The Power of Atoms: Nuclear Energy Fights Against Climate Change
My strongest childhood memories aren’t quite memories. They’re an idea that swelled, a feeling of fear that lingered at my feet like a shadow. As a six-year-old, the things I couldn’t wrap my mind around terrified me the most, like why tornados had to exist, or why I had bad dreams when sleep was supposed to be relaxing. Things like the sirens I’d hear wailing over the radio in my kitchen every month, and my parents ensuring my siblings and I knew what would happen if there was ever an accident at my dad’s work — Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in the southern portion of Maryland.
An accident there would be a reactor meltdown, my dad would say. If something went wrong at the power plant and those sirens went off — not just testing to see they worked properly — we had an escape plan.
The thought of it would keep me up sometimes. Leaving everything I knew to be swallowed by a nuclear disaster. Back then, I’d wonder why my dad worked somewhere so scary as I stared out into my backyard, hands cupped over my ears as sirens howled from nine miles away. Dread settled in my gut even when my parents explained, It’s just science. Some things in this world can be frightening, but that doesn’t mean they’re unsafe.
I didn’t understand what they meant until I was older.
Nuclear energy, put simply, works by inducing a fission reaction in uranium atoms. Inside a reactor, these atoms split and give off immense heat, causing surrounding water to turn into steam that turns a turbine, which generates electricity. Unlike other forms of energy such as coal or natural gas that we must burn to release energy, nuclear uses the energy already found inside atoms.
It’s clean.
But much of the world worries about its safety — you can’t separate the word nuclear from its sibling: radiation.
The conversation today is even bigger than that. We’re talking about climate change and what’s best for the earth, not just potential disasters. As our country seeks environmental justice, new solutions to the threat of climate change present themselves. President Joe Biden includes nuclear in his plan for a clean energy revolution.
But while there are those advocating for nuclear power, there are those convinced it will be our downfall.
In an interview with 1A, a radio show distributed by National Public Radio (NPR), two environmentalists gave their cases for the best way to combat climate change.
Kristin Zaits, co-founder of Mothers for Nuclear grew up in an environmentalist family. Before Zaits founded Mother for Nuclear, she was uneducated on nuclear power. When climate change became a more serious threat, she took the opportunity to remedy that lack of education and share her findings with others.
In the interview, she claimed, “[Nuclear] is the major contributor in the United States to climate action.”
But Alisa Gravitz, president and CEO of Green America, brought economics into the conversation. Even though nuclear is renewable energy, its expense outweighs the good it possibly does. And, of course, the materials used to power the reactor are radioactive — too dangerous, she said.
Those materials she referenced, fuel rods, are kept underneath at least 23 feet of water inside of a vessel held in a massive containment unit that is only unsealed by a special crane when refueling the core every two to two and a half years, and even then the refueling is completed beneath that water with machinery. The expended rods sit in safe locations and decay once removed.
It’s a horrendously complicated process. I remember the exhaustion my dad carried with him when he’d get home from his shifts during those periods. He tried explaining it to me like the vessel was a pot with a lid. They just needed to take off the lid and restock the contents in the bottom of the pot, and FWOOSH — magic energy.
The times he took me to tour the plant, I was always curious about the reactors. All decked out in a hard-hat, safety goggles and squishy earplugs, a part of me wanted to see them in person, those forbidden pools of water.
But then I’d get a bit queasy just standing in the main turbine deck, a room as vast as a football field, almost too hot to breathe in and full of machinery that churned louder than my thoughts. Embarrassment replaced bravery.
Besides, only certain people can work inside there for safety reasons. I’d never get to see the cool flashing effect of the reactor’s radiation in person.
As I shared this with my dad recently, he laughed and said, “Everyone wants to know about the light.”
That light in question comes from charged particles in the reactor moving faster than light speed underneath the water. They give off an eerie glow.
It’s called Cherenkov radiation. From my experience explaining it to my friends growing up, it freaks people out to think that taking one step into the room would make your face melt off, or make you lose the ability to have kids.
That’s definitely not the case.
Laura Castle, also from a nuclear family, went through something similar. In high school, back when she lived with her parents, people wouldn’t often bring up nuclear power. When they did, it would be in terms of disaster. No one cared to learn about it otherwise.
“There were times when kids would be like, ‘We’re all gonna die if something happens.’” Castle said with a laugh. “I wanted to say, ‘Well, yes. But also no.’”
