Final Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Final - Research Paper Example The necessity to create and develop new and cleaner supply of energy is both an imperative of environmental conservation and economics. The urgency of creating and developing new energy supply is urgent due to the damage wrought by the excessive carbon emission of the traditional sources of energy that caused irreversible climate change and other irreversible damage to the environment (Kelly, 2008). One alternative that is seriously considered is nuclear power. Just like any other source of power, nuclear power has its benefits and disadvantages. One of the most popular argument for the preferential use of nuclear power as an alternative source of energy is that it does not produce pollutants and thus can mitigate the effect of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emission especially carbon dioxide. It also makes energy supplies more secure as the diversification of energy source will lessen the dependency on fuel imports. It is also a cheap source of energy as one single nuclea r power plant can produce tremendous amount of electricity. There are however concerns about the use of nuclear power as an alternative source of energy. Foremost to these concerns is the possibility of a nuclear meltdown just like what happened to Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. Next is the issue of the disposal of radioactive waste which can prove to be deadly when a living thing is exposed, that includes humans, animals and plants. The Chernobyl disaster demonstrated how devastating a nuclear meltdown is that the nearby town of Pripyat in Ukraine still remained uninhabited today after the 1986 disaster and made it a reason why nuclear technology should not be used. The present reality however compels a serious consideration of an alternative source of energy. At present, other sources of energy are already depleted because they are non renewable and needs to be abandoned because they pollute the environment (Armaroli, & Balzani, 2011). Nuclear power provides an excellen t alternative because it does not release any pollutants to the atmosphere. Unlike the traditional fossil fuel which converts itself into carbon dioxide during its conversion into electrical energy, nuclear power does not emit carbon dioxide because it is not being burned to create electrical energy (Clemmit, 2010). Energy is created in a chemical process which decomposition takes place exothermally that heats up a water to create a steam that would consequently propel the connecting turbine to create electrical energy from a stored chemical energy. This technology was already available since 1600s and may have been first used as a weapon to bomb the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Second World War (Graetz, 2011) but it was only in 1957 that it was first used as a source of energy when the first nuclear power plant was constructed at Pennsylvania when a uranium atom was discovered that could be split to produce sub-atomic particles of high energy content (Kelley, 2008). The nuclear power as a source of energy also proved to be efficient because it only requires a very small amount of raw materials to produce a large quantity of energy (Cavallaro, 2010). Raiput even estimated that it a single nuclear plant could supply energy for an entire country for a long time (2006). It is also cost efficient because it requires minimal cost in its maintenance that could last up to sixty years (the regular