RE: Nuclear Power vs CO2

["Weiner, Ruth" <rfweine@sandia.gov>]

OK let's look at the total cycle.  Much more coal and oil need to be
extracted, so that CO2 would exceed the CO2 for nukes.  Nuke fuel
fabrication probably uses more energy than constructing the innards of a
coal or oil-burning plant.  If you don't have a mine-mouth plant, coal
transportation is going to take orders of magnitude more energy than fresh
nuke fuel transportation.  Pollutant trapping (especially particulate
trapping) for a coal plant is a high energy consumer.  So I don't think the
rest of the life cycle is going to change the relative proportion of CO2
emission from that of the power generation itself.  No I didn't address
everything, but the rest strikes me as a wash, pretty much.

This is not an argument over whether nukes are environmentally better,
worse, or the same as fossil fuel generation -- only that nukes produce less
CO2.  Personally, I don't think CO2 is a problem, and I think the net
environmental damage is generally just proportional to the power produced,
no matter what the conversion process and what the particular environmental
damage.

And (sorry I can't resist) I know I am "correct as far as [I] went..."

Clearly only my own opinion.

Ruth F. Weiner, Ph. D.
Sandia National Laboratories 
MS 0718, POB 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0718
505-844-4791; fax 505-844-0244
rfweine@sandia.gov




-----Original Message-----
From: Zack Clayton [mailto:zack.clayton@epa.state.oh.us]
Sent: December 23, 1999 10:08 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: Nuclear Power vs CO2


I think this is only part of the original question.  It is correct as far as
it went, but I think the question involved total cycle emissions.  
"Weiner, Ruth" wrote:

 The amount of CO2 produced by burning coal or oil is
> directly proportional to the amount (weight or number of carbon atoms) in
> the fuel, and  that varies somewhat from coal to coal and a little from
oil
> to oil.  By contrast, the only CO2 produced in a nuclear power plant would
> be if there were ancillary power (or heat) produced by burning a
> carbonaceous fuel and maybe a little bit from oxidation of C-14 produced
by
> fission.  .  . .    . . . . So there is no way a nuke could even come
close.
> In sum: CO2 production is an integral product of fossil fuel power
> generation but only a very small incidental by-product of nuclear power
> generation.

So a comparison of energy used for resource extraction, benefaction,
transport, refining, fabrication and transport to point of use.  Some of
these will be purely electric and the power consumption should be able to be
back calculated for the average US fossil mix or the use in the particular
region of processing.  the transportation costs would be diesel and I think
there nuclear will win hands down comparing one shipment of fuel rods every
18 - 24 months to daily unit trains for a dirt burner.  

 Speaking of which -  Why isn't coal ash regulated as a benefaction product
if, as Alex Glabbard says,  it contains more energy in fissionables than
burning the coal produced in the first place?
(My own personal Rant.    ;-)



Zack Clayton
Ohio EPA - DERR
email:  zack.clayton@epa.state.oh.us
voice:  614-644-3066
fax:        614-460-8249

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