Band 4+: The rising cost and decreasing supply of fossil fuels such as oil and gas, along with environmental concerns, means that their continued use as our main source of energy is impractical and alternative sources must be found. The only realistic alternative is nuclear energy. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.

Using fossil fuels as coal, gas and oil for creating electric energy is not only environmentally friendly but neither sustainable solution. Nuclear energy starts to gain popularity over last few decades even it’s better than fossil fuels, there is a few issues.

Nuclear energy has a plenty of disadvantages: radioactive waste storage (being radioactive over hundreds of years), not being renewable (uranium reserves are limited), needs large water supply for cooling, still very dangerous even with modern technology and specialised software. Compared to fossil fuels it’s not creating dangerous green gases and air pollution.

Renewable energy seems to be future way of creating electric energy. For example, solar photovoltaics having many advantages compared to nuclear power, there is no need for water supply, either dangerous storage of any material. Two main disadvantages are space (need a quiet large land) and producing electric energy only under sunny conditions (no production at night time).

My personal point of view is that we should rather focus more on renewable energy like solar photovoltaics, wind and water sources, unfortunately we need some source of energy which we can easily turn on and off as needed. These days main struggle is with storage of energy, batteries are not having enough capacity that can be used in power plants or distribution.