Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol in Patients With Stable Coronary Heart Disease — Is It Time to Shift Our Goals?

Abstract

The electricity in the interconnected commercial grid comes from many sources including fossil fuels, renewable energies (e.g., solar and wind), and nuclear energy. The energy harvested from nuclear fission sources is clean, it does not release greenhouse gases to the environment, and it does not contribute to climate change. Moreover, nuclear sourced electricity is the safest type for civilian use. In the United States and around the globe, the number of human deaths per kilowatt hour of generated electricity from nuclear sources is five orders of magnitude lower than for coal and other hydrocarbon sources. Nuclear electricity is even safer than solar or wind electricity.Nuclear power was first used for military purposes, especially for the propulsion of submarines. However, in the early 1950s, the United Nations program of Atoms for Peace, both the United States and the Soviet Union developed their first civilian nuclear power plants which were connected to their respective grids in the late 1950s. At around this time, the trusted fuel rod pair of zirconium alloy cladding containing pellets of urania fuel was born and used for many decades since. Currently, there are approximately 30 nations which use 451 civilian reactors to generate electricity. The largest expansion of nuclear reactors was in the decades of 1970s and 1980s. In 2019 there were 54 new reactors under construction, mainly in Asia.