Revision as of 14:20, 26 August 2018

One of the main reasons for going vegan, aside from ethical and health concerns, is environmental concern. Factory farms are likely the most harmful thing for the environment right now, and meat consumption just helps it along. Veganism is (obviously) the most effective measure in order to counteract this, making veganism one of the most important actions to take to save our planet.

However, as important as Veganism is, there is another very, very, very, very, very, very important solution in order to help the Earth, and veganism would do nothing without it; Nuclear Energy.

Nuclear Energy, as important and great as it is (as you will see by the end of this article), is unfortunately opposed by many in the Vegan community, which incidentally undoes all of the environmental good veganism does. 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 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.

History

During World War II, the Manhattan Project was undertaken by the world's leading scientists in order to develop Nuclear Weapons using Uranium-235. When it was finally completed, they proved to be the most destructive weapons in human history up to that point, as evidenced by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which hastened the end of the war. This brought along the Cold War, where the both the United States and Soviet Union, the worlds two superpowers, where both sides were creating thousands upon thousands of nuclear weapons in order to not be bombed first.

However, the Cold War was not the only thing to come out of the end of World War II; New advances and discoveries in Uranium brought upon the Atomic Age, where we were able to harness the power of nuclear energy, and take advantage of its effectiveness over other energies. It was the strangely amazing and humanity-saving discovery which was derived from a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.

The Nuclear Energy Act of 1946, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman, along with allowing civilian control over the development of Nuclear Weapons, gave civilian control over the management of Nuclear Energy, meaning that Nuclear Energy plants could be privately owned, rather than managed by the government. This was reversed by future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who called for federal control over Nuclear Energy in his "Atoms for Peace" program. Eisenhower saw the promise of this new energy, and he addressed this in a speech to the United Nations, in order to convince them that good can come from these new discoveries, as he wanted to ensure that Nuclear Energy had a place in the future of energy.

Moving over to the other world power, the Soviet Union was the first country to successfully able to derive power from a Nuclear Energy plant (The Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant) and give it to consumers in 1954. This early version of a Nuclear Reactor is very different from modern reactors; it used a greater amount of Uranium, and didn't produce an impressive amount of energy. While they weren't busy building Nuclear Weapons to deter the Americans, the Soviets were constantly innovating new Nuclear Reactors in order to increase the effectiveness.

Over in the United Kingdom, they have built the first Commercial Nuclear Energy Station, Calder Hall. It proved to be more effective than the Soviet's Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, and was in use for nearly 50 years.

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. In a way, this was a good thing, as it gives the federal government more power and say in enforcing good energy and environmental legislation. Of course, the downside is that it's one of those issues that's divided among the left and the right; Democrats and Republicans.

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 deny 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.

This is unfortunate for pro-science liberals such as ourselves (most of us at least), as there come times when we need to vote a candidate who is Pro-Nuclear into office, but have overall have an agenda we disagree with, since they're running against a candidate who has a more liberal agenda, but opposes nuclear energy.

On occasion, this can serve as a silver lining for when the Conservative Candidate wins; When George Bush Jr. ̶r̶o̶b̶b̶e̶d̶ ̶ won the Election in 2000, he had quite a conservative agenda (his Dad was Reagan's Vice President if that isn't evidence enough), which wouldn't really sit well with us, but he had an excellent stance on Nuclear Energy (or as he called it, " Nucular"), although he still supported fossil fuels unfortunately; see Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Think of it like this, if only one candidate is nuclear:

If the candidate is Liberal and pro-Nuclear, we'd happily vote for them.

If the candidate is Conservative and pro-Nuclear, we'd reluctantly vote for them.

If the candidate is Liberal and anti-Nuclear, we'd reluctantly not vote for them.

If the candidate is Conservative and anti-Nuclear, we'd happily not vote for them.

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).

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 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, and will lead to suffering for other animals, as the water and moisture will disrupt the balance in ecosystems.

As for things that may happen, 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 class), 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% U-235 for such an event to occur. Luckily, modern nuclear reactors are less then 5% U-235, slightly less than 100%.

Cost

Efficacy

Cleanliness

Safety

Sustainability

Vs. Other Forms of Energy

Oil

Coal

Wind

Solar

Hydro

Geothermal

Conclusion