Just think of a typical day living in the city. You turn on the news in the morning and hear about global warning. When the weather comes on, it says that there is an ozone alert today. You walk outside and look into the sky and can see the smog hovering in the distance from burning coal in power plants. When you look on the roads, you can see emissions coming out of cars to add to the smog. The problem is that burning fossil fuels is quickly polluting our Earth while at the same time becoming more expensive and running out. Nuclear energy is the best alternative for fossil fuels.

Nuclear energy is much cheaper to use than coal with nuclear energy, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, costing 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. Fossil fuels come behind with 2.4 for coal, 6.7 for natural gas and 10.2 for oil. Also uranium and plutonium aren’t used only once and then disposed of, they can be recycled to generate 80 percent as much energy as had been retrieved the first time that they were used.

But even after they have been recycled we still have to do something with the spent fuel rods. Some people think that spent fuel rods are just thrown out and left to harm the environment (like coal emissions). They are carefully stored where they can slowly become non-radioactive and not a danger to the environment or any humans. People then automatically think about 'green power' such as wind turbines, solar panels and natural gas that might be more expensive but are still eco friendly.

Wind turbines, solar energy, and natural gas turbines don't create waste, true, but they are not efficient enough to sustain us. The capacity for wind generation is 30 percent, capacity for solar power is 20 percent, and capacity for natural gas is 16 percent. If you add the idea of using plug in cars to the amount of electricity we need, and that’s not considering that, according to the Wall Street Journal, less than 5 percent of our energy comes from wind turbines and solar panels.

If we had cars we could plug in and run off electricity we could cut dependence on foreign oil and spend that money in the United States. The hundreds of billions of dollars that we spend annually on foreign fuels would be spent in the United States. With the recent nuclear reactors, at least 15,000 new jobs have been created. Within the next 20 years an estimated 350,000 new jobs will be created. We would help our economy and depend less on foreign nations.

Nuclear power is the only feasible alternative to fossil fuels for the time being and I believe it is a much better one and will help to cut down on carbon emissions while actually making electricity cheaper. It gives us a viable plan to create jobs and cut our dependence on foreign coal and oil. It might not be a perfect choice but it is by far the best for the time being.