商务英语期末论文 文档

商务英语期末论文

Nuclear Technology: Bene cial or Disastrous?

学 号：4031341605

姓 名：刘思维

Abstract

We have been living in the nuclear age for over half a century. Since the first atomic bombs were developed, nuclear technology has provided governments with the ability to totally destroy the planet. Yet technology has been put into positive use as an energy source and in certain areas of medicine. The threat of nuclear weapons maintains world peace. Nuclear power provides cheap and clean energy.The benefits of nuclear energy overweigh the disadvantages.Is nuclear technology a danger to life on Earth?

Key words: nuclear world peace benefits disadvantages

Nowadays, energy can be obtained through various sources such as oil, coal, natural gas, solar heat, wind, etc. But the conventional energy like oil, coals are being used up rapidly, and solar heat can't become widely used immediately for technological reason. In my opinion, unclear energy will take the place of conventional energy, because people now can control this energy freely, and unclear energy is non-polluting, inexhaustible, and it's much safer than coal and oil. Coal and oil are burned, they also produce many harmful gases, and the air has been seriously polluted by such gases, which will threaten people's living environment. And many accident happened because of the wrong use of such energies.

Nuclear power plants provide about 17 percent of the world's electricity.Some countries depend more on nuclear power for electricity than others. In France, for instance, about 75 percent of the electricity is generated from nuclear power. There are more than 400 nuclear power plants around the world. One question that has caused a great deal of controversy over the years is nuclear technology. Although it offers a number of advantages in world peace and green power, it is also a dangerous technology. Nuclear weapons pose the greatest threat to life. Even the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes also carries some serious risks. In this essay, however, I intend to show how the bene ts of such technology counterbalance its disadvantages. The opponents of nuclear power generally base their arguments on the danger it presents to the world. There are two main dangers: the risk of nuclear warfare and the nuclear disasters. The danger of nuclear war is obvious and if one thinks about Chernobyl, it is easy to understand why people are worried about nuclear power, as it can cause major suffering.

To build a nuclear reactor ,what you need is some mildly2 enriched uranium. Uranium is a fairly common element on Earth,incorporated3 into the planet during the planet's formation. U-235 is one of the few materials that can undergo4 induced fission. Raising and lowering the control rods allow operators to control the rate of the nuclear reaction.When an operator wants the uranium core to produce more heat,the rods are raised out of the uranium bundle. To create less heat, the rods are lowered into the uranium bundle.The rods can also be lowered completely into the uranium bundle to shut the reactor down in the case of an accident or to change the fuel. The uranium bundle acts as

an extremely high-energy source of heat. It heats the water and turns it to steam. The steam drives a steam turbine, which spins5 a generator to produce power.

Well-constructed nuclear power plants have an important advantage when it comes to electrical power generation——they are extremely clean. Compared with a coal fired power plant, nuclear power plants are a dream come true from an environmental standpoint. Unfortunately, there are significant problems with nuclear power plants. Mining and purifying uranium has not, historically, been a very clean process. Improperly functioning nuclear power plants can create big problems. The Chernobyl6 disaster is a good example.Spent fuel from nuclear power plants is toxic for centuries, and, as yet, there is no safe, permanent storage facility for it. There are, however, good reasons for believing that nuclear technology is generally advantageous. The first of these is that there has not been a major world conflict since the invention of nuclear weapons. Although nuclear weapons have enlarged the mechanism of war by threatening to kill more people more secretly and more horribly than those of the past, it is generally agreed that such weapons should be the last thing to be thought of as a means to win a war because there would be no winner in any nuclear conflict. If anything goes wrong, the scale of destruction on human lives and civilization is beyond imagination. The nightmare of Hiroshima is a vivid memory, so nuclear weapons hidden in stock somewhere serve to maintain world peace by theory of counter-attack .

The other most significant benefit relates to the environment. Perhaps the greatest danger facing our world today is a combination of global warming and the greenhouse effect. This danger is caused partly by burning fossil fuel, which leads to our polluted atmosphere. Nuclear power, however, is a much greener alternative which does not have such negative effects. Already power plants have been in operation in a number of countries. These are successful examples to be followed. All in all, although it is true that nuclear weapons pose the greatest threat to life, the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes is really bene cial. In all appearances, the fear of war is overcome by the need for economic development.

The sense of doom in us today is not a fear of nuclear power but a fear of war. Nuclear weapons have enlarged the mechanism of war by threatening to kill more people more secretly and more horribly than those of the past. The nightmare of Hiroshima is vivid memory and there is no way to outlaw a war, so the only alternative is …… 此处隐藏：5297字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……