Nuclear Reactors and Windmills: Nuclear vs Wind

Interestingly enough, on my way to San Francisco, within a short period of time I flew over two completely different alternative fuel sources - wind power and nuclear energy.

Many people like the idea of nuclear power because of how clean it is relative to other fuel sources. It is virtually a renewable energy source that emits no greenhouse gasses, but only supplies about 20 percent of all the energy used in the U.S. However many incidences today are making it seem like the world may be moving away from nuclear energy. This can be seen in Germany, one of the largest economies and energy producers in the world. Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear incident in Japan where there was a meltdown of three of the plant's nuclear reactors, the German government decided to shutdown all of the countries power plants by the year 2022.

Wind energy was initially used used to propels boat along the Nile River in the late 5000 BC. It was then used to power water pumps in China by 200 BC. By the 11th century, people from the Middle East were already using wind mills and wind pumps for food production.

The source of nuclear energy - Uranium - was found in 1789. An experiment that was conducted over a century later revealed that the energy released from one fission is equivalent to 200 million electron volts. This was put into pen and paper by Albert Einstein forward the equivalence between mass and energy , which had been published in 1905.

Initially, the US had twice as many operating nuclear power plants as any other country in 1991 - more than one fourth of the world’s operating plant. Even now, US generates the most amount of nuclear energy worldwide but it is not the most nuclear dependent nation. France gets around three quarters of its electricity through nuclear energy while Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine gets half of it through nuclear energy.

While nuclear power is a very clean and efficient way to produce energy, the risk of potential catastrophic accidents like the one in Fukushima are making it so many countries want to find a risk-free way to make large amounts of energy.