Nuclear Reactors 759 - Metanalysis of Nuclear Power Shows That It Emits More CO2 Than Most Renewable Energy Sources
One response of nations concerned with climate change mitigation is that there needs to be a massive build up of nuclear power plants which are considered to be zero-carbon energy sources by many. Uranium is actually a fossil fuel. It exists naturally in the ground and is dug up to be used. The idea that nuclear power generates carbon free electricity is a lie promulgated by lobbyists and politicians on behalf of the nuclear industry. Considered from the point of view of the entire life cycle of nuclear reactors, nuclear power is most certainly not a zero-carbon energy source.
The truth is that at every stage of the generation of electricity with nuclear energy large quantities of fossil fuels are burned. This includes the mining of uranium, the transportation, milling and enrichment of the ore to make a substance called “yellow cake” which is a high-grade uranium powder. The yellow cake is processed into pellets which are made into fuel rods. Then the fuel rods must be transported to one of the ninety six operational nuclear power reactors in the U.S. All U.S. uranium processing and fuel rod production facilities are powered by the U.S. electrical grid which receives at least sixty four percent of its electricity from other fossil fuel sources.
All of the U.S. commercial nuclear power plants are tied to the U.S. electrical grid. They are connected to the grid to send their electricity to consumers and to receive electricity from the grid to power operations during reactor shutdowns, startups and operations. A huge amount of carbon dioxide is produced during the construction and decommissioning of nuclear power plants.
Dr. Benjamin K. Sovacool is a professor of Energy Policy at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. In 2008, he analyzed over a hundred studies in order to obtain a best estimate of the emissions from nuclear power plants. He found that the mean value of carbon dioxide emission over the lifetime of a commercial nuclear power reactor is sixty-six grams per kilowatt-hour of electricity. That amounts to sixty six grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour multiplied by twenty four hours in a day, multiplied by three hundred and sixty five days in a year, times the estimated operation life time of forty years for a total of about twenty three million grams of carbon dioxide that would be discharged into the atmosphere over the lifespan of the reactor.
Twenty-three million grams of carbon dioxide is equivalent to about twenty-five and a half tons of CO2 emissions. When twenty-five and a half tons is multiplied by the ninety-six operational nuclear power reactors, that amounts to a grand total of two and one half thousand tons of CO2 emissions from nuclear power reactors in the U.S. This is obviously not an example of “carbon-free energy”.
The metanalysis concluded that the commercial nuclear power plants in the U.S. emit more greenhouse gases than the majority of renewable energy sources. Since its publication, the article about the metanalysis has been cited hundreds of times and is considered to be definitive. As climate change accelerates, it would be a mistake to make a massive investment in nuclear power.