Nuclear Power: Not the Solution to Climate Change (very good summary article)

Nuclear Power: Not the Solution to Climate Change
by Elizabeth A. Stanton and Frank Ackerman

If carbon emissions from energy production are the problem, is nuclear power the solution? After all, nuclear reactors split uranium atoms to generate heat; no fossil fuels are used on site, and no CO2 is released into the air from the power plant itself. Plenty of voices can be now heard advocating construction of nuclear plants in order to save the environment. The Obama administration supports new loans and incentives for nuclear power, as does the Kerry-Lieberman climate and energy bill.

It's not quite that simple. The nuclear power life cycle includes many steps, from mining and enriching uranium, building the reactor, operating the plant, processing and disposing of the spent fuel, through, someday, decommissioning the plant when it can no longer be used. Many of these stages are quite energy-intensive, so there are life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power. The best available data show the life-cycle emissions from nuclear power to be much lower than from fossil fuel-burning power plants, but equal to or higher than the emissions from renewable energy, such as solar, wind, and hydro-power.

A comprehensive literature review by Sovacool (2008) screened the available studies on greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power, identifying 19 studies that met several criteria for reliability. The table shows the average carbon emissions across these studies for the five major stages of the nuclear life cycle, in metric tons of CO2-equivalent (CO2-e) per megawatt-hour (MWh).

Carbon emissions for five major stages of the nuclear life cycle
Table: Carbon emissions for five major stages of the nuclear life cycle
Source: Sovacool (2008).

The same literature review reported estimates of life-cycle emissions from renewable electricity generation ranging from 9 to 41 mT CO2-e per MWh, with wind and hydropower at 9 to10, and photovoltaics at 32. Fossil fuel-burning plants, in contrast, ranged from about 440 mT CO2-e per MWh for natural gas combined cycle turbines, up to 1,050 for some coal plants. Thus nuclear power has much lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels, but higher than leading renewable technologies.

There are a number of ...
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/sa090511.html


Frank Ackerman is Director of the Climate Economics Group at the Stockholm Environment Institute-US Center. Elizabeth A. Stanton is Senior Scientist for the Stockholm Environment Institute-US Center. The text above is an excerpt from Elizabeth A. Stanton and Frank Ackerman, "Emission Reduction, Interstate Equity, and the Price of Carbon" (Economics for Equity and the Environment Network, August 2010); it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.

CO2 costs for wind turbines, and hydropower are even in the same ballpark. Concrete prouduction is QUITE CO2 intensive, and both wind/hydro have most investment up front, aside from maintenence vehicles, and replacement parts manufacture.

But the longevity of damns is important to the calculus; they last a long, long time.

n/t

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