Nuclear power why do we use it

Maintenance and servicing. Smart meters. Help and support. Help and contact us. Emergency contact. Making a complaint. Warm Home Discount. Priority services. Ways to pay your bill. Prepayment meter. For business. Compare tariffs. Exclusive offers. Energy brokers. Manage your account. MyAccount login. Submit meter reading. Contract renewals. Moving or adding a location. How to pay your bill.

Energy tariffs. Fixed for business tariffs. Freedom for business tariff. Help, advice and support. Contact us. Frequently asked questions. Gas and elec emergencies. Save energy. Electric vehicles. Start EV journey. Charging infrastructure. Bespoke solutions. Large business. Buying energy. Energy sources. Fixed price electricity contracts. Flex purchasing. Ask for a quote. Selling energy. Energy solutions. Electric Vehicles.

Infrastructure services. Metering services. Existing customers. Billing and payments. Meter readings. Energy view. Renew your contract. Carbon Reduction Commitment. Business FAQ. Talk Power. Talk Power blogs. Talk Power webinars. The government would no longer have to pay utilities for not meeting the mandated schedule, and communities near reactors would be reassured that spent fuel has a place to go.

At each site, the aging fuel would be monitored, so that any problems that arose could be addressed. These sites should be paid for by the Nuclear Waste Fund, a change that would require congressional approval. At the same time, Washington must find an alternative to Yucca Mountain for storing nuclear waste in the long run.

As it does so, it must adopt a more adaptive and flexible approach than it did last time, holding early negotiations with local communities, Native American tribes, and states. Sweden upgraded its waste disposal program with just such a consensus-based process, and for a dozen years the U.

Department of Energy has operated a geological repository for trans- uranic waste near Carlsbad, New Mexico, with strong community support. The government should also investigate new approaches to disposal. For example, it might make sense to separate out the long-living transuranic elements in nuclear reactor waste, which constitute a nasty but very small package, and dispose of them in a miles-deep borehole, while placing the shorter-living materials in repositories closer to the surface.

Given the sustained challenge of waste management, an overhaul to the existing program should include the establishment of a new federally chartered organization that is a step or two removed from the short-term political calculus. Another break from the past would be to manage civilian nuclear waste separately from military nuclear waste.

In , the government elected to comingle defense and civilian waste in a single geological repository. This made sense at the time, since the planners assumed that Yucca Mountain would be available for storing both types. But now, it looks as though it will be many years before a large-scale repository opens. Today, it makes more sense to put plans for storing military waste on a separate, faster track, since that process is less daunting than coming up with a solution to civilian waste.

To begin with, there is simply much less military waste, and the volume will hardly grow in the future. Moreover, most of the military waste already has the uranium and plutonium separated out from the spent fuel, since the aim was to produce nuclear weapons material. Thus, what is left is definitely waste, not a resource. Fast-tracking a defense waste program would allow the federal government to meet its obligations to states that host nuclear weapons facilities, from which it has agreed to remove radioactive waste.

It would also make the finances of waste storage much clearer, since the nuclear utility companies pay for their waste management, whereas Congress has to approve payments for defense waste. And assuming a defense waste repository were established first, the experience gained operating it would be highly valuable when it comes time to establish a civilian one.

If countries such as Iran are able to enrich uranium to make new reactor fuel and separate out the plutonium to recover its energy value, they then have access to the relevant technology and material for a weapons program. Safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency are intended to make sure that civilian programs do not spill over into military ones, but the agency has only a limited ability to address clandestine programs.

Developing enrichment or separation facilities is expensive and unlikely to make economic sense for countries with small nuclear power programs. What these countries care about most is an assured supply of reactor fuel and a way to alleviate the burden of waste management.

One promising scheme to keep fissile material out of the hands of would-be proliferators involves returning nuclear waste to the fuel-supplying country or a third country. In effect, nuclear fuel could be leased to produce electricity.

The country supplying the fuel would treat the returned spent fuel as it does its own, disposing of it directly or reprocessing it. In most cases, the amount of additional waste would be small in comparison to what that country is already handling. In return for giving up the possibility of reprocessing fuel and thus separating out weapons-grade material, the country using the fuel would free itself from the challenges of managing nuclear waste.

The United States already runs a similar program on a smaller scale, having provided fuel, often highly enriched uranium, to about 30 countries for small research reactors. But with no functioning commercial waste management system in place, the program cannot be extended to accommodate waste from commercial reactors. Instead, Washington is trying to use diplomacy to impose constraints on a country-by- country basis, in the futile hope that countries will agree to give up enrichment and reprocessing in exchange for nuclear cooperation with the United States.

This ad hoc approach might have worked when the United States was the dominant supplier of nuclear technology and fuel, but it no longer is, and other major suppliers, such as France and Russia, appear uninterested in imposing such restrictions on commercial transactions. Putting together a coherent waste management program would give the United States a leg to stand on when it comes to setting up a proliferation-resistant international fuel-cycle program. As greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, finding ways to generate power cleanly, affordably, and reliably is becoming an even more pressing imperative.

Nuclear power is not a silver bullet, but it is a partial solution that has proved workable on a large scale. Countries will need to pursue a combination of strategies to cut emissions, including reining in energy demand, replacing coal power plants with cleaner natural gas plants, and investing in new technologies such as renewable energy and carbon capture and sequestration.

The United States must take a number of decisions to maintain and advance the option of nuclear energy. Washington should stick to its plan of offering limited assistance for building several new nuclear reactors in this decade, sharing the lessons learned across the industry.

It should step up its support for new technology, such as SMRs and advanced computer-modeling tools. And when it comes to waste management, the government needs to overhaul the current system and get serious about long-term storage. Local concerns about nuclear waste facilities are not going to magically disappear; they need to be addressed with a more adaptive, collaborative, and transparent waste program.

These are not easy steps, and none of them will happen overnight. But each is needed to reduce uncertainty for the public, the energy companies, and investors. A more productive approach to developing nuclear power—and confronting the mounting risks of climate change—is long overdue.

Further delay will only raise the stakes. So, just how clean and sustainable is nuclear? Try these quick facts for starters. Nuclear energy protects air quality. Nuclear is a zero-emission clean energy source. A 25 megawatt solar power system in DeSoto County, Florida. Nuclear energy produces minimal waste.