The risks and rewards of this oft-maligned power source
By Alyssa Oursler
In the earliest hours of March 28, 1979, a nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island—a sandbar on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania—partially melted when a technological malfunction was compounded by human error.[1] Though crisis was largely averted, the incident cast a shadow over the promises of nuclear power to break America’s addiction to fossil fuels.
Fast-forward seven years, and an even greater disaster halfway around the world had a similar effect. On April 26, 1986, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl plant in present-day Ukraine exploded, killing two plant workers on the spot and another 28 people in the weeks that followed.[2] Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to relocate as a result of the accident, while historians have estimated that the total number of deaths as a result of exposure to radiation from Chernobyl—including radioactive material dispersed by wind across Europe—will be about 16,000 by the disaster’s 50-year anniversary.[3]
More recently, in 2011, an earthquake and tsunami interrupted power at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, forcing 100,000 people to be evacuated.
While the meltdown at Three Mile Island marked the most serious nuclear disaster in the United States, Chernobyl remains the most serious nuclear disaster in the world. As Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Rhodes put it, “Three Mile Island and Chernobyl represent extreme instances of the problem that seems to trouble the American public more than any other about commercial nuclear power: its apparent danger.”[4] No wonder, for many, the word “nuclear” is synonymous with risk. Unfortunately, from an energy perspective, the other side of the coin—the status quo, that is—is riddled with risk as well.
America’s dependence on fossil fuels
Most people don’t think very much about where their energy comes from. But when you flip a light switch in your house, the electricity you’re enjoying is likely generated from coal, oil, or gas. These nonrenewable resources release greenhouse gases—named for the way they blanket the planet and trap the sun’s heat.[5] Per the United Nations, fossil fuels are the largest contributors to climate change, as they account for three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions and almost 90% of all CO2 emissions.[6] Each year, more than 34 billion tonnes of CO2 are released around the world.[7] As of 2021, the U.S. is responsible for about 13% of global emissions, thanks in part to our travel habits, as cars and planes rely on fossil fuels as well. Our contribution is second only to China’s 30% share.[8]
In addition to warming the planet—the effects of which we are already beginning to witness via melting icecaps, rising sea levels, warmer temperatures, and more extreme weather events—emissions from fossil fuels are directly harmful to humans. As the Guardian reported this year, the oil industry knew burning fossil fuels had myriad negative health effects more than 50 years ago, but undermined science on the subject.[9] Globally, pollution from fossil fuels is to blame for one in five deaths, in addition to contributing to chronic conditions like asthma and heart disease. In the U.S., communities of color and low-income communities are most likely to be harmed from air pollution as well.[10]
Last year, President Biden called climate change “the existential threat of our time,” before pledging to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half, from 2005 levels, by the end of the decade.[11] Meanwhile, the leading scientists who comprise the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just released a “final warning,” noting yet again that the planet is on the verge of irreversible damage. The IPCC’s dire assessments are not new; in 2021, the Guardian summarized an earlier report as follows: “Within the next two decades, temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, breaching the ambition of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and bringing widespread devastation and extreme weather.”[12] Already, billions of people live in places that are highly vulnerable to climate breakdown, making concern about the continued release of greenhouse gases highly warranted. Nuclear power plants do not produce greenhouse gases, though they do produce radioactive waste. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at how nuclear power works.
Generating power through nuclear fission
To understand nuclear power, let’s transport ourselves, first, to ancient Greece. Thousands of years ago, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Democritus posited that the world was made of tiny particles called atoms.[13] He believed atoms to be indivisible, though that part of his conjecture would later be proven wrong. Fast-forward to the early 20th century, when New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford used a scattering experiment—in which he bombarded a thin gold sheet with alpha particles then studied their trajectory—to better understand atomic structure. In turn, he demonstrated that atoms have a nucleus, or core.[14] This discovery was, for lack of a better word, core to our understanding of nuclear energy. Atoms can be divided into a nucleus and electrons, while the nucleus is composed of two particle types: protons and neutrons.[15]
While a proton and an electron will attract one another, two of either will repel one another. “The key to understanding nuclear energy,” according to professor Charles D. Ferguson, “involves the push-and-pull between the repulsive electrical force and the attractive strong nuclear force inside the nucleus.”[16] This push-and-pull reflects the stability of an atom’s nucleus—also known as its binding energy. Binding energy can be calculated using Einstein’s theory of relativity. Depending on the type of atom we’re dealing with, the binding energy varies: Generally speaking, lighter elements have lower binding energy, though the relationship follows a curve.[17]
A release of nuclear energy occurs when the nuclei of atoms are changed, which can happen two ways: through fusion or fission. In simplest terms, fusion entails combining light nuclei to form a heavier one, while fission entails splitting heavy nuclei into lighter ones (or fission products).[18] Nuclear fission was discovered in the 1930s by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, a German research team that was competing against three others in the world, including one in Britain helmed by Rutherford.
Uranium is the material most commonly used to produce nuclear energy, due to the ease with which its atoms can be split apart.[19] Nuclear energy can also be released through a process called radioactive decay, during which unstable nuclei emit energy in a bid for stability. Decay is measured by a material’s half-life. The energy released is ionizing radiation, high doses of which can cause a plethora of negative health effects on humans, an issue we will return to later.[20] For now, let’s focus on nuclear fission—the process through which electricity can be produced. As things currently stand, nuclear power plants cannot reliably and safely produce energy from nuclear fusion.
Nuclear energy in action
While atoms were “discovered” in ancient Greece, to find the first nuclear reactor to generate electricity, we must travel instead to Idaho. But we also must wait until World War II ends. The discovery of nuclear fission came just before the war began, causing early research to emphasize the production of atomic weapons. (Meitner, who fled Germany when Hitler annexed Austria, was asked to work on the Manhattan Project but declined.[21]) It wasn’t until World War II ended that attention turned to using nuclear fission for energy production instead. The first commercial nuclear power stations started operation in the 1950s, including the Experimental Breeder Reactor, which went online in Arco, Idaho, in 1951. While the Experimental Breeder Reactor made the first usable electricity from nuclear energy, the first power plant designed to provide energy to an entire community came online in Obninsk, Russia (just outside of Moscow), in 1954.[22]
Nuclear power plants work in different ways, but the general process is as follows: Nuclear fuel, usually uranium, is contained within the nuclear reactor. A fission chain reaction produces tremendous heat inside fuel rods, which are then submerged in water to create steam. The steam then turns a turbine, which generates electricity.[23] Uranium is common, yet the specific type of uranium used to make nuclear energy—known as U-235—is rare, making up less than 1% of the material found worldwide. Because nuclear energy depends on uranium, of which a finite amount exists, nuclear energy is not a renewable resource. Wind and solar power, on the other hand, are—but are vastly more inefficient. Nuclear energy is far more efficient than its fellow non-renewables as well; a single fuel pellet of enriched uranium contains the same amount of energy as 149 gallons of oil, 157 gallons of gasoline, 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, or 1,780 pounds of coal.[24] According to journalist Gwyneth Cravens, “Exactly how much uranium is available worldwide remains uncertain because nations conceal the size of their stockpiles.” Still, the general consensus from experts is that there’s enough to run thousands of reactors for hundreds of years.
Several European nations, including France and Ukraine, get the majority of their energy from nuclear power plants—though the U.S. leads the way in terms of raw output. Nuclear energy provides about 10% of the world’s electricity from just over 400 power reactors, making it the second largest source of low-carbon power.[25] (While nuclear power plants do not release greenhouse gases, it is worth noting that processes for mining and enriching uranium do depend on fossil fuels.[26])While many proponents of nuclear energy emphasize its status as a low-carbon power source, others focus on energy security, defined by the International Energy Agency as “the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price.”[27]
Gas, for instance, comes from a small number of major producers and is subject to disruptions. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, is often referred to as a cartel due to the group’s ability to fix prices in a bid for greater profits.[28] Last year, the group agreed to slash production by 2 million barrels per day in order to raise prices.[29] Additionally, when Russia, the second-largest exporter of oil and the primary supplier of natural gas to Europe, invaded Ukraine last year, “traders, shippers and financiers shunned Russian oil, removing much of it from the daily global supply.”[30]
According to a report in Nature Energy, the energy crisis triggered by the war could push 141 million people into extreme poverty.[31] Meanwhile, the European Union is estimated to suffer a natural gas shortage of up to 30 billion cubic meters this year. The potential silver lining of the energy crisis, though, is “a dramatic turnabout for the fate of nuclear energy.” Ted Nordhaus and Juzel Lloyd of the Breakthrough Institute summarized the recent re-emergence of nuclear power in a piece published last December. In their words:
“Japan has announced, after a decade of paralysis, that it plans to restart many of its reactors, which have sat idle since the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi. France, which had launched plans to reduce its dependence on nuclear energy during President Macron’s first term, reversed course and now plans to build six new reactors and a dozen more small modular reactors. The UK has launched an ambitious plan to build eight new reactors and 16 small modular reactors. Even anti-nuclear Germany has conceded to basic geopolitical energy realities and extended the life of the nation’s last three operating nuclear power plants.”
