Nuclear power is one of the most argued issues. Some people support nuclear power but some people are totally against the use of nuclear energy. All of them have their perspectives and reasons. And I’ll give you my opinion about nuclear energy but first, let’s start with the definition of nuclear energy.
“Nuclear energy, also called atomic energy, is energy that is released in significant amounts in processes that affect atomic nuclei, the dense cores of atoms. It is different from the energy of other atomic phenomena such as ordinary chemical reactions, which only include the orbital electrons of atoms.”1 The force causing the nuclear energy is the strong force in the nucleus of the atom this force holds the nucleus together.
Nuclear energy can be obtained in two ways: fission, and fusion. But I’ll talk about the first one, which is fission because all of the nuclear power plants in the world use fission. Fission is the way of observing nuclear energy by splitting the nucleus of an atom. Whenever we do fission or fusion, radiation spreads out but in nuclear power plants for avoiding the harmful effects of radiation on the environment, they keep the radioactive water, which if spreads into the environment cause leakage, inside the nucleus of the reactor and this water is never taken out into the environment. And nuclear power plants are checked very often for avoiding these risks. Therefore, the risk of leakage of nuclear energy is very low.
When we compare the efficiency of nuclear energy with other energy types, we can say that the most efficient source of energy is nuclear energy.
“As you can see, nuclear energy has by far the highest capacity factor of any other energy source. This basically means nuclear power plants are producing maximum power more than 93% of the time during the year.”2 Also it is proven that nuclear energy is the safest source of energy.
And nuclear energy is even cleaner than solar energy because nuclear energy has no carbon emission or no poisonous gas release.
Therefore, I think nuclear energy is the energy source of future as the global warming increases and even it is one of the main sources of energy in dominant countries so we should take a part in the future’s bright nuclear world and use the most efficient source of energy, which is a carbon zero energy called nuclear energy.
References:
1 https://www.britannica.com/science/nuclear-energy