Resist the Atomic Menace essays

Resist the Atomic Menace essays There are currently 110 working nuclear power plants in the United States today. The government claims that out of twenty-two years of operation, there has only been one mishap in the United States involving nuclear reactors, Three Mile Island located on an island 10 miles south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Yet core meltdowns have been known to occur at several reactor sites, including the Experimental Breeder Reactor in Idaho Falls, Idaho; Westinghouse Testing Reactor, in Waltz Mill, Pennsylvania; Stationary Low Power Reactor, in Idaho Falls, Idaho; and Fermi 1, in Lagoona Beach, Michigan (Against Nuclear Power). Since the near catastrophe at Three Mile Island in 1979, an exploration of government records revealed that there have been more than 23,000 mishaps at nuclear plants in the United States (Against Nuclear Power), an ever-increasing number. Plain and simple, nuclear power plants are dangerous. And despite their obvious drawbacks, the government still continues to offer billions of dollars in subsidies, money that could be put towards researching renewable sources of energy. One of the biggest problems with nuclear power is the potential for an accident. Contained inside a nuclear reactor are several pounds of radioactive material (including but not limited to radium, thorium, uranium, or plutonium), thousands of gallons of contaminated water, and other radioactive refuge. There are a variety of accidents that can occur involving nuclear power and its key ingredients. Most notable is the potential for a core meltdown. As was the case with Three Mile Island, an automated valve in the Unit 2 reactor was shut-off due to a mechanical or electrical error, thus preventing the flow of water and removal of heat responsible for cooling the core (The Meltdown). When the system should have automatically shutdown, it did not. The ensuing loss of coolant t ...