The Pros And Cons Of Nuclear Fission

What can make the world go boom, nuclear fission? While nuclear fission has been used as a bomb in the events of Hiroshima it has been used now to produce 40 million kilowatts of energy per day for every ton of uranium. Nuclear fission is when a heavy nucleus disintegrates into two nuclei approximately equal sizes. In the beginning of our understanding of nuclear fission, fission was first used and discovered by two German physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, in 1939. However, they were not the first to create a nuclear reactor. Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Hans von Halban, and Lew Kowarski became the first to create a nuclear reactor with use of Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch research. The three discovered that when fission of uranium-235 emitted several neutrons releasing energy. Believing this could lead to a chain reaction, they created the first nuclear
Nuclear fission produces 13 tons of carbon per giga-watt hour, while geothermal for example produces 42 tons of carbon per giga-watt hour. Likewise, carbon life-cycle emissions of coal generate 30 times greater than nuclear and natural gas produces 15 times greater emissions than nuclear. On the other hand, nuclear fission energy can have a massive effect on the environment. A common issue of nuclear fission is waste management. The fission products are Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 15.7 million years) and the material will radioactive after a few thousand years. This makes it hard to deal with nuclear waste making the most common method is direct injection. With innovation, I believe that nuclear fission has an opportunity to become a replacement for fossil fuels. In this paper, I have demonstrated that nuclear fission clearly has the power to produce the same amount as fossil fuels. However, with the amount of caution around nuclear energy I believe it won’t happen for anytime