Thursday, October 14, 2010

The nuclear power demand.

In this topic, we will debating about the electrical generated by nuclear power plant that supplying the energy daily needed. Although at present the world is fighting the challenge of energy supply, next generations worries will take into account other fundamental aspects as how to run transports and potential lack of water, which are both primary needs. Today, about 85 percent of world energy needs come from exhaustible resources, mainly fossil fuels and as a minor contributor, uranium. The oil supply covers about 34%, by far the largest share, followed by coal (24%), natural gas (21.5%), nuclear (5.5%) and renewables (15%), including traditional biomass. As we know before, one third of these sources is used for electricity production of about 16,000 Terawatt hours per every year. Considering the world energy demand, it must be seriously doubted whether increasing rates of fossil fuel supplies are to be considered sustainable. It is much more likely, that their share will strongly reduce until 2030 in favor of increasing renewable contributions. Moreover nuclear energy today avoids the emission of about 2 billion atm CO2 annually.

Previously, in 1995, the electric utilities emissions of carbon dioxide world-wide were 32 percent lower than they would have been if nuclear energy had been used instead of fuel fossil. Let we know that the emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide were 35 and 31 percent lower, respectively. Globally, nuclear energy has been the most important factor in preventing carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions related to electric power generation. As proved, handling with safety, no other industry has invested so much time and money in the safety aspect of their business than has the nuclear industry. Over half the initial capital investment of a nuclear power plant goes into the safety systems, because of these and other relevant aspects, nuclear plant are to be considered among the best solutions to meet great energetic and environmental challenges. 

In addition, hydrogen production by nuclear energy which is electrolitically, and in the future high-temperature reactors, thermo chemically will assumed as a fundamental role. This so much discussed “energy carrier” is widely seen as the main future transport fuel, especially for the world environmental burden. Since ,its combustion produces only water vapor, with no carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide emissions. In addition,lack of potable water must be seriously considered, because it is set to become a constraint on development in many world regions. In fact, at present estimated that one fifth of the world's population does not have access to potable drinking water, and that this portion will increase due to population growth relative to water resources. The worst-affected areas are the arid and semiarid regions of Asia and North Africa. Wars over access to water, not simply energy and mineral resources, are therefore to be considered conceivable.

As a reflection, where water cannot be obtained from streams and aquifers, desalination of seawater or mineralized groundwater is required. Nuclear energy can help also in this direction, through the industrial process of desalination, which it is generally cost competitive with using fossil fuels. Nuclear energy is also an excellent source of process heat for various industrial applications including synthetic and unconventional oil production and from about 2003 various proposals have been made to use nuclear power to produce steam for extraction of oil. Lastly, use of nuclear energy as a heating source is greatly challenged by the economic factor since the nuclear heating reactors have relative small size and often the lower plant load factor. However, use of very simple reactor could be a possible way to supply heat economically.