Uranium: The good, the bad and the ugly.

Will here! I’m here to teach you, the reader, about the pros and cons to uranium use in general. First we’ll start off with some facts about Uranium; it has an atomic number of 92 and U as its symbol. Uranium was discovered by a German chemist named Martin Heinrich Klaproth in 1789. It is mainly found in Russia and Australia; both countries are rich in Uranium. Uranium can be used for both military and civilian uses but it is a non-renewable resource! So it will eventually run out whether we want it to or not.
Now that I have given a broad outline of Uranium I will continue on with the pros of uranium use. Uranium is a great source of energy as it produces as much energy as coal while using much, much less resources. It is also much cleaner than coal; it does not produce all of those nasty greenhouse gasses that coal emits. Uranium is also quite plentiful, although it is not renewable.
The cons of Uranium are quite large though, it is a producer of harmful, toxic waste that is very, very hazardous to humans. Because Uranium has such a long half-life this waste does not deteriorate for many thousands of years.
Finally those ugly points about Uranium, it is used in the military for both munitions and bombs. Depleted-Uranium is used in bullets as a high density penetrator, i.e. armour-piercing rounds. Atomic bombs, or A-bombs for short, are devastating weapons of mass-destruction and were responsible for the deaths of thousands in the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in World War 2. Uranium is a crucial part of the A-bomb, as is Plutonium, and provides the ‘Atomic’ to the bomb.
I hope this short over-view on Uranium has proved to be informative to you, the reader, and I hope you enjoyed reading it.

William Peciulis