My name is Billy Heaning, and I believe in nuclear power.
Nuclear power. What images and thoughts come to mind when you hear those two words? Perhaps giant cooling towers, radiation, radioactive waste, mutant fish with three eyes, mushroom clouds, the atomic bomb.
I lived next to the Watts Bar nuclear power plant in Meigs county, Tenn. for 18 years. I swam in waters no less than half a mile away from two massive cooling towers. Despite the fact that I’m the size of a 12-year-old girl, I’ve suffered no ill effects, no radiation poisoning and no mutations (that I know of).
Many of you have probably seen pictures or heard stories about the meltdowns at Chernobyl, which happened in the Ukraine in 1986, or Three Mile Island, in Connecticut in 1979. If you don’t remember these, you may remember the recent disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan, in 2011; a giant earthquake followed by a tsunami critically damaged the reactor.
Despite these occurrences, nuclear power is the most potent form of energy on earth, but nuclear bombs and nuclear power are two completely separate things.
A nuclear reactor creates heat, which turns water into steam, which is then used to spin turbines, thus generating electricity. Instead of fossil fuels such as coal or oil, they use uranium.
America has only experienced one nuclear meltdown with zero fatalities. It occurred in 1979, at Three Mile Island. Scientists later determined that the people directly exposed to the radiation received about the equivalent of one chest x-ray. Reports of any kind of long-term impacts on the environment are anecdotal, and no solid proof has been found that the wildlife, plant life or members of the community have been affected physiologically or genetically by the meltdown.
There aren’t any X-Men because of Three Mile Island.
Between 2006 and 2012, 141 people were killed while working in coal mines. And that’s only coal mining; it doesn’t include offshore oilrigs. The British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 killed 11 platform workers and injured 17 others.
These are facts: one uranium fuel pellet, smaller than a Sweet Tart, contains just as much energy as 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, 1,780 pounds of coal, or 149 gallons of oil.
Uranium is relatively abundant, and even a little bit goes a very, very long way. It doesn’t take a scientist to see the benefits of nuclear energy as opposed to fossil fuels.
In conclusion, I believe in nuclear power, because if looked at rationally and given sufficient funding, it could very well become our world’s greatest chance for cheap, clean energy. I also agree that other forms of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, should also be vigorously pursued.