Pros and Cons of Nuclear Energy

Many people despise the thought of using nuclear energy to power our country. They believe that it is very dangerous and bad for the environment. Even though the waste bi product of nuclear power takes hundreds of years to dissolve, there is no carbon emissions from these power plants. This makes nuclear power a new option for energy and has got many people thinking that this could dramatically help the spread of global warming.

Whether you view nuclear power as the promise for a better tomorrow, or as a tremendous hazard to our environment, there's a good chance you won't be easily converted to the other side. After all, nuclear power boasts a number of advantages, as well as its share of downright depressing negatives.

As far as positives go, nuclear power's biggest advantages are tied to the simple fact that it doesn't depend on fossil fuels. Coal and natural gas power plants emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. With nuclear power plants, CO2? emissions are minimal.

According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the power produced by the world's nuclear plants would normally produce 2 billon metric tons of CO2 per year if they depended on fossil fuels. In fact, a properly functioning nuclear power plant actually releases less radioactivity into the atmosphere than a coal-fired power plant. By not depending on fossil fuels, the cost of nuclear power also isn't affected by fluctuations in oil and gas prices.

As for negatives, nuclear fuel may not produce CO2, but it does provide its share of problems. Historically, mining and purifying uranium hasn't been a very clean process. Even transporting nuclear fuel to and from plants poses a contamination risk. And once the fuel is spent, you can't just throw it in the city dump. It's still radioactive and potentially deadly.

On average, a nuclear power plant annually generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel, classified as high-level radioactive waste. When you take into account every nuclear plant on Earth, the combined total climbs to roughly 2,000 metric tons yearly. All of this waste emits radiation and heat, meaning that it will eventually corrode any container and can prove lethal to nearby life forms. As if this weren't bad enough, nuclear power plants produce a great deal of low-level radioactive waste in the form of radiated parts and equipment.

Eventually spent nuclear fuel will decay to safe radioactive levels, but it takes tens of thousands of years. Even low-level radioactive waste requires centuries to reach acceptable levels. Currently, the nuclear industry lets waste cool for years before mixing it with glass and storing it in massive cooled, concrete structures. In the future, much of this waste may be transported deep underground. In the meantime, however, this waste has to be maintained, monitored and guarded to prevent the materials from falling into the wrong hands.

Obviously, nuclear power plants are not good for the environment. So next time you take into consideration supporting "no emission nuclear power plants," think about all the other harmful biproducts of nuclear power plants.

Sources

"Key World Energy Statistics 2007" (PDF). International Energy Agency. Retrieved on 2008-06-21.

Bernard L. Cohen. "THE NUCLEAR ENERGY OPTION". Plenum Press.

What is Clean Coal Technology?

A major way to live a green life is by realizing where and how you obtain the electricity for your home. Most energy in the U.S. is produced by coal-fired power plants. Even the University of Wyoming has a coal-fired power plant to feed its need for energy.

Coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. When burned, it produces emissions that contribute to global warming, create acid rain, and pollute water. With all of the talk surrounding nuclear energy, hydropower and biofuels, you might be forgiven for thinking that grimy coal is finally on its way out.

Coal generates half of the electricity in the United States and will likely continue to do so as long as it's cheap and plentiful [Energy Information Administration]. Clean coal technology seeks to reduce harsh environmental effects by using multiple technologies to clean coal and contain its emissions.

Carbon capture and storage is the most explored so far clean coal technology so far. It catches and sequesters carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from stationary sources like power plants. Since CO2 contributes to global warming, reducing its release into the atmosphere has become a major international concern. In order to discover the most efficient and economical means of carbon capture, researchers have developed several technologies.

Also, Flue-gas separation is another up and coming clean coal technology. It removes CO2 with a solvent, strips off the CO2 with steam, and condenses the steam into a concentrated stream. Flue gas separation renders commercially usable CO2, which helps offset its price. Another process, oxy-fuel combustion, burns the fuel in pure or enriched oxygen to create a flue gas composed primarily of CO2 and water -- this ?sidesteps the energy-intensive process of separating the CO2 from other flue gasses. A third technology, pre-combustion capture, removes the CO2 before it's burned as a part of a gasification process.

After capture, secure containers sequester the collected CO2 to prevent or stall its reentry into the atmosphere. The two storage options, geologic and oceanic, must contain the CO2 until peak emissions subside hundreds of years from now. Geologic storage involves injecting CO2 into the earth. Depleted oil or gas fields and deep saline aquifers safely contain CO2 while unminable coal seams absorb it. A process called enhanced oil recovery already uses CO2 to maintain pressure and improve extraction in oil reservoirs.

Ocean storage, a technology still in its early stages, involves injecting liquid CO2 into waters 500 to 3,000 meters deep, where it dissolves under pressure. However, this method would slightly decrease pH and potentially harm marine habitats. All forms of CO2 storage require careful preparation and monitoring to avoid creating environmental problems that outweigh the benefits of CO2 containment.

