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Nuclear Power: The Safe and Green Alternative

Alexander P Powers Environmental Management

Senior SPEA Honors Thesis Presentation

Gregory Crouch IUB Radiation Safety Officer

Clinical Professor SPEA Faculty Mentor

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Coal has been the number one source for electrical power in the United States

for many years. The fact that the coal has been so readily available has made it the

main producer of electricity in the past centuries. The amount of coal that is located in

America has made it an obvious and relatively cheap choice in producing electricity

since it was discovered. However, just because it has always been the main producer of

electricity, does it mean that it is the best way to do so? I do not believe that this the

case. Coal burning has major negatives to health and the environment that I will

discuss later in this paper. Because of these negatives I believe that our dependence on

coal should change in the future in order to live in a way that protects the environment

and public health. We have explored a couple of options to coal the last couple of

decades. These have included solar and wind energy as green energy producer. These

have proved to be a much cleaner way to produce energy. They use things such as sun

light and wind that occur naturally to produce energy. However, I do not believe these

are viable ways to rival coal as a way to lead the country in producing energy. Both of

these techniques just are not energy intensive enough to replace coal burning. Nor are

they consistently reliable (if the sun is not shinning or the wind is not blowing then we

are not producing any electricity). This is why I do not believe these are viable options.

However, there is one type of energy production that could rival coal as a viable option.

. This type of energy production is nuclear power.

Nuclear power is not a new technique to produce energy but it is not widely used

in the United States. Just when this technology started to take off in the 1970s in the

United States soaring construction costs and the Three Mile Island accident happened. I

will touch on these topics later in the paper. However, because we have so much coal in

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the United States, we will never completely stop burning coal. We could however stop

expanding the growth of coal produced electricity, and instead turn our focus and

resources into building more nuclear power plants.

Current Energy Production

Currently in the United States, we use several different ways to produce

electricity. As I have mentioned before the main producer is coal at about 49 percent.

Nuclear power contributes about 20 percent of the nation’s electrical energy. Below is a

pie chart that represents the sources of electrical production in the United States.

Figure 1.

(surviving the future)

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Nuclear Power- How it works

Before comparing the two ways of producing energy, I will briefly explain how

nuclear power works. There are two ways to produce nuclear energy. These two ways

are fission and fusion. The fission process works with kinetic energy, which can be

turned into heat. First there is an isotope of Uranium called Uranium 235 (U-235). U-235

and plutonium nuclei are split or fission. The kinetic energy of the fission fragments are

converted into heat as the fragments are slowed. Finally the heat is then converted into

energy (Carbon, 1997 9). This process is explained in the figure below.

Figure 2: Fission Process

(Carbon,1997)

The other way to produce nuclear energy is fusion. In the fusion process the

nuclei of atoms combine or “fuse” together. By doing this mass is lost in the process. In

turn that mass is converted into energy. However, fusion is much harder to do on earth

than fission. One reason for this is because it takes extremely hot temperatures to work,

a lot hotter than temperatures on earth. We have not been successful at using fusion to

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make power. Since the need for clean energy is here and now, this type of nuclear

energy will not be talked about (Carbon, 1997,10).

Public Health

In this paper I am going to compare coal and nuclear power on three criteria to

show that nuclear power is a viable choice for future energy production needs. These

three criteria are public health, environmental impact, and economic impact. The first

criteria I will discuss is public health. Along with public health I will include safety. I

believe this is an important topic in dealing with nuclear power. Over the years nuclear

power has been construed in a negative light. One of the main reasons for this is

because people feel that nuclear power is not safe. The big reason for this is because

the accident at Chernobyl in the 1980s. Chernobyl was a nuclear reactor in the Soviet

Union that had a nuclear meltdown, which released high levels of radiation. As one

would imagine the media picked up this story and ran with it. The British Daily Mail’s

front page read “2000 Dead” and the New York Post said that fifteen thousand bodies

were bulldozed into nuclear waste pits. Also, the National Resources Defense Council

speculated that over a hundred thousand cancers would develop (Bate). As one can

see, the media stepped in and really fuelled the pandemonium around this accident.

