• Misconceptions about nuclear energy, fueled by media portrayal and historical events like Chernobyl, contribute to its negative perception. However, significant safety advancements and international cooperation have made nuclear power much safer.
• There is a crucial distinction between nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Reactors are designed for controlled, steady energy release with low-enriched fuel, unlike weapons, which have highly enriched uranium for rapid, intense energy release.
• Nuclear energy is highly efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly, producing over half of America’s carbon-free electricity and requiring significantly less land compared to solar and wind energy. Understanding these benefits can help reframe nuclear energy’s role in a sustainable future

It’s natural for people’s minds to run to negative connotations when it comes to nuclear energy. Considering our past with handling nuclear waste, the way it’s presented in the media, and how we’re overall not quite used to it yet, the idea of it can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. Before learning about nuclear energy in an unbiased light, it is vital that we unlearn misconceptions, or acquire clarification on some of the most controversial topics regarding nuclear energy.

Redefining “Nuclear”

The word “nuclear” naturally carries negative connotations, largely because of the way it is presented in the media. The word “nuclear” in terms of energy means energy that is released from the nucleus. If we dig a little deeper into specifics of nuclear events (or stigma in general) that have taken place, we can evaluate how much nuclear energy has developed and grown, ensuring that these events are not to repeat themselves.

CherNever Again

For those who haven’t been to history class, or haven’t seen IMDb’s highest critically acclaimed series ever that recounts the events of Chernobyl, here’s what went down. On April 26th, 1986 near the city of Pripyat in Northern Ukraine, one of the reactors of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded after it went out of control during poorly executed safety testing. Operators at the plant conducted their power test unaware that RBMK reactors (reactors specifically only built in Russia due to insatiable startup and shutdown) sometimes increased power. As the fourth reactor overheated, the power soared, accelerating the heating of the steam that drives power generation and also breaking fuel-packed pressure tubes.The explosion destroyed the reactor building and released copious amounts of radiation into the air which spread all over South-East Europe, parts of Asia, and northern Africa. It is considered the largest disaster in nuclear power generation history, resulting in roughly 16,000 overall deaths from radioactive particles in the air.

Operating error and faulty design are the chief wrongdoings in this situation, and since then there have been copious amounts of safety measures implemented to ensure history does not repeat itself. The World Association of Nuclear Operators formed in 1989, connecting nuclear power plant operators in more than 30 countries, while the IAEA reviews safety at still-operative Soviet reactors. Because of this openness and cooperation, the remaining RBMK reactors no longer have the deficiencies that doomed Chernobyl. Although Chernobyl will always be one of Earth’s greatest tragedies, the improved nuclear safety standards, International cooperation, and advanced radiation safety gave massive strides to how we can move forwards.

From Energy to Emergency: Nuclear Reactors vs. Weapons

People often get confused with nuclear energy and nuclear weapons while they are completely different. Nuclear reactors cannot explode. Unlike nuclear weapons, where all of the stored energy comes out instantaneously. The fundamental differences between the design of two is the way the fission reactions are controlled and the enrichment of the fuel. The control rods in the nuclear reactors are designed to have a steady and controllable release of heat from fission. The fissions inside a reactor are much slower and spread out to heat up the water to ultimately generate electricity, which limits the intensity of the nuclear reaction. In addition, the fuel for the reactors is at a low level of enrichment, about 4 to 5%, meanwhile weapon grade is 90%. There is no way for the HEU (Highly Enriched Uranium) to be compressed rapidly enough to reach a supercritical state. The two differences distinguish the energy power of nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons with one producing energy continuously over time, and one producing energy in the blink of an eye.

Split Atoms, Not Glaciers

Nuclear energy is also demonized in the media for its supposed negative effect on the environment and contributing to global warming. Nuclear energy is the most decarbonizing of the energy sources, providing America over half of its carbon-free electricity. Fossil fuels are finite, and release the utmost amount of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, making it the #1 contributor to the warming of our planet. Renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal are effective, but are location and time dependent, making them not as reliable.

Nuclear energy is also the best bang for your buck. The Levelized Cost of Energy is an economic metric used to calculate the average cost of generating electricity over a generator’s lifetime. It divides the total cost of building and operating a power generating asset by the total electricity it generates over its lifetime and is cost per unit.

Mark Nelson, an environmentalist and managing director of the Radiant Energy fund explains the faultiness of this metric, in that it describes the “cost of energy for power plants of a given nature.” This fails to compare energy sources required for 24/7 reliable electricity supply. The costs and performances of electricity grids are dominated by extremes and worst case scenarios, Nelson says. 

It can be easier to learn about a tougher concept like nuclear energy in non-nuclear energy terms. He uses the following example to illustrate the inability of LCOE to take into account the inadequacy of solar and wind: Imagine you are in Manhattan and need to get to London in the most cost-effective way. Swimming is the cheapest! By the cost per mile of swimming, it is far cheaper than building a boat, and the infrastructure needed to use a plane would be very expensive. Swimming there is not physically possible, but this does not stop people from arguing that it is cost effective, and to advocate for others to be required by the government to swim because it’s cheapest. 

Not to mention a wind facility would require more than 140,000 acres, 170 times the land needed for a nuclear reactor, “to generate the same amount of electricity as a 1,000 megawatt reactor,” according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. The institute notes that while nuclear requires 103 acres per million megawatt-hours, solar needs 3,200 acres, and wind uses up 17,800 acres.

Fusion in Conclusion

No energy source is perfect on all counts, we know this. It’s about finding the closest one to it, keeping all aspects of each source in mind. Nuclear energy proves to be the most cost effective, least detrimental environmentally, and most importantly, misinterpreted. Energy sources are a polarizing topic that some people like to think they know everything about . Making efforts to learn the whole story, and not just what you may want to learn can help us come to more of an agreement on what’s right for our world as we know it.