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Nuclear Power: The Savior of the Human Race

Seth Daniel

Department of Communication, The University of Kentucky

CIS 111: Composition and Communication II

Dr. Joe Martin

February 19, 2021

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Abstract

Nuclear power is the way of the future and one day the whole world will be run by it. Nuclear

power has the ability to put out more power than all other renewable energy sources. Also, it

isn’t as dangerous as the public is led to believe, and it is even less dangerous than many other

energy sources. Although the implementation of nuclear power would be detrimental to other

energy industries, it is a step that must be taken at some point for the successful future of the

human race.
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Nuclear Power: The Savior of the Human Race

In 1986, as the result of reactor design flaws and the breach of protocol by insufficiently

trained employees, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine exploded and left a

lasting bad impression of nuclear power on the whole world. Nuclear power is the final solution

to the earth’s quest to find a sustainable renewable energy source. Nuclear energy isn’t as

dangerous as the public is led to believe, and it is even less dangerous than many other energy

sources. In addition, the energy that can be produced by a nuclear plant is immense, especially in

comparison to other renewable sources.

The Power of Nuclear Power

The magnitude of electricity that a nuclear plant generates is a factor that just cannot be

ignored when it comes to comparing energy sources. Nuclear reactors just simply out-power and

out-perform the capabilities of all other energy sources. According to the US Department of

Energy, a standard nuclear plant produces around one gigawatt of electricity. To produce that

much power in other sources you would need, “almost two coal or three to four renewable plants

(each of 1 GW size) to generate the same amount of electricity onto the grid,”(Mueller, 2020).

One of the reasons why they out-power other energy sources is because of their superior level of

reliability. Reliability in energy sources is measured by their capacity factor. The capacity factor

is essentially the percentage of time out of a given year that a power source produces electricity

at maximum capacity. Once again referring to the Department of Energy, the capacity factors of

solar energy, hydropower, and coal are 29.5%, 34.1%, and 47.5% respectively. This can be

compared to the 93.5% of the time that nuclear reactors spend operating at full capacity.

Dangerous Ideas and Safe Practices

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Possessing a plant that has the ability to produce so much power may seem very

dangerous, but the truth of the matter is that although nuclear reactors have the potential to cause

great destruction, in all reality they are not as dangerous as you have been led to believe. For

example, the world-famous Chernobyl disaster, the deadliest and most destructive reactor

incident in history, was marked by only 27 deaths immediately after the incident and 15 deaths

due to thyroid cancer caused by radiation-contaminated milk, (Rhodes, 2018). Although those

are 42 irreplaceable human lives, the impact seems insignificant when compared to the 26,000

people that were drowned in Henan Province, China following the failure of a hydroelectric dam,

(Rhodes, 2018). The danger of energy sources can actually be measured based on deaths per any

given constant amount of energy. The actual danger of nuclear energy can be shown below in

comparison to other energy sources.

Deaths per terawatt-hour of energy for various sources

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For the Future

As you can see, nuclear power is both more powerful and less dangerous than other

energy sources. Nuclear power seems to be the way of the future when those facts are combined

with the fact that it is renewable and has fewer greenhouse emissions per terawatt-hour than any

other source. Nuclear power is humanity’s climate change solution that has been staring us in the

face for six decades.

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References

Mueller, Mike. (2020). Nuclear Power is the Most Reliable Energy Source and It's Not Even

Close.​ United States Department of Energy.​

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-n

ot-even-close

Rhodes, R. (2018). Why Nuclear Power Must Be Part of the Energy Solution. ​Yale University.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-nuclear-power-must-be-part-of-the-energy-solution-en

vironmentalists-climate

Ritchie, H. (2020). What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy? ​Our World in Data.

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy