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All methods of generating power aside from solar, wind and tidal involve, when you get right down to it, boiling water to spin a turbine. The process used to boil the water generally involves burning something, thus releasing CO2, among other pollutants. Nuclear energy, in contrast to fossil fuels, creates heat through a tightly controlled nuclear fission reaction, that creates nothing more than heat, light and nuclear waste. As such, it offers many advantages over fossil fuels and renewable energy, but also a unique set of drawbacks.

Nuclear energy is a source of energy that provides the most power for the smallest amount of fuel. Because of the nature of fission reactions, a relatively small amount of uranium is needed to power an incredibly powerful reactor. Nuclear reactors are, on average, several times more powerful than even the most efficient and largest fossil fuel generator. Because their reaction is not a combustion reaction, the only real byproduct is steam that is used to power the turbine. The other by-product is the rather nefarious substance known as nuclear waste. Many see the problem of waste as an unsolvable one, but, in fact, it has already been largely solved. The French generate 80% of their electricity from nuclear power, with many plants simply reprocessing the spent fuel rods back into usable fuel. The technology for this is not new, and France has been doing this for over 20 years. Because of this there are no massive French nuclear waste dumps as one would expect, just very efficient reactors that recycle their waste into more energy.

Nuclear energy is also some of the cheapest per kilowatt generated. Because fuel requirements are so low, and energy output is so high, plants can charge a very low amount for electricity and still earn a profit. This is in sharp contrast to renewable sources as they exist today, and fossil fuel sources as they become increasingly more rare.

The problem with nuclear power, interestingly, is that due to many safety requirements and regulations, plants are very expensive to construct. Once those initial capital costs are taken care of however, nuclear energy is one of the most reliable sources of power, with the lowest reported safety failures of any power source that isn't solar or wind.

Of course, when an accident does occur, it is generally a true disaster, thankfully, due to very careful oversight and regulation, there have been only two major accidents, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, which shouldn't count as the reactor was intentionally running with many of its safety protocols off. Nuclear waste can be a problem in terms of storage, but adopting the French model promises to make this problem managable or non-existent.

Nuclear power, more than anything, suffers from a PR problem. If people were to look at the facts, without bias, nuclear energy could go a long way towards making our power generation clean and environmentally friendly.

Learn more about this author, Bryan Jennings.
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