The predictions that were expressed overshot the actual effects. The World Nuclear

Association confirms that the accident directly killed thirty people, not 2000. Also, the

only clear health danger cited by the World Health Organization was an estimated

increase of seven hundred thyroid cancers. Out of this increase, there were ten deaths

(“Chernobyl”). The figures and estimates of the deaths that were caused by the

accident at Chernobyl were exaggerated. This overestimating by the media and other

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officials caused people in the world and the United States to be scared of nuclear

power. This contributed to the decline in nuclear power exploration and expansion in

the United State. . The important thing to remember about the accident at Chernobyl is

that it was all preventable. The problems that caused the meltdown were caused by

human error. The people that were working at the plant do not do the proper things that

could have helped stop the problem. Nuclear power was unfairly judged by the media,

and that influenced the public opinion that nuclear power is unsafe.

However, the facts support that nuclear power is safe. Not only is it safe, but it is

safer than the burning of coal. It is not only safer to the people surrounding the plant

and in its proximity, but it is also safer for the workers involved with the mining and

burning of coal. The burning of coal produces thousands of tons of hazardous waste. A

state of the art coal powered power plant in Milliken, New York puts out eighteen

thousand tons of sulfuric acid, seven thousand tons of nitric acid, and three and a half

million tons of carbon dioxide each and every year it is operational (Wharton). All of

these pollutants in the air are detrimental to human health (I will discuss the

environmental effects of this later). For example, the pollution emitted from a single coal

plant in Massachusetts are estimated to cause about one hundred and sixty premature

deaths, one thousand seven hundred emergency respiratory ailments, and forty-three

thousand asthma attacks (Wharton). Even though you cannot actually see these

pollutants, they are still very harmful to the human population. We as a society are

breathing in these harmful air particles and it is taking a toll on our health.

Nuclear power plants, however, do not emit these harmful substances into the

air. Nuclear power plants emit small amount of radiation. These small amounts of

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radiation have uncertain effects but they are not cause for excessive or abnormal fears

(Carbon, 1997, 33). The nuclear plants emit low levels of radiation but inside the plant

there are high levels of radiation. Because of this the plants take extreme caution when

dealing with the radiation and the entire nuclear process. The source of radiation in

these plants is the fuel rods. These rods are made of an alloy of metal zirconium which

contains the fuel pellets (Carbon, 1997, 36). The problem lies in that fact that these rods

get very hot. If these rods get too hot they can melt and release their radioactive

contents. . Because of this, the nuclear plants have many plans in keeping these rods

cool. To keep these rods cool, high quality water pumps are used. There are backup

pumps and several supplies of water are installed to provide cooling incase the regular

pumps and water supply fails. These pumps run on electricity. For safety reasons,

several different power sources are provided to run the pumps. In case one goes out,

there are others to take over and cool the rods. In the newer plants the cooling water is

stored in tanks where the water flows with gravity, so it can cool the rods for a couple

hours while the pumps are being fixed (Carbon,1997, 37). As one can see there are

many different ways to keep the fuel rods from melting and releasing large amounts of

radiation into the environment. However, these are not the only safety precautions. The

plant itself is designed to keep radiation in. There is cladding around the fuel rod made

from a “high-melting-point-material” and a thick steel container in which the core is

located. Then each reactor is enclosed in a building (Carbon, 1997,38) . These

buildings are shown in the figure below.

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Figure 3. Water Reactor Containment Barriers

(Carbon,1997,38)

There are many safe guards to protect from large amount of radiation escaping into the

environment. Because of these techniques and building specifications it is very unlikely

that radiation from a nuclear power plant would escape and cause significant harm to

the citizens near the plant. The safety of these nuclear plants is very good. This

suggests that the fear associated with nuclear power plants does not correspond to the

actual risk.. We need to acknowledge the fact, however, that the radiation generated at

these plants can cause problems in the event of a catastrophic accident (such as

Fukishims). However, we have developed extensive controls to reduce the chances of

an accident in these nuclear plants occurring.

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Occupational Safety

Not only are nuclear power plants safe, they have safer working conditions inside

the plant then compared to the coal industry. There have been a number of studies

done over the past 50 years comparing coal burned power plants and other types of

energy production. Below is a study that ranges from the year 1970 to 1992. It

compares the fatal accidents in four of the primary energy production (World Nuclear

Association, 2011).

Figure 4.

Fuel Immediate fatalities

1970-92 Who?

Normalized to deaths

per TWy* electricity

Coal 6400 workers 342

Natural gas 1200 workers & public 85

Hydro 4000 public 883

Nuclear 31 workers 8

(World Nuclear Association, 2011)

As one can see form this table Nuclear power is the safest compared to the other types

of energy production. One reason that the coal number of fatalities is so high is because

of the large amount of it that needs to be mined and transported to the power stations

(World Nuclear Association, 2011). It takes so much coal to make energy, so therefore

the accidents are going to add up. Below is another table accounting for some of the

energy related accidents since 1975.

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Figure 5.

Place year number killed comments

Banqiao, Shimantan & others, Henan, China 1975 30,000 immediate hydro-electric dam failure (18 GWe lost), 230,000 total deaths resulting

Machhu II, India 1979 2500 hydro-electric dam failure

Hirakud, India 1980 1000 hydro-electric dam failure

Donbass, Ukraine 1980 68 coal mine methane explosion

Guavio, Colombia 1983 160 hydro-electric dam failure

Nile R, Egypt 1983 317 LPG explosion

Cubatao, Brazil 1984 508 oil fire

Mexico City 1984 498 LPG explosion

Tbilisi, Russia 1984 100 gas explosion

northern Taiwan 1984 314 3 coal mine accidents

Chernobyl, Ukraine 1986 31+ nuclear reactor accident

Piper Alpha, North Sea 1988 167 explosion of offshore oil platform

Asha-ufa, Siberia 1989 600 LPG pipeline leak and fire

Dobrnja, Yugoslavia 1990 178 coal mine

Hongton, Shaanxi, China 1991 147 coal mine methane explosion

Belci, Romania 1991 116 hydro-electric dam failure

Kozlu, Turkey 1992 272 coal mine methane explosion

Cuenca, Equador 1993 200 coal mine

Durunkha, Egypt 1994 580 fuel depot hit by lightning

Seoul, S.Korea 1994 500 oil fire

Taegu, S.Korea 1995 100 oil & gas explosion

Spitsbergen, Russia 1996 141 coal mine

Datong, Shanxi, China 1996 114 coal mine methane explosion

Fushun, China 1997 68 coal mine methane explosion

Kuzbass, Siberia 1997 67 coal mine methane explosion

Huainan, China 1997 89 coal mine methane explosion

Donbass, Ukraine 1998 63 coal mine methane explosion

Liaoning, China 1998 71 coal mine methane explosion

Warri, Nigeria 1998 500+ oil pipeline leak and fire

Donbass, Ukraine 1999 50+ coal mine methane explosion

Donbass, Ukraine 2000 80 coal mine methane explosion

Muchonggou, Guizhou, China 2000 162 coal mine methane explosion

Zasyadko, Donetsk, E.Ukraine 2001 55 coal mine methane explosion

Jixi, China 2002 124 coal mine methane explosion

Gaoqiao, SW China 2003 234 gas well blowout with H2S

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Place year number killed comments Kuzbass, Russia 2004 47 coal mine methane explosion

Donbass, Ukraine 2004 36 coal mine methane explosion

Henan, China 2004 148 coal mine methane explosion

Chenjiashan, Shaanxi, China 2004 166 coal mine methane explosion

Sunjiawan, Liaoning, China 2005 215 Coal mine methane explosion

Shenlong/ Fukang, Xinjiang, China 2005 83 Coal mine methane explosion

Xingning, Guangdong, China 2005 123 Coal mine flooding

Dongfeng, Heilongjiang, China 2005 171 Coal mine methane explosion or flooding

Bhatdih, Jharkhand, India 2006 54 Coal mine methane explosion

Ulyanovskaya, Kuzbass, Russia 2007 108 Coal mine methane or dust explosion

Zhangzhuang, Shandong, China 2007 181 Coal mine flooding

Zasyadko, Donetsk, E.Ukraine 2007 101 Coal mine methane explosion

Linfen city, Shanxi, China 2007 105 Coal mine methane explosion

Tunlan, Shanxi, China 2009 78 Coal mine methane explosion

Sayano-Shushenskaya, Khakassia, Russia 2009 75 Hydro power plant turbine disintegration

