APRIL 23, 2019 | ISSUE 1
STOP SHUTTING DOWN
NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
Nuclear energy is more important than you would imagine.
THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF SHUTTING
DOWN NUCLEAR POWER PLANT OTHER STORY
After the incident of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, many countries INSIDE THIS
ISSUE:
decided to shut down their nuclear power for the sake of safety. However,
it seems like this would be a painful decision for a lot of countries because
it would hurt not only the productivity of a country, but also the economy
Other energy
of a country.
resources cannot
In 2013, Belgium decided to shut down all of its nuclear power plant.
really replace
Meanwhile. at that time, about 56 percent of the total electricity of the
country comes from nuclear power plant; shutting all nuclear power plants nuclear energy
and replacing them with fossil-fuel power plant would take about 30 years
to restore the supply of domestic electricity back to the time before the
policy was changed.
In California, just the shutdown of San Onofre plant in California in 2013
causes the electricity market prices were raised by about $6/MWH ~
$9/MWH.
There are many more similar cases caused by the shutdown of nuclear
plants in many other countries, maybe the governments really should
reconsider their decisions when it comes to this.
APRIL 23, 2019 | ISSUE 1
OTHER ENERGY RESOURCES CANNOT
About Nuclear Energy:
REALLY REPLACE NUCLEAR ENERGY
Most of the nuclear power plants
use uranium as fuel to cause
nuclear fission - which is a process
In order to compensate the energy loss of shutting down nuclear power plants where atoms split, and energy is
(NPPs), most countries decides to use other kinds of power plants to replace NPPs. released as a result of breaking
Besides nuclear energy, other energy resources can be classified into primarily two energy bonds. With the heat
categories: fossil fuel and renewable energy. produced from the nuclear
reactor, water will become steam
Fossil-fuel based power plant, also called thermal power plant, is the most used and pushes the turbine to rotate,
power plant to produce electricity around the world. Such power plants generate which allows the generator to
energy by burning natural resources like coals or natural gas. The primary issue produce electricity. Energy
with thermal power plants is the air pollution. First of all, the carbon dioxide produced from nuclear fission has
produced by burning colas or natural gases is the major factor of the greenhouse an extremely high energy density,
effect. In addition, other products of burning fossil fuel can causes lung cancers for instance, nuclear energy
that are impossible to cure. On average, the production of each TWH of electricity released in a nuclear fission
from coal would cause the deaths of 28.67 workers who work in a thermal power reaction would be approximately
plant. ten million times more than the
energy released from a fossil fuel
On the other hand, while power plants that use renewable energy is relatively atom.
clean, they are either not producing electricity consistently or geographically
constrained. Taking wind power plant as an example, “wind power only produces
30 to 40 percent of its potential energy output” due to the fact that the strength of
the wind can vary from time to time (“Reliability of Renewable Energy: WIND”,
2017). And the wind power plant would have to built where the wind is strong,
which can be really far away from the major cities.
All of those evidences prove the irreplaceable status of nuclear energy and nuclear
power plants to the human society.
On average, the production of each
TWh of electricity from coal would
cause the deaths of 28.67 workers who
work in a thermal power plant
