Why Nuclear Power Station Is Better than Normal Power Station in Generating Electricity - Essay Example

? Contents Contents Introduction: 2 Main body: 3 The energy produced and the cost: 3 The emission of greenhouse gases: 6 The bad effect of nuclear and the safety: 9 Conclusion: 10 Bibliography 12 Why nuclear power station is better than normal power station in generating electricity? Introduction: This project is about nuclear energy and how important it is in our life as a source of energy that can be produced in nuclear reactor. Nuclear reactor can produce a high amount of energy which can use to boil water in order to produce a high amount of steam which helps to generate electricity. Nuclear power station is an efficient source of energy that can produce a huge amount of electricity and relatively cheaper than the other source of energy; able to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases which play an important role in changing the environment; and has a high level of safety equipment to monitor and prevent any error or failure. Therefore, relaying on nuclear may change the future of the world and the future of our new generation. Advanced methods are employed to make nuclear power safer and more cost efficient. The advanced ABWR (Advanced boiling water reactor) and PWR (Pressurized water reactor) techniques have made the nuclear power much cost efficient. The advanced core cooling techniques made nuclear power safer for the future. Now a day our major problem is the green house gases emissions and to address the problem nuclear power has a better and safe solution. Nuclear power is free from green house gases emissions. In this project I will explain how much energy can be produced by nuclear reactor; the cost of generating this energy and how the cost could be reduced; how could nuclear station reduce the emission of greenhouse gases; and the bad effect of nuclear and the safety system? Main body: The energy produced and the cost: Firstly, the energy generates from nuclear plant used to heat tons of water to create a huge amount of steam which goes into the turbine to spins the generator and produce electricity. Consequently, it creates tons of megawatts (MWh) of electricity; for example, a nuclear reactor of 1000 MWh can generate electricity for an average city of about one million people (WNA, 2006). Therefore, nuclear energy is not only capable to reduce the amount of pollution but also is able to produce a high amount of energy. In comparison, one kilogram of uranium releases almost the same energy produce by 1 million kilogram of coal (Dittmar, 2009). This energy release because the atom in nucleus split into two fragments and the two fragments split into four and then four to eight and thus a chain reaction starts. At every split, a large amount of thermal energy is released, which is used to heat water to generate power. This is all that happens in all nuclear reactors to produce that huge amount of energy. The capital investment that is required in building a nuclear power plant is comparatively higher than other power plants but the operating cost of a nuclear power plant is lower than a conventional coal or gas fired power plants. Secondly, using nuclear energy as an alternative source of energy will reduce the amount that spent in producing electricity by using fossil fuel. The cost of nuclear fuel is comparatively low as compared coal or gas in terms of energy released. However, there is misunderstanding between the cost of nuclear energy production and the cost of producing nuclear as station that include a high safety level and materials use to control it outcome disposal. The cost of any nuclear power plant is highly dependent on the structure, locality and cooling techniques utilized to remove the unnecessary heat or decay heat. Decay heat or unnecessary heat produced by a nuclear reactor is a big problem and it should be taken care of. Pumping cool water through the nuclear reactor helps remove the decay heat. A structure that could hold a lot of water like a lake should be built before or after constructing a nuclear power plant. If a power plant is near a natural source of water, the cost to build an artificial source can be eliminated. Air cooled nuclear power have not such efficiency as that of water cooled power plants are and water is also required by air cooled power plants. Pressurized water reactors (PWRs) have a system which prevents the cooling water mixing with the heated water, which is used to drive turbine but boiling water reactors boil the cooling water with the heated water and maintain a certain core temperature. Efficiency of a nuclear power plant is independent of its type but certain advancements in the structure and design of pressurized water reactors (PWR), made the design more appropriate and compact as the technology is utilized now a day is marine ships like aircraft carriers and submarines. Boiling water reactors are utilized where power is required on a very large scale. The scale of a power generated determines the cost per kilowatt. Now a day nuclear power is a bit more costly as compared to other power generation systems but advanced PWR and BWR reactors have reduced the cost of power generated by the nuclear power plants. There is a simple formula to calculate the cost per kilowatt would be, the formula is capital cost plus operating cost divided by the amount of power generated by a power plant. As the capital cost of nearly all nuclear power plants are high so the price per kilo watt is more than what is expected by nuclear power. But by the time a nuclear power will cost less than a conventional power unit. A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard investigate under the title of the future of nuclear