Nuclear Energy

Note: This Article is a work in progress, and is far from being completed. Once Red stops being lazy, it'll get done.

One of the main reasons for going vegan, aside from ethical and health concerns, is environmental concern. Animal agriculture is one of the most harmful things for the environment, meat consumption just keeps it going. Veganism is (obviously) the most effective measure in order to counteract this, making veganism one of the most important actions to take to stopping climate change.

However, as important as Veganism is, there is another very, very, very, very, very, very important solution in order to stop climate change; Nuclear Energy. Despite its importance, it is (as you will see by the end of this article), is unfortunately opposed by many in the Vegan community, due to fear-mongering and (unfounded) concerns over its safety). To any meat-eater who is pro-nuclear energy, Vegans may come across as at best hypocrites, for denying one of the most environmentally friendly energies available, and dogmatic at worst, appearing to be anti-science loons who are scared of anything with the term 'Nuclear' in it.

In short, as important veganism is to the environmental movement, Nuclear power is also an extremely important tool, and any Vegan who claims to be for the environment must also support it. For the record, there isn't any "Vegan" position on Nuclear energy, it's just a divide between those who are actually pro-science, and those who are not.

In this article, we will be discussing the cost, safeness, cleanliness, efficacy, and sustainability, along with the general Science and History behind it, and its role in Politics. We will also be comparing it to other forms of energy within the aforementioned criteria.

Nuclear Accidents

A common concern among people when it comes to Nuclear Energy is the possible event of a nuclear accident, and will often cite the Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three-Mile-Island accidents. We'll discuss each of these incidents one by one.

Let's start with the most infamous example of Nuclear Energy supposedly going wrong; Chernobyl. It's obvious that most people aren't aware of the context within the situation, since it was probably the most exaggerated energy incident until the BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill in 2010.

Firstly, the explosion. As you can see in the picture, the explosion was only big enough to destroy the building that held the nuclear reactor, so we can rule out the idea that it caused a nuclear explosion akin to the bombings of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The explosion itself was not the real issue at hand. Secondly, there's the concern that many people got cancer from the debris that was spread as a result of the explosion. It's important to note that most of the cancer cases came from people who were drinking milk from cows, who were eating grass contaminated with radioactivity from the debris (yet another reason to stop drinking cow's milk) in the general area. Overall, only about fifty or so individuals died from the disaster, and roughly 24,000 have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which may sound terrible, but it becomes more reassuring to know that thyroid cancer is an easily treatable form of cancer.

Let's continue with the most recent infamous nuclear accident that happened back in 2011; Fukushima.

Do you know how many people died from the Fukushima incident? Take a wild guess. 50? 100? 1,000? 10,000? 299,792,458?

The correct answer is zero. Yup, not a single person died from the incident. Zero. Nada. Nuthin'. Zilch. So, what is all the fuss about?

Well first, let's talk about what happened. You probably remember the Tōhoku Earthquake that hit Japan in March of 2011 (had a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter Scale!), and how it also caused a Tsunami (roughly 50 feet tall) in the process. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Energy Plant was on the coast near where the Tsunami hit. This was unfortunate, as the nuclear reactor in the plant was only able to withstand either an Earthquake or Tsunami; not both at the same time, especially considering the intensity of both. Now you might be asking yourself "Well, how could they be so incompetent as to put this plant near the ocean with a possible risk of damage?" There's actually a good reason for it; the cooling waters of the sea are great to use for the energy plants, but we'll be discussing that more in the Science section. Anyway, the tsunami and earthquake did a number on the Nuclear Reactor, so it must have exploded, right? Yeah, that must be what people are talking about. Yeah, uh, no. Not remotely. As with all modern Nuclear Reactors that use Uranium, it is virtually impossible to make that thing explode. "But," I can hear you say "That thing has uranium, just like a nuclear weapon! How could it not!" to which I humbly reply, it takes more than just Uranium to make something go boom. It's a lot of very complicated physics and engineering to take into account. So, unlike at Chernobyl, the Nuclear Reactor did not explode. There was an explosion in the building, though it was due to a hydrogen build up in the upper floor. Some heat in the reactor was building up, but it turned itself off, and cooling pumps helped keep the heat from getting out of control. Overall, the only deaths in the plant were three, and they were due to either the Tsunami or the Earthquake, not the nuclear reactor.

