Advantages and Disadvantages of Nuclear Energy

The nuclear energy or atomic Energy is that which is generated through the reactions between the nuclei of the atoms. This can happen spontaneously (as in the heart of stars) or artificially (as in atomic bombs). It is a type of energy that can also be used to produce electricity, through controlled reactions inside the reactors of nuclear power plants.

Nuclear reactions were discovered in the 20th century, during the WWII, and were used to make the most lethal and destructive weapons that human beings have ever devised: atomic bombs, like those that were dropped on stocks Japanese from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, its power generation capacity was so enormous that it was soon sought to use this energy for peaceful purposes, thus achieving the first nuclear reactors in which its immense heat produced to boil water and mobilize electricity-generating turbines.

There are two known types of nuclear reactions:

Fission reactions are the best known and used to date (100% of nuclear reactors are of this type), while

fusion it is known only by exploring and describing stellar processes (at the heart of stars). And although nuclear fusion has not yet been controlled, humanity's hopes are on that sense, since hydrogen is not only a cheap element, but superabundant on the planet and the universe.

Nuclear energy represents one of the greatest technological achievements of the human being, as well as one of the greatest dangers that entails our capacity for inventiveness, when it is placed at the service of destruction or when it is applied without the precautions of rigor. The greatest evidence of the latter is the two atomic bombs that put an end to the Second World War, as well as the atomic disasters of Chernobyl in the Ukraine, or Fukushima in Japan.

Advantages of nuclear energy

The main virtues or strengths of nuclear energy have to do with the following:

Disadvantages of nuclear power

The weaknesses and risks of nuclear power include the following:

References:

• "Nuclear energy" in Wikipedia.
• "What is the nuclear energy?" at Ministry of Economy of Argentina.
• “Advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy” (video) in TeleSUR.
• "Nuclear power"in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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