Nuclear - The Future Of Energy?

It’s a simple fact that the way we power our everyday life is going to change. The main debate, is how?

Governments around the world are all investing huge amounts of money into researching and subsidising green energy as we diminish our dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, polluting the atmosphere as we do so. Britain alone invested £2.5billion last year into finding alternative sources of energy to feed our greedy desire for unnecessary luxuries.

Solar panels, wind turbines, tidal barrages, hydroelectric dams... all great ideas, but is there something better? It’s responsible for 41% of France’s energy mix, but just 8% of the UK’s, so is nuclear a resource something our government has failed to exploit or is it a precarious danger that the UK has wisely avoided? Of course, these questions never have ‘correct’ answers, but there are some clear facts that will point anyone in the direction of their own opinion.


Methods of harnessing nuclear energy are extremely complex, but it is still important to have a basic understanding in order to make an informed judgement about nuclear energy:

So, lets consider the main arguments for and against usng nuclear fuels (uranium and plutonium) to generate electricity. The advantages are huge. Electricity produced from nuclear is cheap. This is very important since nowadays the market is so competitive that investment in this technology has to be economically viable. One reason for this low cost is the efficiency of the fuel rods. The electicity generated from 1kg of uranium is equivalent to the electricity generated from 20,000kg of coal! This greatly reduces the transport costs and makes it more competitive than both trditional fossil fuels and modern renewables. However, this is offset slightly by the high cost of capital investment in the plant, disposal of the radioactive old fuel rods and final decomissioing of the plant.
More benefits of nuclear energy are that it is low carbon and does not create ash containing heavy metal toxins like lead, and the technology has been well developed from 1956 and there are now 439 reactors in 31 countries around the world.
Of course, there are those who believe the risk of an accident like Chernobyl outweighs the benefits. However, these are extremely uncommon, and France seems to be managng fine, so why can't we!
Prehaps the government is sared about the devistaion of a huge disaster, or maybe they just don't understand it! but uranium isn't about to run out any time soon, so I say nuclear power seems like a secure, economically viable solution to coping with the extra pressures of higher demand for energy.