Today, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to approve the plans of Southern Company, allowing for the construction of two new nuclear reactors at the Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. This would mark the first American approval of a nuclear reactor since 1978, a year before the Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania. The Georgia plant currently houses two nuclear reactors and the plans would double its operation with the addition of two more, both of which would be state of the art.
Nuclear reactors were first constructed in the 1940s. These reactors are used to control nuclear chain reactions and to harness their energy output. This energy is used to turn water into steam, which fuels turbines that power electrical generators. Rather than burning fossil fuels to acquire the thermal energy, as is the case in fuel-driven energy production, nuclear reactors use the energy released from nuclear fission.
The energy created from these reactions is considered clean energy since it does not emit greenhouse gases, which have been linked to global warming, into the environment. Today, clean energy nuclear reactors provide the United States with 20 percent of its annual energy consumption.
But nuclear reactors suffer from two major safety issues. When the topic of nuclear reactors comes up, people's minds often jump to the tragic accidents of Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi just this past year. When meltdowns occur, the potential radioactive danger to the workers in the plant as well as to nearby towns is considerable. But over the years, safety at these plants has vastly improved. With the exception of Fukushima, which was the direct result of natural disasters of a magnitude basically unheard of in Georgia, the world has had no major nuclear disasters in more than 25 years.
The second negative characteristic of these reactors is their hazardous radioactive waste. When the nuclear fuel rods used in reactors reach the point at which they are no longer useful for energy production, they still contain radioactive materials with half-lives measured in thousands of years, as well as highly toxic metals. Many procedures have been developed to try to sequester this dangerous radioactive waste, including some plans to bury it deep inside a mountain in the state of Nevada.
We understand the inherent danger involved in nuclear energy. But we also feel that such dangers have clouded our better judgment when it comes to advancement in the field. Nuclear reactions remain some of our cleanest, most reliable sources of energy, and modern technology now has a decades-long track record of effectively preventing the major problems that have haunted nuclear energy in the past.
For more than 30 years now, America has been remained paralyzed in the nuclear field, relying instead on rapidly deteriorating stores of petroleum, natural gas and coal. We applaud the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for ending that paralysis and taking steps to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels with the impending nuclear permit approvals.
