£ Nuclear power was seen by some in the 1960s and 1970s to be the clean power of the future. One nuclear power company made the following claim in its advertisement This advertisement focuses upon how much cleaner, and therefore how much more environmentally friendly, nuclear power is than fossil fuels. This is true. However, what the advertisement does not mention are the dangers to all forms of life from the radiation that is released during the nuclear process. Humans exposed to higher than average levels of radiation develop cancers and leukaemia. Waste is produced, i which remains radioactive, and therefore dangerous pC to people and animal life, for thousands of years. No the Earth? completely safe way has yet been found to dispose of this waste Scientists have repeatedly emphasized how safe nuclear power is, but they have not been able to convince most people of this. Public confidence in nuclear power was shattered by the great explosion in 1986, at Chernobyl in Ukraine (then part of the old Soviet Union), when one of its four nuclear reactors exploded. This killed workers, caused cancers in people living near the plant, and crested a highly radioactive one inthe area | Nuclear reactors opened before around the works, making it unsafe for SidistisriGhatnobyl people to live there for hundreds of years. The nuclear fallout forced tens of thousands | ™ Inthe 30 years before—over 400 to leave their homes, never to return. cpebed (05) = Inthe 30 years after-under 200 Some were just beginning to forget the opened (194) dangers when the disaster at Fukushima in Japan happened in March 2011. Avery strong earthquake out at sea caused a giant tsunami wave which smashed against the power station, flooded it_,) with sea water, and) ‘ triggered a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station-a freak event for which Japan's nuclear industry was not well Figure 2.10 The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami‘cnapten 2 Energy and the environment 9 1,000 people fled from the zone of high radiation around the station. Until this disaster, ‘third of Japan's electricity was produced by nuclear power. Following the disaster, the rnment of Japan stopped all nuclear production. have been knock-on effects. In the wake of Fukushima, the German government ined their own nuclear future; it decided to speed up plans to close all its old nuclear stations, and not to build any new ones to replace them. Instead, Germany has itted its future to renewables. 4 One student's assessment of nuclear power is given below: Renewable Does not emit carbon-dioxide No air pollution No local environmental problems Safe Cheap Known technology Low level technology suitable for developing countries. Always available because it does not rely on the weather (a) Suggest why this student could not decide how to answer the question about local environmental problems for nuclear power. {b) Comment on what the assessment shows for nuclear power. {c)__ State two pieces of evidence which show that nuclear power is not seen as the power of the future by many governments and people. (a) Do your own assessment for a fossil fuel, such as coal, using the same headings as for nuclear power. (b) Comment on what the assessment shows for using fossil fuels. advantages and disadvantages of using fossil fuels. Look at the two power stations in Figures 2.8 and 2.9. Which one is cleaner and Look at Figure 2.20 on page 48. Draw two spider diagrams like those to show the | | more environmentally friendly? Explain your answer as fully as you can. | OXFORD