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Nuclear Energy
Published April 6, 2022
From the still water sheds a subtle warmth. Bodies cluster together, giants standing upright. Waiting, wanting to collapse from an otherwise slow decay. The ground purrs, a fan flutters on, and now endlessly the water runs circles.
A lonesome neutron hurls through detesting currents. Inside the circling, inside these bodies excited and tamed, atoms burst like shattering glass. One neutron dislodges, two, three. One after one neighboring atoms uncage in hysteria.
The equation below demonstrates this chain reaction:
The heat part you see at the end of the equation is all that matters. With every splitting uranium atom comes another wave of heat. The surrounding water circulates through a pump, and heats up to the point of producing steam. The steam then tunnels off to spin a massive turbine, generating electricity.
It’s comical, almost. So much precaution for such a dangerous procedure, all to produce steam to spin a turbine.
Environmental Impact
Just last fall I recall happening upon a moment in my Spanish course. We discussed environmental concerns—air pollution, water pollution, climate change—and the instructor broached the topic of nuclear waste. “La energía nuclear es mala para el medio ambiente debido a los desechos nucleares,” which means, I don’t know a damn thing about nuclear energy. The synchronous nods, a swift accord. With my amateur knowledge of nuclear energy, you want to know what I did after hearing this?
Absolutely nothing, because I’m too aloof and afraid of attention. But just how many Americans are still unaware of the untapped potential of nuclear energy, its significance as a clean alternative power source?
Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest and largest sources of power we use to this day. It provides carbon-free electricity, promoting air quality and reducing the effect of the creeping death that is climate change.
I’m not going to throw a bunch of numbers in your face about how many kilowatt-hours nuclear energy produces in the US, and expect you to gawk at the number in awe. Oh, the futility in referencing these data!
Kilo—who?
Exactly.
As of 2021, nuclear energy makes up 18.6% of US utility-scale electricity generation. It is the largest source of clean energy in the US, accounting for nearly half of all clean energy used for electricity generation, which includes wind, hydropower, solar, photovoltaic, and biomass sources.
Nuclear energy is also the most reliable energy source—a single nuclear reactor can run continuously until needing to be refueled every two years. The longevity of this power source is what’s necessary to power our restless cities for a full season, unlike our wind and solar alternatives. All day the wind does not blow, and all day the sun does not shine.
If you haven’t noticed already, I’ve avoided calling nuclear energy a renewable power source. As much as I’d like it to be, it is not. There is no infinite supply of uranium. In fact, uranium is considered 100 times more rare than silver.
Several mining companies collect unrefined uranium from sand and gravel deposits within groundwater reservoirs through a process called in-situ-leach. An acidic solution leaches uranium off the surface of these rock particles, dissolving it into the groundwater, only to be pumped out of the reservoir. This is but the first of many steps before the uranium concentration is fabricated into pellets small enough to fit the fuel rods of a reactor.
If the US is going to fulfill its commitment in achieving 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035, we’re going to need grid-scale energy storage that can last us a full season. Wind and solar power are a great start to getting to 100% clean energy generation, but I don’t see us moving toward this goal anytime soon without using nuclear energy as an intermediate before we move to predominantly nonrenewable energy.
The Future
I can understand how people would disapprove of nuclear power plants after learning about our past disasters, such as the nuclear disasters in Kyshtym, Fukushima, and Chernobyl—they were absolutely catastrophic. Have you seen the limited series Chernobyl? It strikingly captures the volatile nature of what our inventions can become: nightmares.
Great show, though. Highly recommend watching it.
This shouldn’t stop us from expanding our reach in nuclear energy, though. We didn’t just stop driving cars after the first time someone died in a car crash. We added seat belts and rear-view mirrors and brake lights and a whole bunch of other safety measures to mitigate future disasters. Even now there are so many safety regulations—both necessary and redundant—in place for the operation of nuclear reactors. We have large concrete domes covering the reactor, containment structures to catch releases of radiation, cooling towers to slow the decay of spent fuel. The list goes on and on.
Two more nuclear reactors are being constructed at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia. The state of Georgia projects the first of its new reactors, Unit 3, to be online by the third quarter of 2022, and the other, Unit 4, to be online by the second quarter of 2023. This is remarkable progress considering that the last US nuclear reactor was built more than 30 years ago.
One last feature is needed for large-scale nuclear energy: large-scale waste management. The US currently does not have a designated repository for high-level nuclear waste. Typically the spent fuel is stored in pools of water at the nuclear plant to avoid radiation leakage during transportation, so a permanent repository for nuclear waste is not necessary.
However, if construction of more nuclear reactors continues, coupled with state and federal legislation to form economic incentives for clean energy in the next decade, the US will have a permanent underground repository for old nuclear waste. A hidden closet of fuel rods, uranium slowly decaying by the second, stretched in rows where the water is still, warm, and lifeless.