C+Block+-+Uranium

__Background__ Uranium was discovered by a German scientist in the late 1780's. It has been used world wide because it is an efficient type of energy. The Government needed a high demand of Uranium because they would use it to create nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction. At first it was just used as a method to create weapons until late in the 1900's. The German scientist who found Uranium was called Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Uranium is a very heavy metal that could be mined and used as an energy source. Uranium has high density and could be used for aircraft or submarines to withstand pressure. __New Mexico and nuclear energy__ New Mexico has a large mining area of uranium in Grants called the Grants Mining District. It is located on a Navajo reservation where they mined there from the 1950's through the late 1990's. the reason they stopped mining there was because Indians living in the reservations were getting lung cancer from the uranium mining and there was a lot of environmental contamination that was affecting their crops. The Grants Mining District is the second largest supply of uranium. The Navajos would be mining the uranium for the U.S.A. because the Government wanted to win the race of Nuclear weapons. In 1994, the Government started to find ways to clean up the reservations because the Navajos started to put in complains about the nuclear waste. __Science__ A single Uranium atom has 92 protons,92 electrons and six of them are valence electrons. A nuclear reactor uses uranium to make energy into steam which spins the turbines which really start to make energy. A nuclear reactor has many steps until it is actually producing energy. First, the fuel is Uranium and it is the one thing that keeps the reactor moving. water pressure causes steam to occur which helps the turbines spin which makes electricity that is sent to a transformer and is then distributed as energy to the places that need it. when a Nuclear reaction happens, atoms are splitting up and destroying each other by crashing into each other which makes small explosions, but when used in nuclear weapons the atoms are compacted really closely so that a huge explosion could happen.

__Advantages of Uranium__
 * Uranium is a natural element.
 * Does not have a lot of greenhouse gasses.
 * mining is cheap.
 * a little bit of uranium brings more power than tons of other elements like coal.
 * Efficient energy.
 * Clean energy.
 * Almost no pollution.

__Disadvantages of Uranium__ > __Nuclear plants in the United states__
 * It is a safety hazard.
 * Expensive to create a plant for it.
 * Nuclear waste.
 * Harmful radiation around the area.
 * Accidents within the plant could cause harm to nearby cities.
 * Costs nearly 3-5 billion dollars to construct.
 * Finding safe ways to dispose of waste.
 * It takes at least a decade to fully construct it.
 * Uranium is hard to mine and takes a long time to gather enough.
 * [[image:nukes.jpg width="428" height="332" align="right"]]__Citations__
 * ====Disadvantages of Nuclear Energy - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com. (n.d.).Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com. Retrieved December 15, 2012, from http://voices.yahoo.com/disadvantages-nuclear-energy-430843.html ====
 * "Grants Mining District, New Mexico | Region 6 | US EPA." US Environmental Protection Agency. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. "Uranium | Uranium for Nuclear Power | Education|World Nuclear Association."World Nuclear Association | Nuclear Power - a Sustainable Energy Resource. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2012. .