2008 Energy Forum

Cheap energy forever: that was the promise of nuclear power. The promise still holds true; but then there’s the downside of the coin.
Nuclear power plants create waste materials; there’s no getting around that. We’re talking serious and dangerous pollutants: radioactive waste that stays dangerous for thousands of years.
When you crack open a uranium atom, you get two pieces that weigh less (have less mass) than the original atom. This loss of mass shows up as energy—a lot of energy. You can credit that fellow Einstein for that, as he slipped the speed of light into his famous equation that tells you how much energy you get when mass disappears. The speed of light is a huge number, so you can get a large amount of energy out of a pretty small lump of uranium.
Here’s the problem: the radioactive pieces you get when you break the uranium atom are not stable. They change themselves into something more stable by emitting a particle or an electromagnetic ray: both of these have the capacity to damage human cells and cause sickness or death.
None of this is a surprise to the designers of nuclear power plants. Elaborate containment structures have been built to store the waste products, and eventually these waste products are supposed to be put in a safe place.
After Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, where human errors caused reactors to get out of control, additional safety measures were added to plants. Now, in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, engineers are rethinking the proper location of plants, and safeguards against disruptions caused by natural disasters.
Break the uranium atom and you get a windfall of power. Because of the danger, safeguards must be strict and overly redundant. But the promise of cheap energy is still there.