Well, what about the populace in the area? Sch, you don't want to know. The government in the area was apparently not too bright that day, and forced an unnecessary evacuation of the area, which actually killed many people, particularly the elderly. This honestly more fits as an argument for libertarianism than as an anti-nuclear argument.

And finally, we have the Three-Mile-Island accident. This one was more of an experiment gone wrong.

Cooling pumps, as you will see, are an essential part for Nuclear Power plants to ensure safety. However, some genius at the plant had the genius idea of turning these pumps off, which led to the incident. There, it was that simple, any questions?

The death tolls aren't in the millions as claimed by this dumb bitch uninformed individual.

In Politics

For better or for worse, the issue of climate change and energy sources has made its way into Politics, with a Politician's energy policies usually playing a major role in their campaigning.

The issue of climate change wasn't all too prevalent in Politics until Vice President and Environmentalist Al Gore came along and introduced it into the political realm. Of course, the downside is that it's one of those issues that's divided among the left and the right; Democrats and Republicans. And recently, it seems as though the issue is becoming more politically divided than ever.

The left (Democrats) generally agrees that climate change is an imminent problem, and support methods to curb it, such as passing environmental protection laws (good), yet still, on the farther ends of the Party, there is rampant opposition to the use of nuclear power as a method of combating it (bad). However, in possibly the most ironic thing in modern-day politics, the right (Republicans) generally deny the reality of climate change, and aren't terribly concerned with how the government should handle environmental issues, such as promoting the use of "clean" coal (bad), but they are usually the ones who are pro-nuclear energy. In the UK, the issue is a bit similar, as the more progressive party, the Labour party, is split on the issue of Nuclear, while the Conservative Party is more favorable towards it. Speaking of the Labour Party, former Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was a long time anti-nuclear activist, has come to embrace nuclear energy as a source that the UK will embrace for the future. So that's good.

This is unfortunate for pro-science Vegans like ourselves, who generally support the Democrats over the Republicans due to their better animal welfare policies. It'd be great to have someone who is both pro-nuclear and pro-animal rights (like Cory Booker who is Vegan himself), but since the federal government on average has less power to control the latter, voting in regards to the former is usually the better decision.

When people vote, they generally vote based on the amount of policies they agree with in regards to a certain candidate, which is fine, but the importance of issues is not to be disregarded, especially when it comes to climate change, which is definitely the most important issue we're facing as a world. Obviously, if even 20% of society stopped eating meat, it'd be much less of an issue, but we still ought to support these policies.

In terms of helping out the environment as an individual, going vegan and reducing general energy use is the best you can practically do. There are other things you can do to lower your footprint even further, such as installing solar-panels, avoiding Palm Oil, donating to effective charities (which include Vegan charities), installing a greywater system, using public transit, and so on, but veganism gives you the best bang for your buck. However, voting is also extremely important. People tend to not think of voting as important, or that their vote doesn't matter, which is the reason why climate-change deniers manage to stay in power (these people might support nuclear, but also support oil and coal). That being said, while voting is important, we only get the chance to vote year or so, so Vegan activism is still more important than political activism in terms of climate change.

Science

Ah, now we're talking! Here, we'll discuss the two sciences at hand; Climate Change, and how Nuclear Energy works. I'm not a nuclear physicist (yet), but the following this the scientific consensus among about 99% of Scientists (so it's all probably true).

For the record, the scientific consensus on the matter is that nuclear power is a safe, clean source of energy.

Climate Change

Main Article: Climate change

This part is just a basic summary.

In the Atmosphere

Our atmosphere is made up of a lot of gases; Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Argon make up most of it (78%, 21%, and .93% respectively), and the one we're going to be focusing on, Carbon Dioxide, or CO2, which makes up about .04%. Sounds insignificant, right? Pfft, you wish. Given human psychology, we automatically discount numbers that are low relative to others, (which doesn't fly when you're working in science, as you'll see) mainly due to our inability to properly evaluate numbers and statistics. Even if you're not a botanist, you probably already know that humans breathe in oxygen and release CO2, which our plants and trees need to survive. Even with that .04% CO2 in the atmosphere, plants (and thus all other multi-cellular life on Earth) wouldn't be here.

