Is nuclear energy harmful to the enviroment
l have to do a science project for school and I am researching the element
Uranium. The project is to make a promotional poster for useage of your
element, but l do not wanna write stuff about nuclear bombs. l know you
can use Uranium for nuclear energy but l was not sure if it was better
than using petroleum. Please included a list of Uranium is other uses too
if you can. Thanks!
Uranium has two basic uses. The first use is to create energy
through nuclear reactions. The second use is as a very heavy metal.
In the first case, the uranium isotope U-235 must be enriched to support
nuclear reactions. This process of enrichment produces some uranium that
has more U-235 than naturally occurring uranium & a whole lot of uranium
that has less U-235 than naturally occuring uranium. The uranium with less U-235 than normal is called ''depleted uranium''. Depleted uranium is used for certain types of armor piercing projectiles used by US tanks & some planes. This is because it is cheap, plentiful, dense, & ''self-sharpening''. As defense, US tanks also use depleted uranium as armor. It is a very dense metal, so it is also sometimes used as an effective counter weight for ships, boats, & sometimes on airplane components where there is too little space to use plain steel. Uranium is chemically toxic to humans, but is easily detected because it is radioactive. (Many other chemicals like lead, gasoline, drain cleaner, etc. are also chemically toxic to humans, so uranium isn't special in this regard.) Uranium is very good for producing electricity in large power plants. Petroleum is good for powering automobiles & trucks. Neither is good at doing the other is job. Uranium does have some dangerous wastes, but these wastes are easily contained & very small in comparison to the amount of energy they produce. (For a year of operation, a power plant will only produce a couple of cubic meters of high level waste.) Petroleum also has dangerous wastes & they are emitted directly into the atmosphere where people breathe them in (smog, particulates, carbon monoxide, etc.). In my opinion, petroleum is much more hazardous than uranium for that reason.
Compose the promotional poster for ''your element,'' U-235.
Urge ur audience to agree to enrichment of natural uranium (which is
mostly U-238 & doesn't work) to get the most of U-235 that is left. Assure
ur audience that you want to use U-235 for power generation purposes & not
to make bombs. Your purpose is to insert fuel rods enriched in U-235 into
the core of a reactor. U-235 decays spontaneously by fission to produce
neutrons & ''a lot a other isotopes.'' The many neutrons react with more U-235 to cause more fission. Eventually, there are so many fission events going on & so many neutrons produced, that the whole thing becomes a sustainable chain reaction. Things get really hot. You can use the heat to boil water. You can use the steam to turn a steam turbine. You can get electricity from that. There is no carbon dioxide. There is no petroleum. Your element, uranium, is a ''green'' element. LOL
Nuclear energy is harmful to the environment if the condensed
radioactive material is released into it, such as through a reactor
meltdown or waste spill.
Whether uranium is better than petroleum is debatable. If you have equal
volumes of uranium & petroleum, the uranium will generate more energy (way
more, from what I remember), which is a good thing because it can keep costs down. Uranium doesn't emit greenhouse gasses or other atmospheric pollutants, also a good thing. However, there will be nuclear waste produced, so what do you do with it? Then there is the potential for disaster to consider (think Chernobyl). Check these wikipedia articles for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Uranium is a fuel for nuclear fission, not fusion and fission
(nuclear) power is superior to fossil fuel power for many reasons. The
concerns are also greater, however. The main concerns are waste disposal
and damage caused by mishandling of fuel or waste, contamination of water
and the potential for a major meltdown disaster. Increased benefit comes
with increased risk.
the fact is that there is no other source known to man that
produces more heat energy (this is used to turn turbines that produce
electricity) per pound of waste than nuclear fusion. The problem is that
is is highly dangersou (causing cancer & such) for thousands of years. The
spent nuclear rods must be kept in giant concrete storages tens of feet
underground.
There are some places that nuclear energy can go & not be harmful, though. Nuclear fusion is used to power many un-manned spaceflights. It generates electricity for many years & in space it cant harm anything (anything that most of the earth cares about).
it is bad when it meltsdown!
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