The experience of the past shows: it takes about a century to change some sources of energy by others. Thus, wood was replaced by coal, coal by oil, oil by gas, and nuclear energy replaced chemical fuels. The starting point in the history of mastery of the last type of energy can be considered 1939, when the discovery of uranium fission was discovered. It was then that I.V. Kurchatov justified the need for research related to atomic energy.
Seven years later in Ro
The Russians built and launched the first
nuclear reactor, then still experimental. The uranium mining industry began its development, the purpose of which was the production of plutonium-239 with uranium-235 (nuclear fuel, which was required by nuclear power plants).
In 1954, they launched a
nuclear power plant in Obninsk. The world did not yet know
what nuclear power plants are.
Three years later, the legendary icebreaker "Lenin" was launched, which became the first nuclear-powered vessel in the world.
It took only a decade and a half for the large-scale development of nuclear energy. Now nuclear power plants are built around the world.
Energy is the engine, the foundation of the basics. Almost all the benefits created by civilization, from an elementary light bulb to devices exploring outer space, require a certain amount of energy. And the most cheap energy today is supplied precisely by nuclear power plants. The energy of the atom is ultimately used by absolutely all branches of the modern economy. It is used in biology, medicine, agriculture, metallurgical production, mechanical engineering, etc.
Almost all
nuclear power plants in Russia are built in densely populated areas. There are 10 such power plants in operation (32 power units, the plan is to build another 26 reactors, two of which are floating). In the 30-kilometer zone adjacent to them, about 5 million people live.
The strength of the indisputable advantages of nuclear power plants is great, but the disadvantages cannot be ignored.
For operation, hydropower requires the creation of large reservoirs that flood vast tracts of fertile land off the river banks. Water stagnates, loses quality, and, in turn, other problems associated with water supply, fisheries, and the leisure industry become more acute. But the main thing here is environmental problems. Heat power stations are gradually destroying the natural environment of the Earth, the biosphere. It would seem that the accident-free operation of nuclear power plants excludes various kinds of pollution. But for some reason they are silent about heat, because it is also a kind of pollution. More than a hundred nuclear power plants have been built around the world, with only 10% of nuclear power plants in Russia, at each power plant several reactors. The product of the work of reactors is radioactive waste, potentially hazardous. Of course, the volume of waste is small, the “waste” is stored in special containers that seem to exclude leakage. And some countries (including Russia) even recycle these wastes, but the risk still remains, which means that there is also cause for concern.
Since the launch of the first
nuclear power plant , more than one and a half hundred incidents of varying severity have been recorded. Although the term “of varying severity” is perhaps inappropriate here, any, even a slight malfunction in the operation of a nuclear power plant can have irreversible consequences ...