nuclear power advantages
Saturday, May 29th, 2010
What are the advantages and disadvantages of hydropower, coal fired, gas fired and nuclear power plants?
Technical aspects, unit generation cost, environmental impact and/or people’s response to the method used to generate electricity on commercial basis
Nuclear power plants: Advantages: Don’t produce gases that contribute to global warming or the production of acid rain. When working normally, little or no radiation or radtioactive materials are released into the einvironment.
Disadvantages: Radioactive waste is produced and because much of it remains radioactive for a very long time this waste needs to be stored safely and securely, perhaps for 1000 years.
Hydropower: Advantages: Low running cost. Use a renewable engery resource. They can be made to increase their effciency by being operated in reverse during the night using surplus eletricity from other power stations to pump water from the lower reservoir to the highest one.
Disadvantages: Many of these schemes involve flooding rivers valleys- and that was probably not used for farming or forestry but was the habitat for numerous species.
Coal-fired: Relatively cheap start up and running costs. There are still large reserves in the world although they are getting more expensive to exploit.
Disadvantages: When burnt they release carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas so it will increase global-warming. There is no way to stop CO2 going into the atmosphere.
Burning coal releases sulphur dioxide which causes acid rain.
Hope this helps
Who’s Afraid of Nuclear Power? – 45min. documentary
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Advantages of Peacetime Nuclear Power in Vintage DVD $7.99 |
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Advantages and Disadvantages of High-Power-Density Fusion Reactors: First Wall Thermal-Mechanical Limits £5.00 … |
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Energy Alternatives $35.39 Presents a collection of essays that debate a variety of issues on the subject of alternative energy sources, covering such topics as the advantages and disadvantages of solar, wind, and nuclear power, and the future of hybrid and hydrogen cars. |