The world's natural resources are being consumed at a very fast rate. And as we loss more and more resources, people will be seeking new ways to make electricity. And it looks like the only practical short-term solution for the energy-crisis is going to be nuclear power. Nuclear power, however is not as safe as burning coal, gas or oil in a factory it is in fact, much more dangerous, the dangers associated with a nuclear power plant far out weigh the benefits to society as a whole. About 20 percent of our nation's total electricity is produced by nuclear power in over 100 nuclear power plants throughout the country. Even though atomic power has been in use for over 50 years it was originally a weapon of war and used for mass destruction, but when the Second World War ended the need for atomic bombs diminished. The scientists who designed the weapons were out of jobs. So they turned this weapon of mass destruction into huge plants generating "clean and cheap " electricity for the country. Government declared that nuclear power is a safe and efficient source of energy. It was called progress. This progress brought with it sickness, mutations, cancer and eventually death to those exposed to high levels of the radiation it produced.
While everyone was told how safe of an energy source nuclear power is the truth was that accidents did happen at nuclear power plants all the time. If an accident at a nuclear power plant occurs it has the much more potential to be devastating than an accident at a coal or gas plant because of the radiation that could be released. An example of danger is Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania where there was a partial core meltdown in March of 1979 and an "acceptable" amount of radiation escaped into earth’s atmosphere. But really, there is no amount of radiation that is acceptable if released as a result of an accident at a nuclear power plant.
Today many Americans adopt lifestyles that are based on energy inefficient devices. The public is doing its best to force nuclear power plants into production by wasting electricity and the resources which are used to produce it (coal, oil, gas) and by failing to recycle. Nuclear power has been promoted worldwide as being necessary to replace fossil fuels as the means of energy production in the 21st century. However this is untrue, There are many other economically viable and environmentally safe methods of producing energy. These include solar power, hydroelectric power and wind power. Today one fifth of the world's total energy production either comes from wind, water or solar power, and it is estimated that by the year 2000 forty percent of the world's energy production will be from sources other than fossil fuels or nuclear power. It is also estimated that in the year 2005 the US would have to order a new nuclear power plant to be built every five days to compensate for the irradiation of the coal, oil and gas powered plants. On the other hand if all U. S. nuclear power plants were shut down today, it would make very little difference. The existing electrical backup systems have reserves of power that can more than make up for the loss of the nuclear power plants. So technically, all the nuclear power plants in use today are not serving any purpose to except endanger many people’s lives. With any large energy producing facility there are risks, the risks posed by a nuclear power plant however, are far greater than those posed by any other. Meltdown or the explosion of the main reactor can release tons of radioactive particles into the air. The meltdown of a nuclear power plant would release a thousand times more radioactivity into the atmosphere than the bombs dropped on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Another possibility is the "China Syndrome", where the core of...








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