Risks and Benefits of Nuclear Energy

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how nuclear energy is a controversial form of energy that is being phased out of American society. No new nuclear reactors for creating power have been ordered in the United States since 1978. It looks at how nuclear energy is not only used to generate electrical power for cities and towns across the world, it is also used in weapons of war, to power nuclear submarines and in medicine. It evaluates how the benefits of nuclear power are many, but so are the risks.

From the Paper:

"Nuclear weapons have existed in the world since World War II, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan to end the war. After the war, the Soviet Union developed their own nuclear weapons, and the resulting Cold War made backyard bomb shelters popular. Everyone was worried someone else was going to drop the "bomb" and cause a nuclear catastrophe. Nuclear weapons were beneficial to society when they were first created, because they ended a war that could have continued on, thus saving lives in the end. However, today nuclear weapons are used mainly to keep other countries in check, and the threat always looms that a bomb could be dropped which would cause a worldwide nuclear disaster, or terrorists could acquire a bomb, causing a disaster."

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