Fossil Fuels were the only real source of energy around like 100 years ago, when they were used for cooking, heat, powering trains, and so on (which in their case was understandable, since that was the only real energy source they had at the time, though there isn't any excuse to use them now). But since we've kept on using them, we've increased CO2 levels roughly 40%. So what are we concerned about here? Well, CO2 does an excellent job at trapping heat radiation from the Sun, known as the Greenhouse effect. You've probably have experienced this when entering a building with a lot of windows that has been out in the Sun in the summer time, such as a car.

The Greenhouse effect isn't bad at all; it's what keeps the Earth warm. However, when you have a lot of humans pump tons it of it per day, and disrupting the balance of the natural CO2 count, it heats up our planet. Scientists estimate there is a 2-11 Degrees Fahrenheit increase per century due to CO2 emissions. Sounds like nothing, right? Noooothin' to worry 'bout. But again, remember the human psychology bit we discussed.

What repercussions could possibly ensue? Unpleasant ones.

The obvious issue is that our ice caps will melt; With more heat packed into the atmosphere, and a warming up planet, the temperatures near the poles go above freezing (just a little bit), which melts a lot of ice, and raises our sea levels. This will lead to the suffering of a lot of animals that live in the poles. Oh yeah, and wildfires will also happen more often.

But the real bad impacts of climate change will be on humans. Countries around the equator will have more droughts (you might be thinking "What about the rising sea levels?" but we're talking about fresh water, silly), countries a bit further away from the equator will be more moist (heh), which will drive in more Mosquitoes into the area, and overall decrease in quality for all life on Earth. Oh yeah, and there will be more cancer cases.

Fun things to think about, right?

How Nuclear Energy Works

OK, this is where things get pretty complicated, so get out those notebooks.

Chemistry

Nuclear Energy would pretty much be nothing if it weren't for our old friend Uranium; More specifically, Uranium-235 (we will be abbreviating it as U-235), which is a light form of Uranium. It's the same thing we use in Nuclear Weapons, except a Nuclear Reactor needs more than just U-235 to explode like Hiroshima or Nagasaki, since Uranium isn't the only thing you need in order to cause a nuclear chain reaction.

A single atom of U-235 releases tons of energy; roughly 20 million times for powerful than a single molecule of TNT. When fission occurs in the reactor, neutrons are emitted (those neutrally charged particles in the nucleus if you remember your high school Chemistry), which, when they collide with U-235 atoms, they fission, thus making more neutrons. This makes the Uranium very susceptible to nuclear explosions.

However, you need the Uranium to be 100% (pure) U-235 for such an event to occur. Luckily, modern nuclear reactors are about 5% U-235, slightly less than 100%. There rest of the reactor does contain Uranium, but a heavier Uranium in much higher quantity, Uranium-238. This means that modern nuclear energy plants have a roughly 0% chance of exploding like an atomic bomb.

Thorium

People who are pro-nuclear often tout Thorium as the element that should be used in Nuclear Energy since it's much safer than Uranium. This is a fair and honest concern, but the usage of Thorium is not necessary if we want to ensure that Nuclear Power Plants don't cause any harm. Modern Nuclear Reactors are built to take care of just about every folly of Uranium, and they literally can not explode.

Thorium is also less efficient than Uranium, since it requires the usgae of other elements such as Plutonium to function as well as Uranium, while Uranium gets right to work. On the plus side for Thorium, there are insane amounts of the stuff on Earth, even more so than Uranium. We'll get back to this later in the Sustainability section, but for right now, let's just say that we'll use Thorium when we run out Uranium (which will likely never happen).

Although there is little reason to use Thorium in the practical sense, it can be used in the Activist sense in order to change more minds and increase support for Nuclear. Again, Uranium is fine, but since Uranium is associated with nuclear warfare and Mutually Assured Destruction, people are often skeptical of it. Thorium helps ease the minds of people when they hear of how safe it is, despite the redundancy. Eh, what're you gonna do?

