Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Cost: Nuclear electricity in the United States costs
about the same as that from coal. France has the
lowest-cost electricity in Western Europe.
Weapons: Weapons proliferation is a serious problem
and has to be controlled, but no proliferators have as
yet gotten the necessary material from a civilian power
reactor.
Fusion energy: Fusion involves taking two isotopes of
hydrogen and turning them into helium with the
release of a great deal of energy. Although no working
fusion power plant exists, a great deal of effort is going
into trying to make one work. I have added a new
section (
.
)
to this chapter to give a status report.
.
Radiation
We all live in a continual bath of radiation. It comes from
natural sources that are in our buildings, in the Earth, in
the air, in our own bodies, and in the cosmic radiation that
continually bombards us from space. We get still more
from medical diagnostics like X-rays. We are born into
this bath and live our lives in it. Our average life expect-
ancy has steadily increased through the last century and is
now nearly
years throughout the developed countries.
It continues to increase while the natural radiation
remains unchanged. Clearly, natural radioactivity has
not imposed any limits as yet on life span. A sense of
proportion is needed in thinking about radioactivity and
radiation from power plants. The question should be, is
radiation from nuclear power signi
cant compared to the
natural radiation we get all the time? It is not.