If a disaster happened, those she knew who had been educated on nuclear and took the time to learn about the power plant would probably survive it. There were always plans on how to stay safe.
“It sounds very post-apocalyptic, like, ‘Here, come see my bunker,’ but it’s not. It’s just that we knew what to do. Having the science explained to me was super helpful. I wasn’t ever concerned about it,” she said.
Trying to explain that nuclear power plants aren’t primed to simply explode, or that people aren’t dying from radiation every other day can be taxing.
In fact, when I asked my dad to reiterate specific information for me, he seemed exasperated about the topic and the misconceptions that surround it. Here’s the thing about radiation: no nuclear power plant worker in the United States has died from it. The regulations they have at nuclear plants are so tight, the accidents that have happened are due to steam or people falling.
“Of course radiation is dangerous. Dive down close to the reactor and you’d be DRT — Dead Right There,” my dad said. But swim around at the top of that 23 feet of water — which few essential workers get the chance to do — and you’ll be fine.
Anything can be dangerous, and everything gives off radiation. Go to the beach and lie out on the sand, you’ll get radiation from the sun. Fly in an airplane, you’ll be exposed to radiation.
My dad, standing with his arms wide, said, “I would get more radiation exposure from two dental x-rays than my 30 years in nuclear power, and that’s with me going into high radiation areas [in the plant]. The amount you’re allowed to get per year is regulated by the federal government.”
There are three things you keep in mind about radiation in the nuclear field: time, distance, and shielding. Everything regarding radiation exposure is done by a principle called ALARA: As Low as Reasonably Achievable. Basically, even though people might work with hazardous materials, they do it safely by staying as far away and protected as possible while getting jobs done quickly.
No one’s growing a second head by working in a power plant, they’re just contributing to keeping our lights on and saving the environment.
That’s right. It’s like Zaits said in the 1A interview: nuclear generates more than half of our country’s clean energy, producing more carbon-free electricity than all other clean energy sources combined, such as hydropower, wind, and solar. They’re good options as well, but when it comes to going full Mortal Kombat against climate change, we’re best equipped as a society to pick nuclear when choosing our fighter. It keeps more than 506 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from our atmosphere that fossil fuels would produce in its place. It’s a way to help make the world unpolluted.
According to Yale Environment 360, arguments about nuclear waste disposal — where those radioactive materials go to sit and decay once they’re out of use — is a political problem, not a technological one. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a site deep in the New Mexico desert designed to store all this waste, can accommodate it for 10,000 years.
Again, the danger is there, but it’s dealt with securely.
So, is it simply the possibility of that danger that drives an underlying, anti-nuclear mindset that people like Gravitz have?
My dad, and other experts in the field I’ve spoken to, seem to see it as either a lack of education or the spread of misinformation. Though I’ve grown up in a nuclear family and its concepts and mechanics are familiar to me, even I’m intimidated by the idea of things going wrong — but where I’m hesitant I’m also hopeful due to the fact that nuclear is helping us in our battle for cleaner energy.
That said, we’re also talking about an industry where one tiny thing out of place means a red flag for the entire power plant.
We’ve learned from situations like Chernobyl, which was due to flawed reactor designs and extreme negligence from personnel. Or the accident at Fukushima, where the generators powering the reactors’ cooling systems were flooded during a tsunami because they were built much lower toward the coast despite warnings about sea level regulations.
“If anything begins to go wrong, [our] plants are designed to shut down on their own,” my dad said. There’s a backup for the backup for the backup — a dozen employees would need to purposefully mess up, then every safety measure would need to fail somehow before things ever became disastrous.
Still, there’s always room for improvement. In the future, we hope to see more progress with decreasing carbon emissions. Nuclear power’s resilience over the last year of the pandemic put forth an idea of possible changes in the industry.
Expert Jack Williams, who’s worked mostly in the commercial side of the business for 30 years, shared, “Our new normal won’t be going back to the way we did business in the past.”
Progress takes on many models and one of them may manifest in the form of smaller nuclear reactors, which are a part of Biden’s plan for battling climate change. Nuclear isn’t our only option in the fight for a cleaner earth, but it’s currently our most reliable solution.
Coming from the little girl who used to cover her ears while her dad was at work and sirens blared, I promise it’s not as alarming as it seems. It’s just science, and it’s necessary.
My dad put it this way: “Anything that’s unknown to people can be scary. Rightfully so, and I don’t fault anyone for that. But I think what people need to realize is: just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean you need to be afraid.”
