1. Nuclear Power: Pros & Cons
By: Shokoofeh Akhavan
Professor: Emily Brett
August 2012

2. Overview
• Origins
• Fission
• Pros
Economic
Portability and Productivity
Environmental
• Cons
Waste Storage
Accidents
National Security

3. Origins
• First Controlled Chain Reaction under University Chicago
Football field
• First reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory 1942
• Originally designed production of weapons grade plutonium
• First Civilian Reactor in Obinsk, Russia 1952

4. Nuclear Power Cycle
Functions Similarly to any fossil fuel power plant

5. Pros
• Economic
• Environmental
• Portability & Productivity

6. Economic
• Net external Costs are much cheaper then other forms of
production
• As of 2005 Nuclear power was :
– 3/4 the cost of coal
– 1/5 the cost of gas
• Nuclear energy is, in many places, competitive with fossil fuels
for electricity generation, despite relatively high capital costs
and the need to internalize all waste disposal and
decommissioning costs.

7. Environmental
• Lowest impact on the environment
• No combustion thus Zero emissions of
greenhouse gases
– Only external product is Steam
• Water used for cooling can be
interchanged with the environment

8. Portability and Productivity
• Because nuclear power produces an enormous amount of
energy using a very small amount of fuel, its average
production cost is just 1.87 cents per kilowatt hour.
• A good wind project produces electricity only about 30
percent of the time. The sun shines only part of the time in
much of the world, but nuclear energy is beneficial for various
military and civilian applications.
• It leads to relative large amount of energy that produced per
land area.

9. Cons
• Waste storage
• Accidents
• National Security
• Ease of peaceful usage to weapons
program

10. Waste Storage
• One of the biggest disadvantages of nuclear energy is
the waste:
• Store in cool dry place
• Radioactive indefinitely
• Difficult to store
• Has deadly Radiation

11. Disasters
• One of the biggest disadvantages of nuclear
energy is the occurrence of accidents due to
core meltdown.
• Chernobyl
– Worst nuclear accident
• Three Mile island
– Worst US Nuclear accident
• Most recent Dimitrovgrad in 1996
• Most deadly recently Japan in 1994

12. National Security
• Waste storage sites, Plants, various aspects of
transporting fissile material are “targets” to hostiles
• Not enough is being done to protect these sites

13. Power vs. Weapons
• Peaceful energy production can be very easily turned around
into a weapons program
• Turn around time depending on reactor is approx 6 months

14. THE END
Sources:
• TAS, Aug, 2012 ,Close to 70 percent favor zero nuclear plants in 2030
,, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201208060006
• The Sydney Morning Herald, July 2012 ,Origin Energy attacked for questioning
RET, http://www.eco-business.com/news/origin-energy-attacked-for-questioning-ret
• Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, 2012 ,Nuclear Power Plants,
http://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/licenseesapplicants/powerplants/index.cfm
• World Nuclear Association, June 2010, Outline History of Nuclear Energy
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf54.html