Unit 1: Energy and Nuclear Waste

Energy affects our lives. Our modern world relies heavily on energy and especially electricity to maintain our lifestyle. For many decades in the United States, we have enjoyed a high standard of living because of adequate supplies of energy at prices people could afford to pay.

However, our standard of living comes at a price. Many of our methods for generating electricity have some type of negative effect on people and the environment:

• Power plants that use coal for fuel release sulfur into the air, which can cause acid rain.
  
  
• Power plants that use dams to create electricity flood hundreds of acres of land and impact plant and animal life.
  
  
• Power plants that use radioactive materials to produce electricity create a type of nuclear waste called spent nuclear fuel, which is highly radioactive.

National security is also important to our standard of living. A strong Navy is a vital part of protecting our safety. Many of the most strategically important vessels in our fleet, including submarines and aircraft carriers, are nuclear powered. To maintain readiness, the Navy must periodically refuel its nuclear vessels and remove the spent nuclear fuel. Also, in creating nuclear weapons, our country has produced a type of nuclear waste called high-level radioactive waste.

As of 2004, the United States has accumulated many thousands of tons of nuclear waste from nuclear reactors at power plants, from our nuclear Navy, and from our national defense programs. Right now we store nuclear waste in special buildings and containers that are safe for a certain amount of time. However, nuclear waste will remain dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Therefore, our national interests require a more permanent solution to the radioactive waste problem.

A safe solution for the long-term management of nuclear waste is vital to ensure America’s national security, support energy security, secure disposal of nuclear waste, and provide for a cleaner environment.

In this unit you will study about nuclear waste, but before we can understand nuclear waste we need to understand some basics about energy itself and how we produce electricity using nuclear power.

Specifically, this unit

• describes energy, including its types, forms, and sources;
  
  
• explains the ways in which electricity is produced and distributed in the United States;
  
  
• examines nuclear energy and how we produce electricity using nuclear power plants;
  
  
• describes different types of nuclear waste, including what these are and how they are dangerous;
  
  
• describes how spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste is currently stored in temporary facilities;
  
  
• describes our nation’s plans for permanently disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste.