AboutOsman Kemal Kadiroglu Expertise Nuclear Engineering, Nuclear Engineering Education, Nuclear Reactors, Pebble Bed Modular Reactors, Engineering Education
Experience Has been teaching Nuclear Engineering for more than 20 years and been in this field for more than 30 years
Organizations belong to American Nuclear Society
Society of Nucelar Engineers of Turkey
Emeritus Prof. Nuclear Engineering Department, Hacettepe University Ankara Turkey
Extra-ordinary Prof. Nuclear Engineering Department, North-West Uni. Potchefstroom South Africa
Education/Credentials (Mak. Y. Müh.) MS in Mech. Eng. Istanbul Technical University '68
MS in Nuclear Eng. MIT'72
Sc.D. in Nuclear Eng. MIT'76
Question Hi I'm a student from Miller Middle School. I am working on a project for Language Arts. The project requires and expert. I have a few questions that need to be answered.
1)Why is Nuclear power good?
2)What are the affects of nuclear power?
Return your answers a soon as possible. Thank You!!!
Answer Hi Kristin,
Nuclear energy and language Arts!? You got me. :))
Your question is very very broad. I will answer it the way I understand it.
1) Nuclear power is an alternative to limited resources like hydro and fossil, and so called "alternative resources" like wind, solar, etc. Let me compare all the available energy resources with nuclear and you decide if nuclear is "good".
Resources:
Fossil fuels are petroleum, natural gas and coal. You can add wood, dunk and what not but they are not the main stream resources to produce electricity. There is limited amount of fossil fuels in the crust of the Earth. I am sure you are aware of the petroleum crises. So petroleum is out of question. We have use it in transportation and petrochemical industries. So burning petroleum is like to kill a mocking bird.
We have quite a lot of natural gas mainly situated in the Middle East and Central Asia. One needs to build expensive pipelines to carry them to other countries.
We have huge quantities of coal all around the World. Coal is used a lot, usually half of the electricity produced in industrial countries comes from coal fired plants.
Wind and solar energy is abundant but its intensity is very low. To produce 1 MW of electric power one needs a very large area to collect sun rays or build a huge wind turbine.
Nuclear energy resources are uranium, thorium and deuterium. The amount of uranium and thorium available in the earths crust is sufficient to power nuclear reactors up to year 4000. Then there is the huge deuterium supply in the oceans of the earth. In other words nuclear resources are almost inexhaustible.
Price:
To calculate the price of electricity produced by a power plant one has to consider the value of the land used, amount of construction work done on the site, price of the machinery, cost of operating such a power plant, salaries paid, interest paid to the bank where the credit is obtained to build the power plant. Then, for say, 20 years, the money paid for the purchase of fuel is added to the sum. In 20 year lots of electricity is produced and sold. Diving the amount of money spent in 20 years to the amount of electricity produced yields the cost of electricity. Like 3 cents/kWh.
Hydroelectric power plants cost a lot. The "fuel" for them being a river water is free. So a large hydroelectric power plant produces electricity around 2cent/kWh. The coal fired plants are simpler to build but uses huge amount of coal, like millions of tons a year. They produce electricity around 3 - 5 cents/kWh. Hydro power plants should not be compared with fossil fired power plants. One can build a nuclear power plant any where one likes but one can not build a hydro plant near Boston or Ankara.
Natural gas power plants are build in short time spans and they produce electricity similar to coal fired plants.
Nuclear power plants are very expensive to build and operate but the fuel they use are very inexpensive. A new nuclear power plant produces electricity around 3 - 4 cents/kWh. This price includes all the waste handling and decommissioning and disassembling the nuclear power plant.
The so called "alternative" energy power plants produce electricity at much higher rates. Presently they are not economical. Only wind at special locations with subsidies seems to be bit economical.
Environment:
All fossil fired plants pollute the earth. CO2, SO2, NOx radioactive material in the fly ash and millions of tons of ash from coal fired plants. Harmful gases from oil and gas fired plants are unavoidable. Fossil fired plants are one of the main reasons of global warming.
Nuclear power plants do not emit any of these harmful substances to the environment they are clean power plants.
Yes nuclear power is GOOD.
2) The effects Mmmmm. Well you can say them after you have read this much. Economical, clean, reliable source of energy for electricity production for the humanity for a very very long time.
