Polluting Nuclear Power

With the nuclear fiasco in Japan the world has turned its attention to the pros and cons of using nuclear power. There are great people at the top who are studying the situation, experts in the field of nuclear physics have been studying the use and effects of nuclear power, and they say it is safe and it is an alternative to thermal power stations as they cause less pollution. Absolutely right! Nuclear power plants produce a miniscule fraction of the pollutants that a thermal power plant produces. But does that necessarily mean that the whole process of producing nuclear energy pollutes the environment any less than what a power plant using fossil fuel does? NO! NEVER!

Thermal power plants: they generally use coal, which produces a lot of smoke – it definitely pollutes the environment. Then there is coal mining and its transportation and the dumping of the waste. All this does not cost much but it does pollute. Now look at the nuclear power stations: we can see no blake smoke plummeting out of chimneys. We say – hey, look, there is no smoke… this definitely does not pollute! Yes, there is no smoke at the power station, but there is a lot of smoke everywhere else.

Fuel needed to run a nuclear power station is not commonly found and is not as abundant as fossil fuels. Their mining and extraction requires the use of a lot of machinery, much more than coal mining, and these minerals are then processed and readied for commercial use. The whole process requires the use of a massive amount of machinery that pollutes much more than what coal mining and transportation does. Then where is the edge that scientists and politicians are saying there is when they are touting nuclear power as less polluting? I see nothing special, only added problems.

Thermal power generation is much cheaper than producing nuclear power and it is safe. The mining and extraction of nuclear fuel is very expensive, much more expensive than coal, and then there is the added cost of transportation – as a lot of security is involved in the process, trying to protect it from falling into the wrong hands. Added to all this, the equipment used in a nuclear power plant is far more expensive than the ones used in a thermal power plant. And then there is the added expense on air-tight security at a nuclear power plant.

I fail to understand the use or the need of nuclear power stations when they do not contribute any less to pollution and are astronomically expensive to run – I leave aside the effects in the case of a catastrophe. A wrecked thermal power plant requires far less expenditure and is far more environment friendly than a wrecked nuclear power station. We could use the astronomical sum to research and develop renewable sources of energy like tapping solar energy at the Stratosphere level. Can someone please tell me what the big deal is with nuclear power, other than making a handful of people multi-billionaires?