Hegang city, Heilongjiang, China 2009 108 Coal mine methane explosion

Sangha, Bukavu, Congo 2010 235 Fuel tanker accident and fire

(World Nuclear Association, 2011)

As one can see from the table above there are many accidents that are

associated with energy production. The accidents that are dealing with coal mines are

the majority. The coal mine accident with the highest number of deaths is 314. Compare

those numbers with one accident killing 31 people from a nuclear reactor, there is a big

difference. That one accident is the accident at Chernobyl, which everyone thought,

was so bad. The lowest coal accident on the list is 47 deaths. That means the one and

only nuclear reactor accident took less lives then the smallest coal mine accident. By

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looking at this data one can see that nuclear power can be and is safer than coal power,

if done correctly.

Environmental Impact

The next criteria to focus on when comparing these two types of energy

production is the environmental impact they can have on the planet. The production of

coal is known to have a significant effect on the earth’s environment. The burning of

coal produces some alarming pollutants into the atmosphere. According to the Union of

Concerned Scientists a typical coal plant generates the following amounts of air

pollutants in a given year:

3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide

10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide

10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide

500 tons of small airborne particles

220 tons of hydrocarbons

720 tons of carbon monoxide

170 pounds of mercury

225 pounds of arsenic

114 pounds of lead

(Freese et al. 2006)

All of these pollutants come from just one coal burning power plant of about 594

that are in the United States (sourcewatch). As one can see that all of the air pollutants

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that come from all of the coal power plants add up to a huge amount of total air pollution

that is being put into the atmosphere. Also these totals are not added up from all the

years from burning coal, they are from just one year. This means that all of the years

that coal has been burned in this country have added up to a significant impact on the

earth and its atmosphere.

Nuclear power plants on the other hand are on the opposite side of the pollution

spectrum. Nuclear power plants do not produce any pollutants in the air. That means

that nuclear power plants have minimal environmental impact on the earth, during

normal operation. That is a big difference when you compare that to the amount of

pollutants that coal powered power plants produce from the burning of coal. This is why

nuclear power is a green alternative to burning coal to produce energy.

Another aspect of environmental impact that is of major concern to the people of

this country and the world is global warming or also called climate change. Climate

change is a problem that everyone in the world should be focused and concerned

about. The main cause of this climate change is believed to be caused by greenhouse

gases. The most notable of these greenhouses gases is carbon dioxide. The

understanding of the processes is becoming clearer; we still do not know how much

carbon dioxide the earth can hold. Scientists are concerned about the steady build-up of

carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The build-up is happening as the earth’s carbon-

based fossil fuels, i.e. coal, are being burned and being converted to atmospheric

carbon dioxide. The USA National Academy of Sciences report concluded that “the

primary limiting factor on energy production from fossil fuels over the next few centuries

may turn out to be the climatic effects of the release of carbon dioxide"(World Nuclear

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Association, 2011). This science is becoming more and more accepted by most people

in the United States. Below is a graph of greenhouse gas emissions from the production

of electricity.

Figure 6

(World

Nuclear Association, 2011)

One can see form the graph that coal has a very large emission of greenhouse

gases, whereas nuclear power does not emit any greenhouse gas directly. Nuclear

energy only produces greenhouse gases indirectly from the mining of uranium. Nuclear

energy leaves no carbon footprint on the world. Since a major problem concerning the

world in climate change, nuclear power is smart way to help manage that problem.

Nuclear energy will help fight the major problem of climate change.

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Economic Impact

The third piece of criteria I will compare coal and nuclear energy on is economic

impact. This criterion is not as cut and dry as the other two I have compared thus far in

this paper. On the other two nuclear power is the clear winner in my opinion, however

this topic is not as black and white as the others. Nuclear power plants take a lot of

money to get started and up and running. In the past there have been several nuclear

power plants that were prevented from being finished because of lack of money. Coal

plants are less expensive to build then nuclear plants and also coal is readily available.

