There is a fierce, ongoing debate between supporters and opponents of using nuclear fission for power plants. The issues are many: environmental safety, terrorist threats, storage of radioactive waste, depletion of worldwide uranium reserves, and last but not least, the prospect of greatly decreased CO2 emissions. At first glance, most people think that nuclear power plants will not emit CO2 at all, but this is not the case. To perform a truthful analysis, a life cycle analysis must be done¹. In this analysis, the following factors have to be taken into account:
1. Construction of the reactor
2. Operation of the reactor
3. Mining and refinement of uranium
4. Decommissioning the reactor at the end of its lifetime
5. Transporting and storing nuclear waste
Each of these activities will need energy from fossil fuel and other sources, and therefore will generate CO2. For a complete life cycle analysis, we also need to account for the reactor’s operational lifetime, and calculate the amount of uranium present in the ores.
Based on 2004 data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), I believe it is possible to make a rough estimate of how much CO2 is generated by today’s nuclear power plants. In the table below, I have included data from selected industrialized nations that use variable amounts of hydro or nuclear power. We need to look at both data sets together if we want to correlate energy consumption with CO2 emissions.
Data source: International Energy Agency 2004
For nuclear power, France, Sweden and Ukraine are the top users, and the range runs from almost 80% (France) down to 15% (Canada). The leading users of hydropower are Norway, Canada and Sweden, and the range here is from 99% (Norway) to 1% (Korea). When we consider both power sources together, we see that these countries use substantial amounts electricity generated from non-fossil fuels, with a range from 99% for Norway to 21% for the United Kingdom.
How does this data allow us to decide whether nuclear power generation is helping to reduce CO2 emissions? Take a look at the graph below, which plots the CO2 emissions of these nations against the percentage of their non fossil fuel-based electricity generation.
Data source: International Energy Agency 2004
A few conclusions can be made:
- The country with the highest fraction of non- fossil fuel electricity generation (Norway) indeed has the lowest CO2 emission per units of electricity generated.
- This correlation seem to hold well for the other countries, except that Ukraine and Russia seem to be outliers. This may be due to less-efficient power plants. Also, Japan is somewhat atypical (on the positive side), perhaps for the opposite reason (more-efficient generation plants)
- The top three nations in hydropower (Norway at 99%, Canada at 57%, and Sweden at 40%) score the lowest in CO2 emission per electricity unit produced². It’s interesting that the number one nation in nuclear power (France, at 78%) is in that same group of low-CO2 performers.
In summary, we can preliminary conclude that both the use of hydropower for electricity generation clearly decreases production of CO2. However, a complete life cycle analysis (LCA) must be done first before final conclusions can be reached. See for that reference 1.
Later on, I’ll delve a bit deeper into several aspects of using nuclear power for electricity generation.
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1. For a detailed discussion, see this article at: http://www.stormsmith.nl/
2. I was made aware of a somewhat unexpected source of CO2 from hydropower generation by a reader at http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7046
Copyright ©2007 John E.J. Schmitz
June 19, 2007 at 2:52 pm
For more information regarding total life cycle emissions and electricity generation, see the following link:
http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=260
June 19, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Hi Eric,
Thanks for sending the link, it contains indeed lots of materials that are very relevant for this discussion
Rgds, John.
July 13, 2007 at 1:25 pm
For a more independent study on CO2 emissions and nuclear impacts visit:
http://www.stormsmith.nl/
Not sure I agree with the assumption that hydro generated power is green. It has a CO2 lifecycle all of it’s own: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7046
July 13, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Dear Christian,
Thanks very much for your comments.
1) I agree 100%. The stormsmith.nl web site contains a very good article about life cycle analysis from Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen. As a matter of fact I discussed with him his article a few week ago in a discussion on nuclear power generation entertained bythe Dutch chapter of the Club of Rome. I will add the reference in the blog.
2) Also, your concern about the greenhouse impact of hydro generated power is an important viewpoint and I will add a note to the blog to alert readers.
November 28, 2007 at 7:07 am
The Information is resourceful but is it possible for you to research the average amount of CO2 is produced for a hydropower station itself?
November 28, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Hi Rebecca,
Don’t have it available rigth away. Will do an attempt and get back to you.
Rgds, John
March 24, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Fine – you have to build a hydro plant or a nuclear power plant and pour a lot of concrete and make lots of steel and drive lots of lorries to carry the steel and concrete.
OK, and gas-fired or coal-powered or oil-fired power stations are built how? Do their components materialise? The decommissioning is a lot easier, certainly.
The New Scientist link works, but the NEI one is now dead.
March 30, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Hi Charles,
Thanks for the comments. Yes indeed even wind powered electricity generation has, because of the construction materials, a certain amount of greenhouse gases production, butof course very low versus fossil fuels powered power plants.
The broken NEI link I am checking with the NEI and asked them for a replacement.
April 16, 2009 at 11:13 am
The Data source for your table is quoted as “International Energy Agency 2004” could you perhaps be more specific? I am very interested where this information is from.
April 16, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Hi Beth,
If you go to: http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/
you’ll find more recent versions of the World Energy Outlook reports as published by the International Energy Agency
Rgds, John