Sustainability

We have lots of Uranium on this Earth. Tons of it. Estimates are that we have a few thousand years of Uranium left on this planet, along with another few thousand years if you throw Thorium in there.

Vs. Other Forms of Energy

Everyone is familiar with the other standard forms of energy, wind, oil, hydro, but looking at all that we have examined with Nuclear, it's time to compare it to other forms of energy, and see how it stacks up. We will be looking at all types of energy sources with a quick rundown of each, and basically how Nuclear is better than it in one way or another. Hopefully, by the end, you'll realize how Nuclear is the only really viable option we have here.

Oil

Ah, oil, the quintessential best friend to the average absurdly rich enterprise Capitalist.

We all know how much you can make with Oil; The captain of industry John D. Rockefeller had an insane monopoly on it and became one of the richest men in history, and possibly the richest man in modern history. Americans love the stuff, so much so that they're willing to declare war in the Middle East under the ruse of getting an evil dictator out of there, just to get the stuff.

Crude Oil (or Petroleum, as the eggheads call it) has many advantages, and many disadvantages, and we'll go through each one.

Sustainability & Price

Being a fossil fuel, oil is the culmination of millions of years of ancient organisms being subject to massive amounts of heat and pressure under sedimentary rocks. We have tons of the stuff, and people have made millions upon millions, even billions of dollars in the business. The price is always changing (since we're fortunately moving away from the stuff), but in the past 50 years prices range from about $20 a barrel to about $120 (which was during the Energy Crises of the late 70's.) per barrel. It really all depends on the time period.

Or do we? We've been using the stuff for the past 150 years at a constant rate. We use it to power our automobiles primarily, cooking, certain machines, and so on. It's a common concern that we're running out of fossil fuels, but this honestly is a good thing; Oil is terrible for our CO2 levels, and the more we run out of it, we'll be forced to convert to cleaner, more sustainable energy sources (of course, most notably Nuclear Energy). So is this fossil fuel crises really a bad thing?

Coal

Do I honestly have to get into why coal is bad? It's like oil; efficient and abundant, but terrible for the environment.

Also, take into account the diseases you can get from breathing in the soot produced by Coal Plants; why would anyone do this?

Wind

Wind is the stereotypical renewable energy you'll often hear from anti-nuclear liberals (along with Solar) as being able to sustain our energy usage. This isn't exactly true.

As vegans who care about the well being of animals, it's important to remember that thousands of birds are annually killed by windmills. Now of course, there are more bird deaths caused by buildings than windmills. But think about it this way; why have those extra unnecessary deaths from something that doesn't have much utility compared to something that does? It's terrible.

And as for the issue of energy effectiveness, it suffers the issue of situationalism, much like solar. Wind generally thrives at high altitude areas, so in the United States, places like California or the New York Islands or any coast state really will get decent (just decent though) amounts of energy. Everyone else in those other states (and remember, the U.S. is a pretty damn big country) will have to accept the fact that they'll never be able to get the delicious fruits of wind energy. So, not very good for powering the entire United States, and definitely not good for powering the entire world (especially in those low altitude areas).

And let's not forget the insane infrastructure cost for building these things, and the sheer amount of resources required. Let's consider how tall these things are; One 7-megawatt turbine is, on average, 650 Feet tall, taller than Lady Liberty, who stands at 305 feet. So, yeah. Plus the CO2 released building this stuff will outdo the clean energy ultimately produced; I mean, theoretically you can use wind energy to get wind energy, but you can do all that and more with nuclear.

Solar

Ah yes, Solar! Bunch of those blue panels spread out across the land, harnessing the energy from our Star the sun, just converting it all to energy! Yeah I guess but not really.

Like wind, solar suffers badly in areas where you can't get consistent sun. If you're further from the equator, where Winters are cold and long, you won't have much luck getting reliable amounts of energy from solar. Sure, if you live in a place like Hawaii, a place very close to the equator and gets year-round sunshine, solar'd be much more reliable. But not many people live in Hawaii, and not everyone lives in the equator. During Fall and Winter, the days get much shorter, meaning less energy from sun.