In the U.S., though, nuclear power plants have by and large experienced more hiccups than success. In the words of Atlantic writer Jonathan Rauch: “Today, legacy nuclear power supplies about 20 percent of American electricity, but the country has fired up only one new power reactor since 1996.” Altogether, he writes, nuclear energy has “consistently flopped as a commercial proposition.”[32] Still, many people—from billionaire Bill Gates to President Joe Biden—are working to rejuvenate the prospects of nuclear power stateside as well. In November, the Biden administration announced $6 billion in funding from the Civil Nuclear Credit (CNC) program as part of its infrastructure bill. The first round of funding will go to the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California. Its nuclear reactors were scheduled to be decommissioned in coming years but will remain open thanks to the credit.[33]
Bill Gates, meanwhile, has backed a startup called TerraPower—one of 20 U.S. companies working to build advanced nuclear power plants that run on high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, which is enriched between 5% and 20%.[34] (Existing reactors rely on fuel that is enriched up to 5%.) Ironically, the scheduled demonstration of TerraPower’s advanced reactor has been delayed by at least two years. Why? As CNBC reported, “because its only source of [HALEU] fuel was Russia, and the Ukraine war has closed the door on that trade relationship.”[35]
Risks and challenges
As nuclear power plants take center stage once again—both as a result of the current energy crisis and the looming threat of irreversible planetary damage from the continued use of fossil fuels—there are numerous reasons as to why they have failed to gain greater momentum thus far. For the sake of simplicity, let’s break the main risks associated with nuclear power plants into five broad buckets: safety, waste, physical security, nuclear proliferation, and cost.
- Safety: As referenced in this article’s opening, safety tends to be the leading concern around nuclear power plants, as accidents can release radioactive material into the air, harming people and the environment. A common aphorism in the industry is that “a nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere.”[36] Nuclear accidents can arise when a reactor experiences a loss of coolant, as happened on Three Mile Island, or when a reactor suffers a criticality accident, which refers to an uncontrolled fission chain reaction.[37] And yet, the three accidents cited earlier mark the only significant ones in the six decades during which a total of 18,500 nuclear reactors in 36 countries have been used to generate power.[38]
There are many safety precautions baked into the design and operation of a nuclear power plant, including a safety concept known as “defense-in-depth.” This refers to a system in which each component is functionally independent and has multiple layers of safety measures.[39] One mandated safety indicates is the probability that the reactor’s core might get damage. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires the probability of damage to be 1 in 10,000, but most modern reactors have an even smaller accident probability of just 1 in 1 million.[40] Newer designs may also be even safer: Small modular reactors, as TerraPower aims to use, incorporate greater levels of passive safety, which refers to the reactor’s ability to shut itself down in the event of a malfunction.[41]
Altogether, Chernobyl is the only accident that caused mass fatalities from radioactivity. It’s also very much worth noting that the disaster at Chernobyl has been chalked up to the faulty design of Soviet nuclear reactors and tremendous human error. Recall the figure cited earlier: 16,000 people will have died from exposure to radioactive materials because of Chernobyl by 2036. But, as historian Bernard Cohen has pointed out, there are 16,000 deaths caused each year by the air pollution release by coal-burning powerplants stateside.[42] Still, 11 such reactors are still operating in Russia. These reactors pose the greatest safety concern.[43]
- Waste: Another risk associated with nuclear plants is the fact that radioactive waste is a byproduct of nuclear reactors and is generated when reactors are decommissioned. The U.S., for instance, has over 85,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from its commercial power plants, the federal liability for which is expected to approach $60 billion by 2030.[44] Low-level waste refers to items that have been contaminated by radioactive material, such as protective gear and lab supplies. It is usually allowed to decay at a storage site. High-level waste, also known as spent fuel, is generated by fission reactions inside reactors. Despite decay, radioactivity can last for tens of thousands of years. High-level waste is initially transferred to a spent fuel pool, where it cools for several years before being transferred to dry casks.[45] Long term, though, the desired solution is to drill deep into the Earth and store the waste there.
