Analysis Of The Need For Nuclear Power
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Submitted by napstar on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: Technology
- Words: 1262
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Analysis Of The Need For Nuclear Power
There is a need for nuclear power all over the world. The author of a journal article entitled "The need for Nuclear Power" uses trends, and has adequate explanations for his proposition on running the world on nuclear power.
In "The need for Nuclear Power", authors Richard Rhodes and Dennis Beller explain how the world would benefit from greater use of nuclear power. One third of the world lacks electricity, but our energy consumption will double in the next fifty years, and be multiplied by a factor of up to five in the next hundred years. World energy consumption would have to triple by the year 2050 in order to support consumption at one-third of today's U.S. per capita rate.
The world's energy comes primarily from petroleum, coal, and natural gas. The other thirteen- percent of the world's energy comes from hydroelectric and nuclear power. Less of the world's energy is coming from oil and coal, while the percent of natural gas and nuclear power has been increasing. Countries like France and Belgium generates from sixty to seventy-nine percent of its electricity from nuclear power. The United States on the other hand, although the largest producer of nuclear power in the world, only generates twenty percent of its electricity from nuclear power.
In 1998 the unit capacity factor for operating reactors reached eighty percent for about one hundred reactors. A unit capacity factor is the fraction of a power plant's capacity that it actually generates. From 1980 to 1990, the U.S. capacity factor increased from 59 percent to 66 percent, which is an increase of eight percent. From 1990 to 1998, a shorter period of time, the factor increased from 66 percent to 80 percent, which is an increase by fourteen percent. At this rate, I predict that by the year 2010 there will be a unit capacity factor of one hundred percent, or close to it. The article mentions that nuclear energy is 1.5 cents cheaper than electricity produced from gas per...
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