WIP Essay about Nuclear Energy
Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 12:07 am
Make sure to offer feedback and criticism whenever necessary, this video's gotta be sweet. I'm aware it needs a lot of cleaning up in terms of organization and information.
This is just the first part of the essay, I'm hoping to have the rest or at least another part written out by tomorrow (or later today, rather; it is midnight where I am).
Oh yeah, and tell me where to get rid of any jokes. I laugh at almost all of them.
To the layman, the issue of climate change is usually either a possible inconvenience at best, and completely nonexistent at worst; The issue has made its way into the political sphere, with politicians either campaigning about it, denying it (or at least claiming to), or giving ambiguous statements about the issue. The left is generally associated as the side that wants to fight it, while the right is considered the side that denies the issue altogether.
I don’t give a damn about your politics or opinion on the matter; The point is, climate change has been scientifically proven to be a very real and imminent threat to not only our planet, but to every human and most species of animals. This video isn’t going to be all about climate change, but we’ll a give gross oversimplification of it since it is important for the context of this video.
As a species, we humans have mastered technology to increase convenience and quality of life for everyone. Oh yeah, it’s just fantastic; cars, televisions, light bulbs, phones, computers, the internet. Of course, in this day and age, these things require a catalyst to make them work; electricity. How do you get electricity? We have tons of energy sources with tons of different factors to consider, and we’ll be looking at cost, efficacy, safeness, and cleanliness of energy.
Before we continue, we must specify what we mean by cleanliness. It means a lot of things, but for the sake of time, take it to mean how much Carbon Dioxide is released into the atmosphere (chemical formula being CO2), which dissolves our ozone layer, a layer in the Earth’s atmosphere (thermosphere to be specific), which absorbs most of the UV rays that reach the Earth from the sun, the one emitting these UV rays. The Ozone Layer is essential for life on Earth, as those UV rays keep the Earth from experiencing large doses of the greenhouse effect (which keeps the Earth warmer than it would be); It is estimated that the temperatures are rising about 2-11 Fahrenheit degrees ever century. Sounds like nothing, right? Eeeeeeeeeeh, not exactly. Given how the human mind works, we tend to underestimate the impact of these things. Even a 2-11 Fahrenheit increase will cause a rise in sea levels due to melting poles, countries near the equator will be drier and subsequently have more droughts, places further from the equator (but not at the caps) will get warmer and wetter, attracting pests such as mosquitoes, diseases such as cancer will be increasingly rampant due to a weakened ozone layer, increase of droughts, and honestly, those aren’t the worst of our imminent problems.
With that crash course about climate change out of the way, let’s get back to our energy sources. When we refer to clean energy, that means energy that has little or no CO2 emissions, while dirty energy emits lotsuv ‘em. Dirty energy is usually found in the form of fossil fuels (coal, oil), and while they are dirty as hell, and are prime culprits behind climate change (other than CFCs which have been outlawed in the United States AFAIK) they are super efficient in the energy, and are generally very cheap and/or abundant in terms of resources. But again, the issue of CO2 emissions is troubling. As for safeness, coal and oil, when exposed to it for extended periods of time, can really mess up a guy’s lungs, and can cause other environmental issues, such as oil spills (though admittedly, they are often exaggerated greatly by the media), which kills many animals, and ruins a lot of homes for both animals and humans. Well, what about our cleaner sources of energy, which are often referred to as ‘renewable’ energy sources? These are usually found in the forms of solar and wind; these energies are clean as hell, rather than dirty as hell. They release no CO2 AT ALL. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Well, unless you count building the damn things, which emits CO2, but I’ll get to that later. HOWEVER, while these clean energies win in the environmental department, they are well behind in the efficacy department. We won’t be getting into all the technicalities right now, but here is something to consider; it takes a whole mile of solar panels just to have the same energy output as one coal plant. It’ll be quite difficult to use that to power an increasingly electricity dependent world. Now you might be saying “Yeah but dude, we can just build more of the things, it’s not a hard work around.” True, BUT there is also the cost issue. Installing and maintaining solar panels, and building effective windmills isn't cheap. And while solar is generally pretty safe, windmills usually aren’t, due to it killing many birds needlessly, and even humans on rare occasions. So, knowing all of this, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation; You can’t get the clean, safe energy using fossil fuels, and you can’t get the cheap, effective energy using renewable energy!
However, what if I were to tell you that there is an energy source that meets all four of these standards in cost, efficacy, safeness, and cleanliness. “Oh!” I can hear you say “Surely you jest! What are the chances that a source of energy can be cheap, effective, safe AND clean? This is nothing more than a mere pipedream!”
