Nuclear Concern

Environment | May 19, 2010 | Share

UK has been majorly relying on their nuclear resources since 1956 and is responsible for major energy production. The main motive behind setting up these plants was to reduce the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide emissions and at the same time meet the huge energy requirements of the country. The use of nuclear power definitely helped in reducing emissions and at the same time resulted in saving a lot of fossil fuel.

Nevertheless, as it seems, these reactors are reaching their critical points where the amounts of Carbon Dioxide emissions have increased immensely. This also leads to a lot of security issues as the reactors are slowly wearing out. The current change of parties which recently resulted in the formation of a coalition government has put a light on the nuclear power issue but can see varied reactions towards this current issue. With the need of replacing the nuclear reactors, the Liberal democrats are not in favor of it as they say that there are better and cheaper ways of replacing and regenerating power. The conservative party on the other hand is fully supportive of this move as they feel that more energy needs to be generated to meet the energy requirements of the country.

One of the main motives behind using nuclear reactors is that they are used as alternative sources of energy which is responsible for the production of around 27% of the country’s electricity. They do not emit any sort of gas or residue that might be harmful to the environment or the community but at the same time if they are not maintained and treated properly, the radioactive wastes generated by the nuclear reactors can be extremely harmful for the environment as well as the community. One needs to act real fast to avoid another Chernobyl Nuclear disaster which claimed thousands of lives. This calls for immediate action and work on the dying reactors let it be their replacement or repairing.

Neville Jones