Since alternative forms of energy cannot yet replace a power source as cheap and plentiful as coal, clean coal technology promises to mitigate the increasingly severe climactic effects ?of coal emissions. Please support the research of clean coal technologies to help make our planet a cleaner place to live!

Sources

U.S. Department of Energy. "Clean COal". 2008. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/clean coal/csp_program.html

Recycling!!

Recycling is the process of taking a product at the end of its useful life and using all or part of it to make another product. The process of turning one products useful parts into a new product is done to conserve on the consumption of resources, energy and space used in landfills. By recycling 1 plastic bottle not only saves anywhere from 100 to 1000 years in the landfill but also saves the environment from the emissions in producing new bottles as well as the oil used to produce that bottle. The internationally recognized symbol for recycling includes three arrows moving in a triangle. Each arrow represents a different part of the recycling process, from collection to re-manufacture to resale. Recycling reduces our waste sent to landfills, and making new products out of recycled ones reduces the amount of energy needed in production. For every 1 ton of plastic that is recycled we save the equivalent of 2 people’s energy use for 1 year, the amount of water used by 1 person in 2 month’s time and almost 2000 pounds of oil.

Recycling Aluminum Cans:

A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. That's closed loop recycling at its finest! Used aluminum beverage cans are the most recycled item in the U.S., but other types of aluminum, such as siding, gutters, car components, storm window frames, and lawn furniture can also be recycled. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline. More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product. Once an aluminum can is recycled, it can be part of a new can within six weeks. Because so many of them are recycled, aluminum cans account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, according to EPA estimates. An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now! There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum can be recycled. We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year. At one time, aluminum was more valuable than gold!





Recycling Paper:

To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down. Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees. If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year! If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25,000,000 trees a year. If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket goes through 60,500,000 paper bags! Imagine how many supermarkets there are in the U.S.The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year. The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years. Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.

Recycling Plastic:

Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away! Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year! Americans throw away 25,000,000 plastic beverage bottles every hour! Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator. American throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year.

Recycling Glass Bottles:

Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable. The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials. A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill. Mining and transporting raw materials for glass produces about 385 pounds of waste for every ton of glass that is made. If recycled glass is substituted for half of the raw materials, the waste is cut by more than 80%.








Important Facts About Recycling

1. .A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers -- make sure they're recycled!
2. Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
3. A typical family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk, and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. That's a lot of containers that can all be recycled!
4. About 80% of what Americans throw away is recyclable, yet our recycling rate is only 28%.
5. Every month Americans throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper (think: Empire State Building), but all of these jars are recyclable!
6. Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures a year! Ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It's twice the size of Texas and is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. It's also 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons.
7. Recycling one ton (about 2,000 pounds) of paper saves 17 trees, two barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 1,260 miles), 4,100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for six months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space, and 60 pounds of pollution.
8. The 17 trees saved by recycling one ton of paper can absorb a total of 250 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air each year.
9. If all of our newspapers were recycled, we could save about 250 million trees each year! If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we could save about 25 million trees each year.
10. More than 20 million Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil. Believe it not, ALL that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it so most it goes in the trash!
11. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours. In spite of this, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every three months!
12. More than 20,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of aluminum foil. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.
13. Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute!
14. A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
15. Motor oil never wears out, it just gets dirty. Oil can be recycled, re-refined and used again, reducing our reliance on imported oil.
16. On average, each one of us produces 4.4 pounds of solid waste each day. This adds up to almost a ton of trash per person, per year.
17. The average American uses 650 pounds of paper each year – 100 million tons of wood could be saved each year if all that paper was recycled.


*To find out more information about recycling in your area, you can go to local.com or visit your local recycling center. Recycle Reduce Reuse, close the loop.

Reducing your Carbon Footprint : Jennifer McIntire

What is a Carbon Footprint? This seems the be a rising question in many peoples mind. A carbon footprint is the total amount of green house gases produced to directly and indirectly support human activities, usually expressed in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide or CO2 (timeforachange.org,2008). There are many different things that you can do to reduce your carbon footprint. It is simple to help reduce the amount of carbon that you are releasing.

On thing that you can do to reduce you footprint is by walking or cycling. When your destination is close you should really consider walking or cycling because the amount of carbon you use when driving is a lot and when walking your not releasing any which is a plus. Another great thing you can do to help the environment it planting trees. When you plant trees you help make more clean oxygen which helps reduce the amount of CO2 in the air. Recycling is also key when your trying to help reduce your footprint and by recycling that means not only recycling cans plastic and boxes but that means buying recycled materials. You can also be earth friendly when you are cooking. A great option is to eat organic foods. They taste even better than non organic food and it helps the planet.

There are many things that you can do to help reduce your carbon footprint and I gave you a few simple ways to do that. Now that you know what you can do go out and start reducing your footprint!