Nuclear power comes from the process of nuclear fission, or the splitting of atoms. The resulting controlled nuclear chain reaction creates heat, which is used to boil water, produce steam, and drive turbines that generate electricity.
The United States is home to 104 nuclear power plants, located in 31 states. Together, these plants generate roughly 20 percent of America’s electricity, or approximately 8.2 percent of its total energy.
Courtesy DOE/OCRWM
From 1973 to 2005, electricity generated by nuclear plants in the US rose from just under 130,000 megawatt hours to almost 800,000 megawatt hours. Reliability of existing plants has grown substantially during this time, which means that existing plants are producing more energy than in the past.
The US is the world’s largest producer of nuclear power, but it derives a smaller percentage of its electricity from nuclear technology than many other industrial countries. In 2006, France derived 78.1 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Other countries producing a high percentage of their power from nuclear energy include Lithuania (72.3 percent), Belgium (54.4 percent), Sweden (48.0 percent, South Korea (38.6 percent), and Switzerland (37.4 percent).
Nuclear energy is reliable and emission-free, and is increasingly viewed by governments around the world as an attractive form of future electricity generation. Comparatively speaking, it is also an inexpensive energy source. Nuclear plants are the lowest-cost producer of base-load electricity.
Nuclear Challenges
While several new US nuclear plants are planned, none have been built in decades. A new federal law enacted in 2005 seeks to revive the construction and deployment of nuclear power plants by granting regulatory certainty to new and safer designs of nuclear reactors.
One ongoing concern in the nuclear power field is the safe disposal and isolation of spent fuel from reactors and waste from reprocessing plants. Consumers have paid billions of dollars in levies on their electric bills over the years to fund a government program to dispose of the waste. The Department of Energy has had the responsibility for development of the waste disposal system for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive nuclear waste since 1982, and current plans call for deposit of the material in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, but this program is much delayed.
USDA Photo by Ken Hammond
