Re: Nuclear Power vs CO2

[Mrtgoldman@aol.com]

I've just returned to RADSAFE after several weeks away, and going through the 
accumulated digests I came across the question from Mr Jo <mjo@scs.unr.edu> 
but didn't see a specific answer to his question about CO2 production from 
nuclear fuel cycle energy usage in subsequent posts.   Since this was a very 
common question raised by opponents during the licensing of nuclear plants in 
the 70's and 80's, it was addressed in a number of hearings, and in generic 
environmental impact studies of alternative energy technologies.

One value frequently seen is 56 MW(e)-year of energy from coal combustion to 
operate the nuclear fuel cycle for 1 GW(e)-year of output (see Table 13, in 
Gotchy, Health Risks from the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Chapter 2 in "Health Risks 
of Energy Technologies",  C.C. Travis & E. L. Etnier, AAAS Selected Symposium 
82,  1983).  NEI cites 265 MT of C produced by burning coal in generating 1 
million KW-hr - 1 GW(e)-hr (NEI Fact Sheet, Benefits of Nuclear Energy, 1998) 
- or 2.32 E6 MT of C  (or 8.51E6 MT CO2) per GW(e)-yr. 

Thus, nuclear fuel cycle energy requirements, if satisfied entirely by 
burning coal, would generate 5.6% of the CO2 produced in generating the same 
amount of energy by coal alone, or about 4.77 MT CO2 per GW(e)-year.


Mort Goldman, Sc.D., PE
Retired troublemaker
************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html