Can Nuclear Power Save the Earth?

In his article entitled “The Nuclear Power Advantage”, Cohen states that advantages of nuclear power and difficulties of using fuel fossils. Fuel fossils are limited and cause a lot of environmental problems such as global warming, acid rain, and coal mining. Cohen claims that nuclear power has a lot of advantages and can be used as alternative energy instead of fuel fossils. First, nuclear power can avoid a wide variety of environmental problems. Second, there is enough uranium because it has little value for other purposes except nuclear power. Third, nuclear waste is very small in volume so can be easily buried underground. Moreover, nuclear power makes people independent from oil, so it prevents from fighting like Persian Gulf War. Finally, he claims nuclear power is safe by comparing the probabilities of reactor accidents with other risks. However, I believe that people should not work on using nuclear power. There are harmful problems in environment, politics, and safety.

First, Cohen states that “these wastes have the extremely important advantage of being very small in volume and can be easily contained so they can be buried deep underground”(para.14). However, it costs a lot of money to build facilities to bury radioactive waste. In addition, it is hard to select the places to lay wastes under the ground because everybody opposes the setting up of facility. After burying it, the waste that is toxic does not disappear. If there is something wrong with the facility, it causes soil contamination. Therefore, it is difficult to deal with nuclear wastes.

Second, using of nuclear power can lead to politics problems about nuclear weapons among foreign countries. In Japan, there are Three Non-Nuclear Principles. The policy declares that that Japan shall neither possess nor manufacture nuclear weapons, nor shall it permit their introduction into Japanese territory( Kristensen, 1999, para.5). Although some countries try to abolish having nuclear weapons like Japan, other countries try to invest weapons to assume control of the world. For example, North Korea launched Taepodong, a missile nuclear warhead to the Sea of Japan in 2006. In addition, it is said that the U.S. started Iraq war to destroy nuclear weapons that Iraq has. Nuclear power can be changed into nuclear weapons, so it can shake the security of world.

Finally, nuclear power cause major accidents. Cohen claims that “nuclear accidents are not an important problem, and their very low probability is a great advantage of nuclear power”(para.18). However, nuclear reactor accidents have bad influences on a lot of people. Remember the Chernobyl disaster. It was an accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. After explosion, the sarcophagus was built to cover the plant and even now the surrounding near the area is restricted. There is still a little radiation near villages. The problem is that it is possible to escape radiation when the sarcophagus collapses. Nuclear accident causes the increasing incidence of cancer. Moreover, the forest near the plant is called red forest because all woods died by radiation. Therefore, this accident that influenced neighbors made known around the world that nuclear power is very dangerous.

Now nuclear power is expected to be alternative energy instead of fossil fuels. However, there is much risk of polluting environment in disposal of nuclear waste. In addition, nuclear power can be a cause of making a highly volatile political situation. Besides, it is possible for serious accidents to happen, like the Chernobyl disaster. Therefore, people have to solve these problems before utilizing nuclear power. The most important thing is not convenience but safety and future.

Reference
Cohen, Bernard. (n. d.). The nuclear power advantage.
Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy. Retrieved February 7, 2007 from http://www.ecolo.org/documents/
documents_in_english/nuclear_advantage

Kristensen, Hans. (1999, July 21). Nuclear umbrella, The Nautilus Institute.
Retrieved February 20, 2007
from http://www.nautilus.org/archives/nukepolicy/Nuclear-Umbrella/