Earth Has Limited Supplies of Coal and Oil
Essay by people • July 5, 2011 • Essay • 252 Words (2 Pages) • 1,842 Views
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The Earth has limited supplies of coal and oil. Nuclear power plants could still produce electricity after coal and oil become scarce.
Nuclear power plants need less fuel than ones which burn fossil fuels. One ton of uranium produces more energy than is produced by several million tons of coal or several million barrels of oil.
Coal and oil burning plants pollute the air. Well-operated nuclear power plants do not release contaminants into the environment.
Almost 0 emissions (doesn't emit green house gases). It produces electricity without pollution into the atmosphere.
They can be sited almost anywhere unlike oil which is mostly imported.
The plants almost never experience problems if not from human error, which almost never happens anyway because the plant only needs like 10 people to operate it.
A small amount of matter creates a large amount of energy... so there is little fear that we will run out of it
A lot of energy from a single power plant
Current nuclear waste in the US is over 90% Uranium. If reprocessing were made legal again in the US we would have enough nuclear material to last 100s of years.
A truckload of Uranium is equivalent in energy to 10,000+ truckloads of coal. (Assuming the Uranium is fully utilized)
An nuclear aircraft carrier can circle the globe continuously for 30 years on its original fuel while a diesel fueled carrier has a range of only about 3000 miles before having to refuel.
Modern reactors have 2-10x more efficiency than the old generation reactors currently in use around the US
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