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Although nuclear power is in general a clean source of power in terms of the environment, there are many things that can go wrong with it: one is human error such as what happened in Chernobyl, Russia; the waste products; and the mining of uranium. Uranium mining is not always as clean or good for the environment as it should be, but the process is nessasary as uranium is used for fuel in nuclear reactors. Another problem is that the waste products of nuclear reactors are very radioactive and will remain so for a long time (if you recall, plutonium has a half life of 2.41 x 10^4 years). This means that it�s really dangerous to transport them from one place to another and they can be hard to store safely. One way of transporting these products is by train or truck in specially sealed watertight containers. These containers must be tested to make sure they will not break if they collide with something while going at a very high speed, such as on a train. These products are usually stored in old salt mines very deep in the earth, since human contact can be very harmful. With the human error, the mining, and the waste products the use of nuclear reactors can be very dangerous, however there haven�t been any cases in the United States where there have been any deaths. |
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