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three reasons why we should stop using nuclear energy

one. nuclear weapons proliferation

nuclear technology made a violent entrance onto the world stage

just one year after the world’s first-ever nuclear test explosion in

1944

two large cities were destroyed by just two single bombs

after that, reactor technology slowly evolved as a means of generating

electricity but it’s always been intimately connected with nuclear

weapons technology

it’s nearly impossible to develop nuclear weapons without access to reactor

technology

in fact the nuclear non-proliferation treaty serves the purpose of spreading

nuclear reactor technology

without spreading nuclear weapons, with limited success

in forty years five countries have developed their own weapons with the

help of reactor technology

the fact of the matter is that it can be very hard to distinguish

a covert nuclear weapons program from the peaceful use of nuclear energy

in the nineteen seventies the big nuclear powers were happily selling

peaceful technology to smaller countries which then developed weapons of their

own

the road to deadly nuclear weapons is always paved with peaceful reactors

2. nuclear waste and pollution spent nuclear fuel is not only radioactive

but also contains extremely poisonous chemical elements like plutonium

it loses its harmfulness only slowly over several tens of thousands of years

and there is also a process called re processing

which means the extraction of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel

it can be used for two purposes: to build nuclear weapons

or to use it as new fuel, but hardly any of it is used as fuel

because we don’t have the right kind of reactors for that, a milligram

will kill you a few kilograms make an atomic bomb and even an inconspicuous

country like Germany

literally has tons of the stuff just lying around because re processing

sounded like a good idea decades ago

and

Where will all the waste go? after dumping it into the ocean was forbidden

we’ve tried to bury it, but we can’t find a place where it will definitely stay

secure for tens of thousands of years

over 30 countries operate nearly 400 reactors

managing several hundred thousands of tons of nuclear waste

and only one is currently serious about opening

a permanent civilian waste storage: tiny Finland

3. accidents and disasters

over sixty years of nuclear power usage there have been seven major accidents in

reactors

or facilities dealing with nuclear waste three of those were mostly contained

but four of them released significant amounts of radioactivity into the

environment

in 1957, 1987 and 2011

large areas of land in Russia Ukraine and Japan

Were rendered unfit for human habitation for decades to come

the number of deaths is highly disputed But probably lies in the thousands

these disasters happened with nuclear reactors of very different types

in very different countries and several decades apart

looking at the numbers we may as well ask ourselves: are 10 percent of the

world’s energy supply

worth a devastating disaster every 30 years?

would thirty percent be worth another Fukushima or chernobyl somewhere on

earth

every 10 years? what area would have to be contaminated

so we say no more? where is the line?

so should we use nuclear energy?

the risks may outweigh the benefits and maybe we should stop looking into this

direction

and drop this technology for good if you want to hear the other side of the

argument