Nuclear Power Realities vs Homer Simpson's World
The Simpsons
It’s a show we all know and grew to love—unless you actually work with nuclear technology.
Animation of The Simpsons character 'Mr. Burns' tapping his fingers together repeatedly.
America’s longest-running animated series on FOX has been making nuclear workers cringe on their couches for almost 3 decades now.
An introduction to nuclear radiation and its impacts on human health and Earth’s environment
Ron Gester, retired geologist & physician, 2023.
Earth is a nuclear planet … and nuclear energy is essential for our existence on Earth.
Without Earth's molten core, life as we know it would not exist. Earth is protected from extreme levels of cosmic and solar radiation by a geomagnetic field generated by the rotation of Earth’s molten core. It rotates because of a combination of convection, due to heat, and Earth's rotation. The heat is generated in part from the radioactive decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium isotopes. [Johnston, 2011] This heat also contributes to convection in the mantle which drives plate tectonics and continental drift. Nuclear energy is a natural and essential force on Earth. Nuclear fission reactors have occurred naturally in Earth’s geologic past. Rock formations in Oklo, Gabon, W. Africa reveal that self-sustaining nuclear reactions ran in these formations for hundreds of thousands of years starting about 1.7 billion years ago.
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