power and state that: There is no question that the up-front costs associated with making nuclear power competitive, are higher than those associated with fossil fuels but as our study shows, there are many ways to mitigate these costs and, over time, the societal and environmental price of carbon emissions could dramatically improve the competitiveness of nuclear power (Dr. Moniz, 2009). Figure 1: to show the Cost of Producing Electricity in US Source: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html The emission of greenhouse gases: Today the biggest threat to the human and other habitat of the world is green house gases and their emissions. Power, in the form of electrical energy or electricity is generated by converting other form of energy. The chemical energy of the coal gives thermal energy and thermal energy is then converted to electrical energy. The by-product of the chemical reactions is carbon dioxide and other harmful and green house gases. Coal and all other fossil fuels burn in the presence of air producing heat and harmful gasses. Coal is the dirtiest of all, as it produces oxides of nitrogen and sulphur when it is burnt in air. Power generation is highly related to green house gases emissions. Coal fired power plants are massively in use all around the world. Burning coal produces a huge amount of green house gases. Carbon-dioxide, carbon-monoxide and other oxides of nitrogen and sulphur are the components of green house gases produced by the burning of coal. Advanced coal fired power plants use different methods like washing the coal with some acid or other chemical and treating it with different chemicals to reduce the harmful emissions. The washing and treating process eliminate the sulphuric and nitrous compounds, which help reduce the emissions of oxides of sulphur and nitrogen. Nitrogen oxides are responsible for acid rain and smog that may cause serious health problems. There is a need to find out solutions regarding green house gases emissions and reduce our power consumption. Scientist believes that any kind of energy produce a low amount of waste is more valuable to other sources of energy. As there is no burning process involved in the process of generating power from nuclear fuel, nuclear power is known to be the carbon free way of generating electricity because it produces a near-zero amount of carbon during the process of producing the energy. Thus, using nuclear power will reduce the amount of pollution especially air pollution. According to Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), it has been proven that nuclear power does not create any greenhouse gases or burning byproducts. It also shows that nuclear energy contributes in cutting down the amount of air pollution by reducing the emission of carbon dioxide. The same report states that “In 2008, U.S. nuclear plants prevented the emissions of almost 689 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. This is nearly as much carbon dioxide as is released from all U.S. passenger cars” (NEI, 2009). In addition, France depends on nuclear power station to generate about 78% of its electricity. Therefore, it has the least percentage of emitting carbon comparing to the worlds big economic countries (ANS, 2006). Globally, 400 reactors over the world wide produce about 14 percent of the world’s electricity, therefore using of nuclear power reduce the emission of carbon dioxide to more than 2.8 billion metric tons a year (NEI, 2009). According to American Nuclear Society which stated in one of its position statement that “Without the nuclear contribution, the increase in carbon-dioxide emissions over the past few decades would have been much greater” (ANS, 2006). Comparing nuclear energy with other sources of energy will prove that nuclear energy is cleaner and emit the lowest percentage of greenhouse gases. Other alternative sources of energy like wind, solar or tidal are not contributed much to fulfill the need of power for world. Nuclear energy institute says that the cycle of nuclear energy is almost free from carbon emissions. Wind has a little higher emissions of CO2 indirectly or from life cycle. Solar and hydro powers also produce emissions indirectly from life cycle. Coal and gas have direct and indirect emissions on a very high scale. Results show that coal emit over 1000 grams of carbon dioxide by generating just a kilowatt of power (Nuclear energy institute, 2009). Figure 2: to show the Emission of Greenhouse Gases from Electricity Production Source: http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/ueg.htm As a result, using uranium will help to reduce emission of carbon gases, for instant, using 22 tons of uranium will stop one million tons of carbon dioxide emission. In addition to that, during the process of using fossil fuel to generate electricity some kind of harmful gas will be produced like Nitrogen Oxides, these byproduct play an important role in the chemistry of the ozone, which affect indirectly the human health. The same research by NEI state that: In 2008, U.S. nuclear power plants avoided the emissions of nearly 1 million short tons of nitrogen oxides—the same amount emitted by more than 47 million passenger cars in a year (NEI, 2009). The bad effect of nuclear and the safety: Despite that energy produce by nuclear can reduce the amount of greenhouse gases, the waste that produced during the process of producing that huge energy are highly dangerous. That because it produce a radioactive element that cannot be used anymore and may cause a huge risk in people life if it is in not in a safe place. Nuclear waste can be categorized into three intensity levels which are: low level waste, medium level waste and third is high level waste. Low level waste is the least