Cities require immense amounts of power, and a sustainable city must draw all of this power from clean energy sources. Nuclear power could be a good option for the future. It has some definite pros and very negative cons. Nuclear power would be very expensive to establish. The plant and the workers there would all require a lot of money. For operating, the facility would require top of the line scientists and physicists. They would have to be paid by large salaries. Uranium, the most common fuel for these power plants, costs $15,000,000 per kg. However one gram can produce 24,000,000 million kWh of electricity (24 gWh). This amount of electricity is worth around $3,560,000, meaning the fuel is more expensive than the energy output. Even still, this amount of can power over 2,250 homes. Comparing to wind turbines, where a 1,000 KW (1 MW) turbine costs around $2,000,000. That means 1 kg of u-235 produces as much energy as 24,000 wind turbines, which would cost $48,000,000,000. Even though nuclear power is incredibly expensive, it is still much cheaper than its energy equivalent in wind turbines. There is also the problem of the radioactive waste. It is difficult and expensive to despose of and has numerous negative effects if not dealt with properly. Incorrectly disposed-of waste can have very detrimental effects on the environment and any surrounding population.

Is nuclear power a good option? There are clearly some serious downsides, but also some considerable benefits. It could still be an option for the future of clean energy.

I agree with you, but I think that you have your conclusion mixed up. 4,000,000 people die each year from pollution associated with the generation of power through fossil fuels, while a fraction of those deaths would occur if all of the power in the world was generated through nuclear power. I don’t think that nuclear power would be a sustainable energy production method in the future however, because of the toxic waste that is a byproduct of nuclear power. I think that it would be a great way to move away from fossil fuels until we can implement the necessary green energy infrastructure because as you said, we are going to need a whole lot of wind turbines and solar panels, but we wouldn’t need that many nuclear power plants.Another thing I didn’t agree with is that you said nuclear power isn’t profitable. You said that uranium costs $15,000,000 per kg, and that one gram produces $3.56 million dollars worth of power, but it seems like you failed to notice that there are 1000 grams in a kilogram. Anyways, I agree with you, just not entirely.

It is definitely a step in the right direction, but I feel the final solution hasn’t even been discovered yet.