Alternative Energy

Dear Next President, Energy has become a problem in the past 10 years. “The US has been using coal since the early 1700s” according to the US Department of Energy. That’s almost 320 years! We are going to eventually run out of resources. All the other renewable energy sources do not produce enough energy to run the United States. One acre of solar panels only produces one GWh per year. “That is only enough energy to supply 1,000 homes with energy” says Energy Manager Today. Nuclear Energy is our last option for energy. Nuclear energy is created when a hydrogen atom and helium atom collide make one heavier atom and at the same time producing a ton of energy. It produces as much energy as an atomic bomb. That is one million times stronger than a conventional explosive device according to Atomic Archive. If we can harness this energy and convert it into electricity we can have a near infinite energy supply. The machine you need to harness the energy is called a nuclear reactor. The way this works is that it forces the atoms to collide to make the energy. There is water in the reactor that the energy boils because it is so hot. This creates steam. The pressurized steam turns turbines really quickly creating a lot of electricity. This may seem like hydroelectric energy but those turbines turn a lot slower. Nuclear reactors can cost up to 9 billion dollars but produces 8913% more energy than a coal plant. Coal plants can cost up to 2 billion dollars but produce a lot less energy. The only problem with nuclear reactors is that the can have a “meltdown”. This mean that the heat can get to intense and start to melt everything around it. This will create holes and release radiation due to the uranium helping the atoms combine. The radiation will stay there for almost 1000 years. This has happened before in a small Russian town called Chernobyl. The incident happened not because the machine was at fault but the human was. Now days people are a lot better trained and can prevent this from happening I hope the next president puts more research into running more nuclear power plants. This will overall help the environment by not producing greenhouse gases and helping people in their everyday lives by providing them with electricity. Sincerely, Logan Dacy