dangerous of all the wastes. The radioactivity of the low level waste may last for few days or months. Medium level waste is more radioactive as compared to the low level waste. The decomposition of medium level waste may require more time as required by low level waste. High level waste is the most dangerous of all the other types of waste and mishandling of this waste can cause serious problems. High level waste can remain radioactive for many years and careful attention should be given to the high level waste. All types of the wastes are deposited at the site and disposed of properly. Any mistake will directly affect people health and the next generation and may cause a huge injure like cancer. There is a great danger of accidents in nuclear reactors. In the past, nuclear reactors have faced many accidents, which caused serious health problems to the human habitat. What happens in Chernobyl (Ukraine 1986) is a good example of the bad effect of nuclear where almost more than 30 people were killed as a coincidence problem occurs during the process of heating the water (Lovgren, 2004). However, scientists learn from the Chernobyl accident and they try hardly to create almost optimum nuclear safety systems that use an advance equipment to monitor the process of production and prevent error or operator failures. The advanced methods that are employed to enhance the safety and security of a nuclear reactor provided a secure and uninterrupted clean power. Now nuclear reactors have such systems which will completely stop the generation of power, if any accident happens. Advanced pressurized water reactors (APWR) recently employed by naval ships and submarines have minimized the capital cost of the reactor and enhanced the efficiency of the reactor but the main motive is to generate a clean and safe power provided by advanced pressurized water reactors. Latest boiling water reactors or advanced boiling water reactors (BWRs) have also provided better safety and security features. Today terrorist activities are rising day by day and in case of any such activity, a nuclear power plant is a big threat. To provide a safety for such an activity, a nuclear power plant must utilize such secure methods that will prevent the radioactive material to be exposed to the outer atmosphere. In case when the situation is uncontrollable, containment cooling methods are utilized to prevent the radioactive fuel to penetrate into the outer atmosphere. Containment cooling methods completely shuts down the nuclear reactor. According to the World Nuclear Association: The use of nuclear energy for electricity generation can be considered extremely safe. Every year several thousand people die in coal mines to provide this widely used fuel for electricity. There are also significant health and environmental effects arising from fossil fuel use (WNA, 2010). Conclusion: Using nuclear power station can produce a huge amount of energy in a reasonable price with high efficiency. Since the world faces the problem of global warming as a result of greenhouse gases, I believe that nuclear power is one of the solutions to limit the emission of carbon dioxide. Therefore, without nuclear power the percentage of carbon dioxide will increase, because most of countries almost relay on fossil fuel in generating electricity. Today fourteen percent (14%) of the world’s energy requirement is fulfilled by nuclear power that prevent tons of carbon and green house emissions to penetrate into the atmosphere and thus reduce air pollution and water pollution also. If the use of nuclear energy in doubled, then one can think of a clean and better future that has no or less carbon emissions. There is a need to cut down or stop using fosil fuel in all aspects of our life. Conventional power generating methods should have no place in the future. Besides nuclear power, other sustainable sources of energy should have a place in our life. Wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, bio and other alternative sources of energy must be utilized for a better future. If we do not realize the effects of green house emissions today, our future will have no air to breath, no clean water to drink and no food to eat. Green house emissions are indirectly linked to our food chain and food chain of other organisms. If there is no food, no one in the world can survive. Long term effect of using these sources will make this world face a huge change in it environment. In term of the safety and security, all the researches proved that nuclear station has almost a unique system that provides a high level of safety and security. Nuclear power has provided a way to generate huge amount of power without damaging the environment Bibliography World Nuclear Association. (2010). Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors. Retrieved 5 26, 2011, from http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html american nuclear society. (2006). Nuclear Power: The Leading Strategy for Reducing Carbon Emissions. Retrieved 5 25, 2011, from http://www.ans.org/pi/ps/docs/ps44.pdf Dittmar, M. (2009). The Oil Drum: Europe . Alternative energy. Retrieved 4 23, 2010, from http://canada.theoildrum.com/node/5631 Lovgren, S. (2004). Chernobyl Disaster's Health Impact Remains Cloudy. National Geographic News , pp. 1,2. Menzieshill, D. (2006). Technology and our Fragile Environment.Timesonline news. Retrieved 6 20, 2011, from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article699675.ece Nuclear Energy Institute. (2009). Nuclear Energy and the Environment. Retrieved 526,2011, from http://www.nei.org/keyissues/protectingtheenvironment/factsheets/nuclearenergyandthe environment/ 2, 2010, from http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/uran.htm Read More