When most people hear the word "nuclear."  Not very many good thoughts come into mind.  Which is a fair characterization.  Through most of history since nuclear material became more known to the public, it's 95% of the time in reference to nuclear weapons.  Weapons of mass destruction.  Capable of leveling entire cities and wiping out millions of lives in a near instant.  Weapons that produce a fireball of heat that exceeds temperatures found on the surface and interior of the Sun!


But what about nuclear energy?


Since 1954, when the Soviet Union created the first plant used for civil power, reactors have been silently and safely producing enormous amounts of power for millions of people.  Despite being powered by a decaying nuclear isotope.  Nuclear energy actually produces zero emissions.  Used nuclear fuel is produced but over the past 60 years, less than 10% of a football field worth of used fuel has been produced.   And now physicists are coming up with ways to possibly reuse it.  In terms of land compared to the amount of land required by solar or wind farms.  Nuclear plants are actually extremely small.  Usually requiring no more than 1 square mile.  Whereas solar and wind farms require upwards of 300x that amount of space.  There is currently no wind or solar farm in existence that is capable of producing more power than the average nuclear plant.


Backtracking a bit.  When I used the word "safe" earlier.  It is used rather loosely on occasion.  Because things have gone wrong.  Granted, this has been more due to recklessness, poor design, and human error.  Usually a combination of or all three factors.  Chernobyl being the number 1 example of this; was a case of all three.  Reckless supervisors, poor/cheap design, and workers incapable of running the reactor properly.  This lead to the most disastrous and lethal nuclear accident in history.  While preventable, it cannot be ignored that problems like this are perfectly possible both then and now.  A great many steps have been taken to both prevent and contain these incidents, but nothing is truly 100%.  The Fukushima Daiichi disaster proved this being caused by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake.  However, the two just don't compare due to the amount of fail safes it had versus how many Chernobyl did not. 



But I'm curious to know what you think.  What are you opinions on nuclear energy?  Is it safe?  Should we be using more of it?  Less?  Or none at all? 
 

As a science communication major, I am sad about how the communication came about when nuclear energy was first developed. Now, people are afraid of it. It feels like it never got a fair chance. From what I've learned in the few energy lectures I've followed, it's actually a very clean energy source and, while disasters like Chernobyl happened, actually costs less lives than other sources (think wind energy - killing birds, coal energy - killing humans).

It's true (and feels logical somehow?) that people consider 'a (relative) few of deaths in 1 place/timeframe' more traumatic than 'a lot of deaths globally/over a long time'. But when you try to step back and think about it, you'd rather want the 'few deaths', right?
Example: we tend to think Corona Virus is more scary than smoking. But when you step back and realise how many deaths each have caused, you know smoking is far more dangerous.
Anyway, I'm slacking off..

Yea nuclear energy is great.

Sadly I am still of the mindset that Nuclear is a scarey thing.  I realise we need to find other power sources, hopefully we will find something.

There is good and bad in most things we have to weigh up is it worth it?

Sadly I am still of the mindset that Nuclear is a scarey thing.  I realise we need to find other power sources, hopefully we will find something.

There is good and bad in most things we have to weigh up is it worth it?

I think it is.  There is always that possibility but the number of steps we've taken to ensure safety should something goes wrong has gone up exponentially since Chernobyl.  Chernobyl had poor design, very few safety measures, and undertrained staff. 

How is nuclear power even made?

How is nuclear power even made?

In basic terms: Atoms with high potential energy get split. The heat that gets produced by this reaction is used to produce power.

Nuclear power is very efficiënt and I'm very pro nuclear energy. It is sad that people still feel it is too dangerous. People are also too focused on just using uranium for nuclear energy. There are ways to get nuclear energy using thorium. That doesn't even produce plutonium as a product so it can't be used to create nuclear bombs afterwards.

I could go on an entire rant about how nuclear energy is a good transition source of energy on our way to complete green energy, but that would be an essay and I don't think it would benefit anyone.

But yeah: Please people consider using nuclear energy as the inbetween solution.