When you hear the words “Nuclear power,” you probably think of Chernobyl. The Chernobyl incident’s 40th anniversary is coming up next year on April 26, and it made many people rethink nuclear power. Is the productivity of nuclear power worth the danger it brings?  There are many concerns about nuclear power, such as the cost or safety, but one thing no one can argue with is its efficiency.

The US Energy Information Administration estimates that only around 19% of all US electricity is generated via nuclear power plants, which is a relatively small number compared to the 60% that comes from fossil fuels. The other 21% comes from renewable energy. Commonly known issues with fossil fuels include global warming and climate change.  However, there is also an issue with renewable energy: it is horribly inefficient. Wind and solar farms require vast amounts of land to produce what a nuclear power plant can. According to the US Department of Energy, just one nuclear power plant produces enough power to equal 3.125 million solar panels, or 431 wind turbines. The average nuclear power plant only takes up about one square mile of land, whereas the space three million solar panels could take up could differ based on the efficiency of the panels. The output of solar panels can vary widely based on the composition of the panels, and the climate the panels are in.

One of the largest solar farms in the US is Solar Star in California and it uses highly efficient solar panels, 1.7 million of them, in fact. Solar Star takes up about 5 square miles, so 3 million of these solar panels would take up about 10 square miles. Less productive panels could take up even more space. Either way, nuclear power is over 10 times more productive than solar power. Plus, nuclear power plants don’t have to worry about weather or anything like solar panels or wind turbines do. 

But what about the safety of these plants? They are known to be dangerous if handled the wrong way. That is why no under-qualified person should ever be working at these plants. Chernobyl was the greatest disaster in the history of nuclear power, and, today, nuclear power’s greatest hindrance. But Chernobyl happened under the Soviet Union, a starving, dying country that decided it would put a bunch of under-qualified people in charge of one of the most dangerous things in science. Nuclear power is the most productive method of power generation that we can harness. The reasons that we haven’t are a result of fear mongering and lies over the past 50 or so years. Nuclear power is not as dangerous as you’ve been led to believe, and it is far more effective than any other source of energy. The process makes little to no carbon emissions, and the cost of nuclear power has decreased drastically over the past few decades. Nuclear is the future of power generation. It should have been the past and present as well.