However when these nuclear power plants are built, it is a whole different story. These

existing nuclear power plants run at a very low cost. Their operations and maintenance

and fuel costs are at the low end and make very suitable base-load power suppliers

(World Nuclear Association, 2011). Below is a graphical representation how the cost of

operating the different types of electricity production.

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Figure 7

(World Nuclear Association, 2011)

As one can see that nuclear power is the cheapest way to produce energy as far

as operating costs. Coal is inexpensive as well, but according to these numbers nuclear

power is still cheaper than coal. Even though it is expensive to get started, once you

have the plant built and ready to run, nuclear power is inexpensive to operate and

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maintain. Because the fact of that nuclear power plants cost so much to get up and

running, it puts them at a significant disadvantage compared to coal burning power

plants on this issue. However, they do not take into account the fact that people are

experiencing health problems an even death because of the burning of coal. This price

the public pays for their health is not shown as a cost of burning coal, but I believe it

should be. If these costs would be added into the coal costs, it would significantly make

coal more expensive.

Past Problems: Nuclear Energy

As I have briefly touched on before, nuclear power has faced some problems

before in the past to cause it to be turned away from. The first cause for problems with

nuclear power is the cost of building and getting the nuclear power plants started. As I

have mentioned before, the cost of building a nuclear power plant is a negative when

comparing it to other ways to produce energy. In the 1970s when nuclear power was

getting started in the United States, construction of of many nuclear power plants that

stopped because of cost overruns. . One can find an example of this in this vary state.

In 1977 construction of a nuclear power plant near Madison Indiana was started. This

was called Marble Hill and this nuclear plant was supposed to provide power to eastern

and southern Indiana, along with possibly parts of Kentucky (wthr.com,2011). However

this plan was never realized. About seven years after they started construction on the

nuclear power plant, it was halted. In 1984 the construction was stopped and it was

estimated that over $2.8 billion was spent on the plant. Reportedly an additional $4

billion was needed to finish the project. The company that was in charge of the building,

PSI, would have gone into bankruptcy if Marble Hill was completed (Abandoned, 2011).

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This is just one of many examples of this happening over the United States. Nuclear

power plants were started and money was put into them, but along the way the money

for the project would stop, forcing them to stop building. Obviously this was a problem

for the spread and use of nuclear power. If people could not afford to build them, how

were we as a society supposed to use nuclear power as a major energy source? This is

why the overall cost of building nuclear power plants caused a problem in the past.

The next problem that arose that caused problems with nuclear power really

taking off in the United Sates where the accidents, more specifically one accident. This

accident was at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg Pennsylvania. In 1979 the nuclear

power plant Three Mile Island experienced a cooling malfunction that caused some of

the reactor core to melt in one of the reactors. The TMI-2 reactor was destroyed. Even

though there were some radioactive gases that were released during the accident, there

was not enough radioactive gas to cause a dose that was above the background levels

that the residents experience regularly. There were no harmful health effects or injuries

caused by this accident at Three Mile Island (World Nuclear Association, 2012). The

contamination barriers did their job and prevented large amounts of radioactive gases

into the environment. Even though there was no adverse health effects form this

accident and the barriers worked the way they were supposed to, the public was

unsettled by this accident. This accident really hurt the chances of nuclear power to

succeed in the United States because of the fear that goes along with nuclear energy.

By the time the Chernobyl accident happened in 1986, the chance of expansion of

nuclear power in the United States was all but over.

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The next problem that hurt the takeoff of nuclear power in the United States is

very closely related to the accidents. This problem is public fear of nuclear energy. The

development of the atomic bomb really fueled this fear of nuclear power. Because of the

dangers and destruction people have seen from atomic bombs, they are fearful from

anything that has to do with nuclear energy. Even though the public fear of nuclear

energy is not a rational one, the media fuels this fear with the coverage of nuclear

power. Reporting on things that can scare people is known to get ratings and more

money. This is why still today, where there is information about nuclear safety, people

are scared of nuclear energy.

