April 26 - thirty eight years since the Chornobyl disaster
photo: Liquidators of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Photo from the personal archive of Viktor Sydorenko
The world reconsidered its attitude to nuclear energy when the largest man-made disaster of humanity happened 38 years ago. Despite the fact that some countries are determined to gradually abandon the operation and construction of new plants, nuclear power still accounts for almost a quarter of electricity generation in the developed countries.
In the United States, for example, just over 100 operating nuclear power plants currently provide about one-fifth of the country's electricity. This makes nuclear power the second largest source of electricity generation in the country; coal accounts for more than half of the production, and natural gas (the fastest growing source) accounts for about one-sixth.
However, despite the fact that in the EU taxonomy nuclear power is an acceptable source of energy until 2050, the German Bundestag decided to abandon nuclear power in 2011. Renewable energy sources provided more than 47% of the electricity consumed in Germany in the first half of 2019. Nuclear energy accounted for 13% of the total electricity consumed.
In Switzerland, a nuclear power plant that had been operating for 47 years was shut down in December 2019. Sweden also shut down one of the four reactors at its largest power plant, which had been operating for more than 40 years, in December 2019.
To ensure energy security in the country, we should strive for a combination of weather-dependent and weather-independent energy sources. At this stage, we have no alternatives to replace the energy we receive from nuclear power plants.
Despite the dangers that nuclear power can pose if the plants are operated incorrectly, it has significant advantages: first, unlike coal, natural gas and oil, nuclear energy does not emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the process of generating electricity.
In addition to generating a huge amount of carbon-free energy, nuclear power produces more electricity in a smaller area than any other source. According to the NEI, wind farms require 360 times more land to produce the same amount of electricity, and solar photovoltaic plants require 75 times more space. That's about 1 million times more than other traditional energy sources, and so the amount of nuclear fuel used is not as large as one might think. All of the spent nuclear fuel produced by the U.S. nuclear power industry over the past 60 years could be placed on a football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.
Some modern reactor designs under development can even run on spent fuel.
Another advantage of nuclear power, although it currently only applies to plants that are already in operation, is that once they are built, these plants are extremely cheap to operate. The downside, however, is perhaps the most important: while nuclear power plants are cheap to operate once they are up and running, they are by far the most expensive to build.
To keep in mind the safety and the events that have already taken place in our history, we have compiled a selection of documentaries about Chornobyl:
Wildlife Takeover: How Animals Reclaimed Chernobyl | Free Documentary Nature
Scientific testing ground. Chernobyl. A documentary film