Well, that’s where you’d be wrong.
This is just the first part of the essay, I'm hoping to have the rest or at least another part written out by tomorrow (or later today, rather; it is midnight where I am).
Oh yeah, and tell me where to get rid of any jokes. I laugh at almost all of them.
To the layman, the issue of climate change is usually either a possible inconvenience at best, and completely nonexistent at worst; The issue has made its way into the political sphere, with politicians either campaigning about it, denying it (or at least claiming to), or giving ambiguous statements about the issue. The left is generally associated as the side that wants to fight it, while the right is considered the side that denies the issue altogether.
I don’t give a damn about your politics or opinion on the matter; The point is, climate change has been scientifically proven to be a very real and imminent threat to not only our planet, but to every human and most species of animals. This video isn’t going to be all about climate change, but we’ll a give gross oversimplification of it since it is important for the context of this video.
As a species, we humans have mastered technology to increase convenience and quality of life for everyone. Oh yeah, it’s just fantastic; cars, televisions, light bulbs, phones, computers, the internet. Of course, in this day and age, these things require a catalyst to make them work; electricity. How do you get electricity? We have tons of energy sources with tons of different factors to consider, and we’ll be looking at cost, efficacy, safeness, and cleanliness of energy.
Before we continue, we must specify what we mean by cleanliness. It means a lot of things, but for the sake of time, take it to mean how much Carbon Dioxide is released into the atmosphere (chemical formula being CO2), which dissolves our ozone layer, a layer in the Earth’s atmosphere (thermosphere to be specific), which absorbs most of the UV rays that reach the Earth from the sun, the one emitting these UV rays. The Ozone Layer is essential for life on Earth, as those UV rays keep the Earth from experiencing large doses of the greenhouse effect (which keeps the Earth warmer than it would be); It is estimated that the temperatures are rising about 2-11 Fahrenheit degrees ever century. Sounds like nothing, right? Eeeeeeeeeeh, not exactly. Given how the human mind works, we tend to underestimate the impact of these things. Even a 2-11 Fahrenheit increase will cause a rise in sea levels due to melting poles, countries near the equator will be drier and subsequently have more droughts, places further from the equator (but not at the caps) will get warmer and wetter, attracting pests such as mosquitoes, diseases such as cancer will be increasingly rampant due to a weakened ozone layer, increase of droughts, and honestly, those aren’t the worst of our imminent problems.
With that crash course about climate change out of the way, let’s get back to our energy sources. When we refer to clean energy, that means energy that has little or no CO2 emissions, while dirty energy emits lotsuv ‘em. Dirty energy is usually found in the form of fossil fuels (coal, oil), and while they are dirty as hell, and are prime culprits behind climate change (other than CFCs which have been outlawed in the United States AFAIK) they are super efficient in the energy, and are generally very cheap and/or abundant in terms of resources. But again, the issue of CO2 emissions is troubling. As for safeness, coal and oil, when exposed to it for extended periods of time, can really mess up a guy’s lungs, and can cause other environmental issues, such as oil spills (though admittedly, they are often exaggerated greatly by the media), which kills many animals, and ruins a lot of homes for both animals and humans. Well, what about our cleaner sources of energy, which are often referred to as ‘renewable’ energy sources? These are usually found in the forms of solar and wind; these energies are clean as hell, rather than dirty as hell. They release no CO2 AT ALL. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Well, unless you count building the damn things, which emits CO2, but I’ll get to that later. HOWEVER, while these clean energies win in the environmental department, they are well behind in the efficacy department. We won’t be getting into all the technicalities right now, but here is something to consider; it takes a whole mile of solar panels just to have the same energy output as one coal plant. It’ll be quite difficult to use that to power an increasingly electricity dependent world. Now you might be saying “Yeah but dude, we can just build more of the things, it’s not a hard work around.” True, BUT there is also the cost issue. Installing and maintaining solar panels, and building effective windmills isn't cheap. And while solar is generally pretty safe, windmills usually aren’t, due to it killing many birds needlessly, and even humans on rare occasions. So, knowing all of this, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation; You can’t get the clean, safe energy using fossil fuels, and you can’t get the cheap, effective energy using renewable energy!
However, what if I were to tell you that there is an energy source that meets all four of these standards in cost, efficacy, safeness, and cleanliness. “Oh!” I can hear you say “Surely you jest! What are the chances that a source of energy can be cheap, effective, safe AND clean? This is nothing more than a mere pipedream!”
Well, that’s where you’d be wrong.