The last problem that has helped impede the growth of nuclear power has been

the lack of need for it in the past. With the abundance of coal that this country has, there

was no real need to have nuclear power. We as a country have had the luxury of

enough coal to produce as much energy has we want. This along with the other

problems that I have mentioned in this paper, nuclear power was just not worth it to our

country to put in the resources to make nuclear power grow to the levels originally

projected. . The abundance of coal made the decision easier, when faced with the other

mentioned problems, to stop the growth of nuclear power because coal could handle

the load of or energy needs. At that time in our country’s history there was just not the

need for nuclear energy like I believe there is today.

Current Issues of Nuclear Powers

There are some current problems that we as a country must face and resolve if

we want to expand our nuclear power. The first issue is what to do with the High Level

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Waste that these nuclear power plants produce. Since these plants to not emit their

byproducts into the environment like coal plants, they produce solid hazardous waste

that needs to be disposed of. This problem is not a volume problem but yet a hazardous

and timely one. That means that there is not a lot of hazardous waste produced but the

hazardous waste that is produced is radioactive for thousands of years. There is a

relatively a small volume of waste( the entire world only produces 210,000 metric tons)

that comes out from these nuclear power plants compared to that of coal plants (World

Nuclear Assiocation). The problem however is that people cannot come into contact

with this waste (Cohen). The waste is radioactive for thousands of years and even

millions of years. This means that people cannot come into contact with the waste for a

very long time or they will be negatively affected and even be killed. The problem is of

time and isolation. There needs to be a plan for how and where these plants can store

the waste that they produce. One suggested plan was to put this waste site in Yucca

Mountain which is located in Nevada. The original plan was to put all of the nuclear

waste from nuclear power plants in lined tunnels under Yucca Mountain. However, this

plan was shut down. The plan was never put into place because people felt like Yucca

Mountain was not a safe place and also people in the area did not want to be around

the site. I believe we need to decide on a safe place where we can store this waste.

Right now most facilities store there wastes on site at each nuclear power plant. This is

not a permanent answer to this storage problem (cbsnews). With safety as a big

concern, storing the waste in this way is not the safest possible way. We need to come

up with a plan to have a disposal site where this waste can stay safely for a long time.

By having a specific disposal site, we can know exactly where the waste is and also

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help protect it better. I believe that the best way to dispose of the high level waste is to

put it into a disposal site. The Blue Ribbon Commission released on January their

recommendations to the energy council. The main part of their focus was on three

points, which were: “First, the Commission recommends a consent‐based approach to

siting future nuclear waste storage and disposal facilities, noting that trying to force such

facilities on unwilling states, tribes and communities has not worked. Second, the

Commission recommends that the responsibility for the nation’s nuclear

waste management program be transferred to a new organization; one that is

independent of the DOE and dedicated solely to assuring the safe storage and ultimate

disposal of spent nuclear waste fuel and high level radioactive waste. Third, the

Commission recommends changing the manner in which fees being paid into the

Nuclear Waste Fund – about $750 million a year – are treated in the federal budget

to ensure they are being set aside and available for use as Congress initially intended.”

(brc) With the technology we have today, we can make a place safe from this

hazardous waste from ever coming into contact with the human population.

The next current issue that needs to be resolved with nuclear power is of big

concern, especially in this day and age. This issue is dealing with security, more

specially terrorism. Since the waste that these nuclear power plants produce is

extremely hazardous, we have to be careful who can access it. If this waste gets into

the wrong hands, it could be dangerous to our safety. If we put in a disposal site where

all the waste from nuclear power plants like I mentioned earlier in this paper, that means

that all of this waste would be traveling across the United Sates on highways and

railways. This is an issue that needs to be addressed. With the waste traveling there will

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need to be a safety plan and measures in place. Large cities and towns need to be

taken into account and try to be avoided with transporting this waste to the future

disposal site. Security on these routes would be a big concern for this nuclear power

issue. This also includes technology that is spill safe if something happens to the

container that is hauling the waste. The containers that haul the high level waste from

the nuclear plant to the disposal site will have to be able to sustain and stay structurally

sound in case there is an accident. If the waste is split into the environment it could

have major consequences to the environment and the people that are around the

accident. This technology already exists. We can ship the spent fuel in shipment casts.

