Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Lets give Nuclear Power a chance...can we please?

I know its scary but I really think that's its time for the big Change (its big enough to be capitalized!)
(PS this is a nuclear power plant in the far islands of Germany)
So they're closing another Nuclear Power Plant. Another one. 
                         That's definitely the last straw (though technically for me, it would be the first one. I really haven't really been in the closing nuclear power plants and other groovy news items loop :p ). I seriously think that if things keep going this way, we won't have any (nuclear) power plants left. Imagine that!
                         Most people have an incredibly bad opinion about nuclear power plants, calling it "dangerous" and "unnecessary". It seems like a lot of drama over something that's a good thing :/ 
                            
                        First of all, nuclear power plants aren't dangerous! I don't know what put that notion into people's heads (actually I do, if you're remembering all those explosions. Take note that there has been only one actual dangerous nuclear disaster in history and that was at Chernobyl. Want to know how many people died of it? 56). I'm not saying that it's okay for 56 people to die, if it's just 56 people. 
            I'm saying that nuclear disasters, which people think would happen everyday, almost never happen! We've had only one dangerous one so far, and it was 27 years ago! Technology has improved, we're only getting better at making energy. It's a lot safer now, we haven't had an accident in a looong time (I choose to ignore Fukushima- no I haven't been living under a rock, I know that it happened- because the death toll isn't in. So far they have just one man who died within a 20-mile radius due to anything that remotely resembles over-exposure to high radiation levels). 
                         And also, its not like Nuclear Power Plants are the only ones that have accidents...(because I'm not here to cover up the mistakes made in the past, they're here and there's nothing we can do about it-except for learn from them, which we do- I'm here to point fingers!) Other sources of energy are equally dangerous, sometimes- and by that I mean most of the time- these other sources are a LOT more dangerous. My obvious example would be oil!


That would be uncomfortable on my roof too
Yes i have resorted to cute animal pictures
But hey! they work :)
  • First they build they're huge drilling machines over the pretty (dangerous and slippery) Arctic landscape.
  • They they take it out. But what good is oil if its all stuck in the Arctic right? So now they take their humongous oil tankers up there to get all the oil back. They aren't even CAREFUL with it. Oils spills are soo common nowadays...(seriously, you can go Google "oil spill in the news" right now and you would probably get news about an oil spill that occurred yesterday or maybe last week?)There have been more than 150 dangerous oil spills recorded in history. The Exxon Valdez and BP oil spills are some of the worst. Just because the ones affected aren't people (in this case, adorable sea otters and other amazing creatures of the sea) doesn't mean that we shouldn't care!


Oil refinery in the UAE
  • Then this oil (if it survives an oil spill that is) is taken to a refinery to be well, refined. That's where the people dying part comes in. Do you know how much an oil refinery pollutes the environment in a year? I don't know and I don't want to. Polluted air sucks, it kills people...more than 56 people (I don't mean to offend the 56 who died but I really need them for my comparisons. I'm not evil! Don't judge me!!). THIS is what most environmentalists are always talking about. The ozone layer, polluted air...it all seems so repetitive...but hey! I guess that's the price you pay right?
  • Then this refined oil is put into cars, airplanes and all the other ego-rising vessels for transportation and what do we get? More pollution!! yay! (plush interiors and all that jazz to death right?) 
  • OR that refined oil is burned to give us "energy" (so what do we have now? A lot of pollution and maybe, just maybe a little titchy bit of energy which isn't enough. Who would've thought?)

                      Now why did I even go into oil and how much it sucks to be a part of a wrld that uses it? Oh yeah...Nuclear Power Plants :)
Thermal power plant in India
                           As I was saying, nuclear power plants are NOT "dangerous" or "expensive". They are, truth be told, a lot cheaper than natural gas/ oil power plants. Its really surprising, really really surprising considering that nuclear power plants make about 73 thousand times more energy than any old natural gas power plant. (73199.998536 to be exact). According to MIT's estimation, natural gas power plants cost about 5.1 ¢/kWhr (cents per kilo-watts hour) while a nuclear power plant costs about 3.5 ¢/kWhr. Lets not forget that natural gas also costs a lot to manufacture, and is also super polluting. Now we know that nuclear power plants are cheaper, we know that they're a lot less work (just one power plant and we're good for the next ten years...no messy refining or drilling). Why not give it a shot? Think of the baby otters!!

Nuclear power plants are green, they're cheap and they aren't what you think they are. Lets give them a chance, because if we do wanna keep riding our cars and flying our planes we should stop using oil to power our lights and computers too!


My source for ALL of this information is http://www.eia.gov/ which is actually a government website and is ALL credible- so this is more than just one delusional girl's thoughts, their real. (I can't believe that I just called myself delusional).

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