What Are the Problems With Nuclear Power Plants?
- Nuclear power plants pose safety and sustainability issues that concern supporters and opponents alike.nuclear power station 4 image by Vitezslav Halamka from Fotolia.com
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), America's 104 nuclear power plants provide approximately 20 percent of our electricity. While they can be viewed as an energy alternative source that's low on greenhouse gas production, nuclear plants pose potentially serious risks, including the waste that accumulates from spent reactor fuel and their potential to become terrorist targets. The finite supply of uranium 235, their primary reactor fuel, also poses long-term problems. - According to the EPA, America's nuclear power plants produce 2,000 metric tons of radioactive waste every year. Spent reactor fuel emits extremely high levels of radiation, and the isotopes formed by the atomic reactions that generate power can remain radioactive for thousands of years. A nuclear power plant must shut down every 18 to 24 months so the spent fuel can be removed from the reactor, and Bloomberg reports that this waste is currently stored in 120 different sites among 39 states. The United States currently has no facilities to either partially reprocess the place or for deep, shielded underground storage. Congress intended Yucca Mountain, Nevada to provide a site for permanent waste storage, but capping 27 years of legal challenges to the proposal, President Barack Obama scuttled the plan in favor of developing another way to manage nuclear waste.
- The UCS reported in 2007 that security measures at America's nuclear plants were insufficient to deter or repulse a terrorist attack. Retired CIA Operations Officer Charles Faddis echoed those concerns, noting that security at nuclear power plants is handled by private security guards who typically receive low pay and little training. If terrorists were able to seize a nuclear plant and cause a meltdown, the resulting dispersal of hard radiation would be catastrophic in terms of lives lost and land rendered uninhabitable. The UCS report also expressed concern over the potential of terrorist groups to obtain fissionable material to use in nuclear weapons, noting that this threat is most acute in nations that reprocess spent reactor fuel to produce plutonium.
- Nuclear power plants rely on uranium 235, which is a finite, non-renewable resource, as their primary reactor fuel. Australia's Monash University released an analysis indicating that uranium supplies have been decreasing for the past 50 years and that remaining deposits are becoming more difficult and expensive to mine. MIT news reported in 2007 that global uranium production only met 65 percent of global nuclear power plant requirements. America relies on Russia for half of its uranium needs, which Russia has supplied by converting nuclear weapon material to reactor fuel. The present deal expires in 2013. Russia, China and India are turning to nuclear power plants to meet their energy needs, forcing America to compete with them in the market for reactor fuel.