These casts are a steel cylinder that is closed to a leak-tight containment. Then each

cylinder is surrounded by more steel, concrete or other material that would stop

radiation from escaping and effecting workers and the public (NRC). Safety and

security is an issue that needs to be talked about and taken care of if we want to

expand nuclear energy for our future energy needs. We already have the technology to

make this happen, we as a country just have to come together and find a way to make it

work.

The last issue that needs to be address with nuclear power is the public

perception of nuclear power. Even though we have been using some nuclear power

plant since the 1970s the overall public perception of it is not a positive one. The public

still looks negatively on nuclear energy and the radiation that is associated with it.

Because of movies like “The Hulk” and other entertainment that focuses on radiation,

the public is scared of nuclear energy. We as a country are going to have to change the

public perception of nuclear energy if it is going to grow in the future. If politicians

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cannot approve the growth of nuclear energy because their constituents are against it, it

would cause an obvious problem for nuclear power expansion.

Even though I have mentioned that there are potential issues that have to be

addressed if nuclear power is going to grow, these issues can be successfully

addressed. If the public can be educated on the facts about nuclear power, I believe

their opinion would change. If we can change the public opinion to a more positive one,

the other issues I have brought up will be taken care of. If we can show that the steps

that are taken to project the public work, it can be a huge step in the right direction of

expanding nuclear power for future energy use.

Indiana vs. Illinois

The bordering states of Indiana and Illinois states are on complete opposite sides

of the nuclear power spectrum. Illinois is what was envisioned for the future of nuclear

power back when it started in the 1970s. Illinois uses nuclear power to produce half of

its energy needs. Indiana on the other hand does not have any nuclear power, and

depends heavily on the burning of coal. These facts can be attributed to the air pollution

in both states. Indiana, according to the National Resources Defense Council, is the

sixth most toxic state in the United Sates. This means that the air quality in Indiana is

ranked the sixth worst in the country. The main reason for Indiana ranking so high on

this list is because of their coal burning (NRDC, 2009). “Coal-fired and oil-fired power

plants emitted nearly 26.8 million pounds of harmful toxins — which includes mercury,

sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter — into the air, accounting for 68

percent of Indiana’s air pollution, according to the study.” (tribstar). As one can see form

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the results of the study and what I have mentioned earlier in this paper that the burning

of coal is a major player in air pollution. Also Indiana accounts for about 7 percent of the

country’s air pollution (tribstar). On the other hand Illinois is ranked 17th of the air

pollution toxic state list. Obviously this is still not very good but it is much better than

Indiana. “Power plants are the biggest industrial toxic air polluters in our country, putting

children and families at risk by dumping deadly and dangerous poisons into the air we

breathe," (NRDC. 2009). So one can only imagine what Illinois’ air pollution problem if

they did not use nuclear power in the amount that they do. Nuclear power plants do not

emit the air toxicants that coal plants do, helping with air pollution. By comparing

Indiana and Illinois, one can see what was supposed to happen all around the nation

with nuclear power playing a major role in energy production. Illinois is a state that relies

on nuclear power, the way it was planned to be in the 1970s with the start of nuclear

power. Indiana on the other hand is a symbol of the nuclear power resistance. With

coal being abundant in Indiana and the problems that nuclear power had in its early

stages, it was easier and more popular to just have coal by the major producer of

energy. That is how two states that border each other are on the two opposite sides of

the spectrum in the nuclear power production of energy.

Conclusion

Nuclear power has been used in this country for electrical energy production

since the 1960s. However, coal has always been the number one producer of electrical

energy in this country. After comparing the two different types of energy production on

three criteria which are, public health, environmental, and economic impact, I have

found that nuclear power is a viable option for future energy production. I have found

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that nuclear power is safer, cleaner, and cheaper to run then the burning of coal to

produce energy. I am not saying, however, that nuclear power should or will replace

coal as an energy source. We as I country have too many coal plants and too much

coal for that to happen. My point is this, as our country continues to grow, we are going

to need to produce more energy. In order to halt the expansion of coal produced energy

(and its associated health and environmental effects), we must expand nuclear power to

cover our energy needs. By expanding our nuclear power production rather than coal

power production, we can help protect the earth and the health of people on it.

26

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