What is an advantage of coal power plants over nuclear power plants?
1 Answer
Nuclear waste is difficult to dispose of and nuclear power plants have a risk of a meltdown. Also, coal has a higher energy intensity than nuclear.
Explanation:
Though nuclear power has many advantages over coal, nuclear waste is produced when nuclear power is used and is very difficult to dispose of. It must be stored for thousands of years in a location which will not allow radiation to escape. This is expensive and risky.
Nuclear meltdowns are also a threat of nuclear power. It is not a danger of coal, though coal related accidents can occur, and do so far more often than those related to nuclear power.
It takes so much energy to gain access to usable nuclear power, that by the time you use it, you only have a 3% gain in energy. That means that from all the fossil fuels and other energy spent to acquire and refine the nuclear energy, the nuclear energy yields 103% of that power. You barely gain anything, and you just burned a lot of fossil fuels. Coal has a much greater energy intensity.
