. Three Mile Island was very similar to the Chernobyl incident. One of the systems in the reactor coolant loop showed conflicting reports and the system moved to shut the reactor down automatically as it was designed to do. However the controllers overrode this process. The reactor began losing coolant wanter until the core started overheating and there was a steam explosion as well as a hydrogen explosion just as at Chernobyl. But unlike the Soviet designed reactors, US reactors have a large re-enforced concrete and steel structure that was designed to contain such events and indeed it worked very well at Three Mile Island.

Finally I would be remiss if I did not mention the threat of terrorism. By my estimation, and many of my co-workers, the worse thing that could happen in the event of a terrorist attack on a nuclear power station would be that the reactor would scram, or shut down automatically. The walls of the reactor building are double layered and so thick that a speeding 747 would most likely have little effect on critical reactor components. Another concern is the theft by terrorists of high level nuclear waste such as spent fuel. This is a physical impossibility! Much of this spent fuel can emit over 1 million Rem. Anyone who came in direct contact with radiation at this level would receive a fatal dose of radiation in less the 2 seconds! Finally the security at nuclear power stations is incredibly tight so the chances of anyone mounting an attack would be slim to none.

Certainly there are risks associated with nuclear power, but there are more risks with continuing on our present course of using primarily fossil fuels which will may lead to drastic climate change and even worse has the threat of igniting a global war for energy, especially oil.

Answer 6

the by products and radiation sickness and if the plant plant goes terminal that city screwed for 100 mile out or so and the by products half life is like 50,000 years or something crazy like that