In 1987, a national nuclear waste repository was authorized in Yucca Mountain of Nevada, but it has never been used and was abandoned in 2010. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, passed in 1982, mandates a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste. Nuclear companies have already been suing the government for their failure to provide one. By 2011, the government had already paid out just shy of $1 billion settling such claims.[46] Other countries that depend heavily on nuclear energy recycle used fuel instead, but this increases the risk of nuclear proliferation, which will be discussed shortly. All in all, no country has yet established a permanent disposal site for radioactive waste, though Finland did break ground on one such site in 2021.[47] Sweden also approved one in 2022.[48]
- Physical security: While safety refers the prevention of nuclear accidents, physical security refers to securing nuclear power plants against bad actors, whether terrorists or insiders. In 1982, for instance, Rodney Wilkinson—a white South African working with the African National Congress to end apartheid—detonated four bombs at the Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant, which was under construction at the time.[50] No one was injured by the blast, though the attack caused about $50 billion in damage and delayed the plant’s opening by nearly two years.[49] Attacks on nuclear power plants often take place during war, such as when Iran’s air force, and then Israel’s, bombed a reactor being built by France in Iraq.[51] In the U.S., though, security is regulated by the government and includes multiple layers, from physical barriers and electronic surveillance to professional security forces and access control for employees. According to the Nuclear Regulation Commission, nuclear power plants are some of the “best-protected private sector facilities” in the nation.[52]
- Nuclear proliferation: While nuclear power plants pose many risks in and of themselves, perhaps the greatest fear of all surrounding the technology is that countries will use highly enriched uranium or plutonium to make and use nuclear weapons. Nuclear proliferation refers to the acquisition of nuclear weapons or the expansion of a country’s nuclear arsenal. The U.S. built the first atomic bomb via the Manhattan Project in 1945, dropping a uranium-based bomb on Hiroshima (killing 140,000 people) and a plutonium-based bomb on Nagasaki shortly after (killing 70,000 people).[53] Much like fission, proliferation tends to create a chain reaction; during the Cold War, for instance, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union built up their nuclear arsenals. In 1962, the U.S. discovered that Soviet missile sites were under construction in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis marked the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war.[54]
A few years later, 62 nations, including the U.S. and Soviet Union, signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which stipulated that countries with nuclear weapons would not help others obtain and create them.[55] Additionally, nuclear-weapon-free-zones have been established in Latin America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia. In 2017, a global treaty banning nuclear weapons altogether was passed at the United Nations and endorsed by 122 countries. Still, risk remains. North Korea, for one, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and, just this year, unveiled small nuclear warheads that can be fitted onto short-range missiles.[56] Additionally, India and Pakistan came close to nuclear war as well, and each country has about 100 nuclear warheads.
Altogether, while many steps have been taken to minimize proliferation and the risk of nuclear war, many countries remain in possession of the deadly weapons. It’s worth noting, though, that some scholars suggest that the spread of nuclear weapons may actually produce stability from a political perspective. Of course, all it takes is one detonation to prove them wrong. According to a report from a group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “The current international safeguards regime is inadequate to meet the security challenges of the expanded nuclear deployment contemplated in the global growth scenario.”[57]
Proving their point, perhaps, is Russia’s continued aggression towards Ukraine. In the wake of the war, Russia backed out of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which previously allowed the U.S. to inspect its nuclear weapons sites and capped arsenals at 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 deployed missiles and heavy bombers.[58] Vladimir Putin also made a deal with Belarus to store nuclear weapons there. Per Al Jazeera: “The deal with Belarus would not violate nuclear nonproliferation agreements, Putin said, adding that the United States had stationed nuclear weapons in the territory of its European allies for decades.”[59] In response, the U.S. has stopped sharing information about its strategic nuclear stockpile with Russia, another stipulation of the START treaty.
