Daya Bay

Daya Bay


Nuclear power is used to generate electricity in Daya Bay.

Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant is located on Daya Bay in Guangdong, China, north of Hong Kong, at approximately 22°36′N, 114°33′E.


Daya Bay has two nuclear reactors. Unit 1 began power operations on August 31, 1993, and Unit 2 began power operations on February 2, 1994. The reactors were designed and built by the French National Company, Framatome, with Chinese participation. Daya Bay is 25% owned by Hong Kong-listed CLP Holdings, which buys about 70% of the plant's output to supply Hong Kong's power needs.


Advantages:

One important advantage of nuclear power is that is avoids the wide variety of environmental problems arising from burning fossil fuels - coal, oil, and gas.

Disadvantages:

Global warming: Burning fossil fuels produces vast quantities of carbon dioxide, for example 3.7 tons for each ton of coal burned, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat, increasing the earth's temperature. Estimates of the rate of the temperature rise and of the consequences vary, but eventually the effects are bound to be important. Eventually, the melting glaciers will cause sea levels to rise - this floods valuable land, escalates the frequency and severity of disasters from hurricanes, allows inland penetration of salt water which heavily impacts aquatic life (e.g. oyster harvests), and leads to loss of urban water supplies and contamination of groundwater. Effects of changing storm tracks, rainfall, and wind patterns are bound to be important.

Acid rain: Burning fossil fuels releases large quantities of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide gasses which combine with moisture in the air to produce acids that fall with rain. The effects are complicated and conclusions about them are controversial, but there is strong evidence that, in some cases, acid rain is making lakes unlivable for fish and is badly damaging forests.

Some of the most important problems caused by acid rain are political. The emissions from coal burning power plants in Midwestern U.S. are the cause of acid rain in Eastern Canada and this has been a top priority political issue in Canada, making it an important sources of difficulty in U.S. Canadian relations.

Air Pollution: While global warming causes only economic disruption, and acid rain kills only fish and trees, air pollution kills people and causes human suffering through illness. Vast amounts of research have gone into understanding the processes involved and tying down the responsible components, but successes have been limited. There are well recognised health effects from many of the components, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, fine particulates, hydrocabons, ozone, volatile organic compounds, and toxic metals, but probably the health effects result from combinations of several of these. The problem is complicated by the fact that effect build up slowly over many years or decades, causing illness and weakening constitutions to the point where death eventually results but is not obviously tied to air pollution. Shifting from fossil fuel to nuclear power would avert these deaths, and if electricity becomes much more widely used for transportation (e.g. with electric cars), the life saving would be much larger. Human discomfort ill health is an important part of the price we pay for burning fossil fuels. Economic losses from worker absence and/or reduced efficiency due to illness are also substantial.

Air pollution discolours and otherwise damages buildings, soils clothing, and makes for a generally dirty environment, which adversely impacts on our quality of life.