Nuclear Power: Part of the Problem?

[chris]

Mark Lynas, who is pro-nuclear power, has posted a response to his views from Greenpeace:

Greenpeace opposes the construction of new nuclear power stations – of all kinds.

Firstly, Greenpeace’s opposition to nuclear power is not held as article of faith, or even an ideology, but on the legitimate concerns over the persistent threat that major releases due to accidents or terrorist attacks and the long-term threats radioactive waste presents to our biosphere and the proliferation of fissile materials. It is however crucially held on a pragmatic, realistic and evidence based approach to employing the most effective tools to tackle climate change and reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.

Back in December 2007 Rob Hopkins wrote about a free book, The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy -- this essentially concludes that the planets nuclear power plants will never generate enough energy to power their own decommissioning -- this means that the nuclear industry is a fossil fuel energy sink not a source of power.

There are also doubts about the economics of it in the US:

A new study puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at from 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour — triple current U.S. electricity rates!

Furthermore, given that all the UK's nuclear plants are on the coast and will end up underwater I think people like Mark Lynas, James Lovelock and James Hansen are making a very big mistake by advocating more nuclear power plants.

[chris]

I am particularly concerned about all the radioactive and toxic installations, stockpiles and dumps. Future generations are unlikely to be able to control them, especially if global warming puts them underwater. There is enough of this muck sitting around to kill off most of us. There are abandoned mine sites at which, soon after the bulldozers and the excavators stop running, toxic tailings and the contents of settling ponds will flow into and poison the waters of major rivers, making their flood plains and estuaries uninhabitable for many centuries. Many nuclear power plants have been built near coastlines, for access to ocean water for cooling. These will be at risk of inundation due to extreme weather events and rising sea levels caused by global warming. At many nuclear power stations, spent fuel rods are stored in a pool right at the reactor site, because the search for a more permanent storage place has been mired in politics. There are surely better places to store them than next to population centers and bodies of water. Nuclear reservations — sites that have been permanently contaminated in the process of manufacturing nuclear weapons — should be marked with sufficiently large, durable and frightening obelisks to warn off travelers long after all memory of their builders has faded away.

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[steve]

Yeah there's no doubt that the stockpiles of radioactive waste are a lethal legacy. However these can be burned in the newer generation of reactors thus solving two problems at once: creating energy and getting rid nuclear waste. This also cuts all the fossil fuel use in mining and exporting nuclear materials since we already have them, piled up with nowhere to go.

The cost to develop are likely to be high but James Hansen suggests that nations like China, India the USA, work together on this. $12bn might be a lot for a private firm to pay but for a government like that of the US it is peanuts. They coughed up $700bn just like that in a desperate attempt to save the financial system. That's 58 reactors! I guess the question in relation to cost is how long can they be made to last for. If they could design them to last for centuries then the cost per unit of energy would be much lower than if they only last for say 25 years.

[chris]

the nuclear industry is a fossil fuel energy sink not a source of power.

Nuclear energy, in the following graph, taken from an article by Euan Mearns on The Oil Drum, doesn't have a Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) as bad as for the tar sands or bio-fuels but it's sill got a ERoEI value which is far worse than solar PV and wind...

The energy efficiency of energy procurement systems

[steve]

I presume it would depend on what type of nuclear one he's referring to. The new type that get 100 - 300 times more power surely have a much higher EROEI than the old sort. Likewise the newer types that use the spent fuel from old reactors. This stuff doesn't have to be mined but merely moved from where it is to the reactor. The EROEI must surely be significantly lower where no mining is required.

[chris]

The new type that get 100 - 300 times more power surely have a much higher EROEI than the old sort.

What's the source for these figures?

The Nuclear figures in the graph from Euan Means appears to be based on this academic paper, which is only available if you pay for it...:

Life cycle energy and greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear energy: A review

Manfred Lenzen

aISA, Centre for Integrated Sustainability Analysis, The University of Sydney, Physics Building A28, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Received 13 June 2007; accepted 31 January 2008. Available online 8 April 2008.

Abstract

The increased urgency of dealing with mitigation of the looming climate change has sparked renewed interest in the nuclear energy option. There exists a substantial stream of research on the amount of embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions associated with nuclear generated electricity. While conventional fossil fuelled power plants cause emissions almost exclusively from the plant site, the majority of greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle are caused in processing stages upstream and downstream from the plant. This paper distils the findings from a comprehensive literature review of energy and greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle and determines some of the causes for the widely varying results.

The most popular reactor types, LWR and HWR, need between 0.1 and 0.3 kWhth, and on average about 0.2 kWhth for every kWh of electricity generated. These energy intensities translate into greenhouse gas intensities for LWR and HWR of between 10 and 130 g CO2-e/kWhel, with an average of 65 g CO2-e/kWhel.

While these greenhouse gases are expectedly lower than those of fossil technologies (typically 600–1200 g CO2-e/kWhel), they are higher than reported figures for wind turbines and hydroelectricity (around 15–25 g CO2-e/kWhel) and in the order of, or slightly lower than, solar photovoltaic or solar thermal power (around 90 g CO2-e/kWhel).

Article Outline

1. Introduction
2. Literature review

2.1. Uranium mining
2.2. Uranium milling
2.3. Conversion to uranium hexafluoride (UF6)
2.4. Enrichment
2.5. Fuel fabrication
2.6. Reactor construction
2.7. Reactor operation
2.8. Decommissioning
2.9. Fuel re-processing
2.10. Nuclear waste storage
2.11. Nuclear waste disposal
2.12. Transport
2.13. Summary: energy and greenhouse gas intensities

3. Meta-analysis

3.1. Multiple regression
3.2. Sensitivity analysis

4. Conclusions
References

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