Cost: The final hurdle for greater adoption of nuclear energy is the cost of building and running power plants. Modern reactors can cost between $5 billion and $10 billion each. That breaks down to $5,366 per kilowatt capacity—more than double the cost per kilowatt for a wind farm.[60] In 2017, South Carolina abandoned two unfinished reactors because of construction delays and cost overruns. In the U.S. state of Georgia, two reactors estimated to cost $14 billon ended up costing close to $23 million. One of the perks of small modular reactors, in addition to improved safety, is lower costs. Additionally, as Brad Plumer reported for Vox, the cost of nuclear power hasn’t skyrocketed everywhere: “Countries like France, Japan, and Canada kept costs fairly stable during this period. And South Korea actually drove nuclear costs down, at a rate similar to what you see for solar.”[61] One reason: standardized designs. Stateside, though, nuclear power has some way to go to become cost-competitive with other energy forms, though a carbon tax could shift the math in nuclear power’s favor. Currently, renewables are the most cost-effective energy source and actually generated more electricity than coal in 2022—a first.[62]
The bottom line
On March 16, 1979, a movie called The China Syndrome, starring Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda,hit theaters. The movie’s title refers to a loss-of-coolant accident, named by former Manhattan Project physicist Ralph Lapp, during which a meltdown of core components burns through not just the power plant, but the Earth’s crust until reaching the other side (China).[63] Less than two weeks after the movie was released, a loss-of-coolant accident at Three Mile Island took place. But again, the accident at Three Mile Island did not result in any deaths or radioactive exposure. Still, accidents garner more attention than operations that run smoothly—and make for better entertainment. But they don’t necessarily reflect the actual risk involved in using nuclear energy to generate power.
Nevertheless, the threat of such accidents seems to remain lodged in the forefront of the nation’s collective consciousness. Just before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans about their views on nuclear power. While nearly 70% of Americans said the nation should aim to become carbon-neutral by 2050, only 35% said the federal government should encourage the production of nuclear power.[64] For reference, a comparable percentage of respondents expressed support for the government’s encouragement of oil and gas drilling. Around the same time, the Associated Press conducted an analysis which found that two-thirds of U.S. states are turning to nuclear power to offset their reliance on fossil fuels.[65]
Despite the many challenges that exist with regards to nuclear power, the reality is that—from an energy perspective—we may not have much of a choice. Investing in nuclear power has tremendous potential to be a reliable source of low-carbon power generation.
ALYSSA OURSLER is a freelance journalist.
Endnotes
[1] “Three Mile Island accident,” Encyclopedia Britannica. Aug. 12, 2016. Accessed March 20, 2023.
[2] “Chernobyl Accident 1986,” World Nuclear Association. April 2022.
[3] Nuclear Renewal, Richard Rhodes, 1993.
[4] Ibid.
[5] “Causes and Effects of Climate Change,” United Nations. Accessed March 21, 2023.
[6] “Causes of Climate Change,” United Nations. Accessed March 21, 2023.
[7] “CO2 emissions,” Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, Our World in Data, 2020.
[8] “CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser and Pablo Rosado, Our World in Data, 2020.
[9] “Oil firms knew decades ago fossil fuels posed grave health risks, files reveal,” Oliver Milman, The Guardian. March 18, 2021.
[10] “Fact Sheet | Climate, Environmental, and Health Impacts of Fossil Fuels,” Savannah Bertrand. Environmental and Energy Study Institute Dec. 17, 2021. Accessed March 23, 2023.
[11] “At Biden Climate Summit, World Leaders Pledge To Do More, Act Faster,” NPR. Scott Detrow and Nathan Rott. April 22, 2021. Accessed March 20, 2023.
[12] “Major climate changes inevitable and irreversible – IPCC’s starkest warning yet,” The Guardian. Fiona Harvey. Aug. 9, 2021. Accessed March 24, 2023.
[13] Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know, Charles D. Ferguson, 2011.
[14] “The Scattering of α and β Particles by Matter and the Structure of the Atom,” Ernest Rutherford, Philosophical Magazine. Series 6, vol. 21. May 1911
[15] Ferguson.
[16] Ferguson, page 8.
[17] “Nuclear Energy,” Energy Education, U. S. Department of Energy and the Texas State Energy Conservation Office (SECO)2010.
[18] Ferguson.
[19] “Nuclear energy,” National Geographic. Last updated March 2, 2023.
[20] Ferguson.
[21] Ferguson.
[22] “Outline History of Nuclear Energy,” World Nuclear Association, November 2020.
