How does Nuclear technology affect society today?
Nuclear Technology still plays a big role in society today. 11 percent of the world is powered by nuclear power plants. They produce roughly 2,400 terra watts of power a year, which is about 2,400,000,000,000,000 watts of electricity. Much of the world is relying more and more on nuclear energy. Nuclear energy produces 3/4 of France's energy, and many other European countries like Ukraine and Finland get a third of their energy from nuclear power plants. There are currently 447 commercial reactors in the world, 99 in the US alone, and another 61 are under construction. China, who is the biggest polluter in the world, is on board with nuclear energy. They have 37 operational reactors and 20 currently under construction, with more planned. The building of all these plants does not come without protests and hatred though. Many people hate the idea of nuclear energy for many reasons. One is that the plants might leak radiation in to the atmosphere, rivers or lakes. Others fear that it can give people cancer, while this is true and can happen in the case of a leak, it is an exceedingly rare occurrence. Most anti-nuclear activists use Chernobyl, Fukushima, and three mile island as examples of why nuclear energy should not be used, but most of these incidents occurred when nuclear energy was new with only Fukushima being a modern incident, which was caused by a tsunami. The Fukushima incident in particular invigorated many activists and resulted in the closing of many of Japan's nuclear power plants. With these activists though, nuclear power is still fairly widespread, not only used in commercial reactors but in ships of many navies across the world. All of the Nimitz class super carriers are nuclear powered, along with most US submarines and the new Gerald R. Ford class super carriers. The US is the main user of nuclear propulsion on ships, but other countries such as France, India, and China are using the technology to a lesser extent too.