[23] “Understand the working of a nuclear power plant,” Encyclopedia Britannica.
[24] Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy, Gwyneth Cravens, 2007.
[25] “Nuclear Power in the World Today,” World Nuclear Association, March 2023.
[26] Ferguson.
[27] “Energy Security”; IEA.
[28] “Organizations and Cartels,” Oil and Gas Industry: A Research Guide, Library of Congress.
[29] “Why Did OPEC Slash Oil Production?” Christina Lu, Foreign Policy, Oct. 6, 2022.
[30] “Why Are Gasoline Prices So High? Ukraine-Russia War Sparks Increases Across U.S.” Scott Patterson, Wall Street Journal. April 1, 2022. Accessed March 27, 2023.
[31] “Burden of the global energy price crisis on households.” Yuru Guan et al., Nat Energy 8, 2023.
[32] “Is America Ready for a New Age of Nuclear Power?” Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic, March 2023.
[33] “Biden-Harris Administration Announces Major Investment to Preserve America’s Clean Nuclear Energy Infrastructure,” Department of Energy, Nov. 21, 2022.
[34]
[35] “Bill Gates-backed nuclear demonstration project in Wyoming delayed because Russia was the only fuel source,” Catherine Clifford, CNBC. Dec. 16, 2022. Accessed March 28, 2023.
[36] “How Chernobyl Jump-Started the Global Nuclear Safety Regime,” U.S Government Accountability Office
[37] “A Review of Criticality Accidents,” McLaughlin et al. Los Alamos National Laboratory. 2000.
[38] “Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors,” World Nuclear Association, March 2022.
[39] “Defence in Depth in Nuclear Safety,” International Nuclear Safety Advisor Group, 1996.
[40] World Nuclear Association.
[41] “Tech Talk: Rising Interest in SMR Technology,” Mark Sabourin, Environmental Risk Information Services, July 2020.
[42] Nuclear Renewal, Richard Rhodes, 1993.
[43] Ferguson.
[44] “GAO: Congress Needs to Act on Nuclear Waste,” Jeremy Dillon, E&E News. Sept. 23, 2021.
[45] “Lesson Seven: Waste from Nuclear Power Plants,” Department of Energy.
[46] “While Nuclear Waste Piles Up in U.S., Billions in Fund to Handle It Sit Unused,” Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica, March 30, 2011.
[47] “This Underground Tomb in Finland Will Store Nuclear Waste for 100,000 Years,” Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, March 10, 2022.
[48] “Sweden approves nuclear waste storage site,” Charlie Duxbery, Politico, Jan. 27, 2022.
[59] Ferguson.
[50] “Insider Threats: An Educational Handbook of Nuclear & Non-Nuclear Case Studies.” Christopher Hobbs and Matthew Moran. August 2015.
[51] Ferguson.
[52] “Radiation and National Security,” USNRC.
[53] “Nuclear proliferation.” André Munro. Encyclopedia Britannica.
[54] “The History of Nuclear Proliferation,” World 101: Global Era Issues.
[55] “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” Lawrence Freedman. Encyclopedia Britannica.
[56] “North Korea asserts first evidence of tactical nuclear weapons,” Jean Mackenzie, BBC. March 28, 2023. Accessed March 29, 2023.
[57] “The Future of Nuclear Power,” An Interdisciplinary MIT Study. 2003. Accessed March 29, 2023.
[58] “Putin says Russia will halt participation in New Start nuclear arms treaty,” Andrew Roth and Julian Borger, Guardian. Feb. 21, 2023.
[59] “Putin says Russia will deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus.” Al Jazeera. March 25, 2023. Accessed March 29, 2023.
[60] “Why America abandoned nuclear power (and what we can learn from South Korea),” Brad Plumer, Vox. Feb. 29, 2016. Accessed March 29, 2023.
[61] Plumer.
[62] “The U.S. produced more electricity from renewables than coal in 2022,” Isabella O’Malley. Fast Company. March 28, 2023. Accessed March 29, 2023.
[63] “Thoughts on nuclear plumbing,” Ralph Lapp, New York Times. Dec. 12, 1971.
[64] Americans continue to express mixed views about nuclear power,” Rebecca Leppert. Pew Research Center. March 23, 2022. Accessed March 29, 2023.
[65] “Majority of US states pursue nuclear power for emission cuts,” Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press. Jan. 18, 2022.
