Yesterday, I made a claim. Something along the lines of “It is obvious that nuclear power is better and safer than fossil fuels”, that claim has been challenged and I’d like to talk about it here.
Carbon Dioxide
The life cycle emissions refers to the amount of some product over the entire life of the generating plant from construction, operation, and decommissioning. For fossil fuel-based plants, the non-operations (construction, decommissioning, fuel processing, etc) emissions is about 25% of the total. For non-fossil fuel plants, the non-operations emissions is about 90% of the total.
Life cycle Carbon Dioxide Emissions ( in grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour of electricity) -PDF
- Lignite-based coal plant (currently operating) – 1100 to 1700
- Lignite-based coal plant (using future technologies) – 800
- Hard coal-based plant (currently operating) – 950-1250
- Hard coal-based plant (using future technologies – 750-850
- Oil-based – 500-1200
- Natural gas (currently operating) – 440-780
- Natural gas (future tech) – under 400
- Nuclear (light water reactor) – 2.8-24
- Photovoltaic – 43-73
- Wind – 8-30
- Hydro – 1-34
- Biomass – 35-99
Sulfur dioxide
This is the compound that results in acid rain. Basically, the sulfur dioxide reacts with water in the atmosphere and produces sulfuric acid. This data is from the US EPA, so it’s in different units (pounds per Megawatt hour) and this is only emissions from operations, not life cycle.
- Coal – 13
- Oil – 12
- Natural Gas – 0.1
- Nuclear – 0
- Wind – 0
- Photovoltaic – 0
- Hydro – 0
- Biomass – very low
Nitrogen oxides
These compounds contribute to smog and health problems. Again, this is from the US EPA in pounds per Megawatt hour.
- Coal – 6
- Oil – 4
- Natural Gas – 1.7
- Nuclear – 0
- Wind – 0
- Photovoltaic – 0
- Hydro – 0
- Biomass – very low
Deaths and Safety
Think up a list of nuclear power plant disasters. I can think of five right off the top of my head; Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and two Russian subs (K-19, K-27, and I just found K-431). According to research (here) in spite of all this, there has been exactly one (1) nuclear incident with more than 5 deaths from 1969 to 2000, that being Chernobyl with 31 deaths.
During the same time period, there were over 1,100 accidents related to coal-fired power resulting in over 20,000 deaths.
During the same time period there were almost 500 accidents related to oil-fired power resulting in over 20,000 deaths.
Natural gas-fire power had 135 accidents resulting 2000 deaths.
Hydro power had 11 accidents resulting in just under 30,000 deaths.
Now, these are direct deaths from the accident. Most people complain about the lingering affects of radiation exposure. The report specifically deals with that saying
Assessment of the delayed (latent) fatalities associated with the exposure of radioactive material released by the Chernobyl accident indicates numbers up to 33 000 over the next 70 years assuming a linear non-threshold effect of radiation (i.e. even a small amount of radiation will result in an associated very small risk). On this basis, natural background radiation would result in1 500 times as many deaths (about 50 million) over the same timescale, so these additional fatalities, if they occur,would be very difficult to observe.
Data on these is difficult to find but we note that the OECD Environment Directorate estimates that 960 000 premature deaths resulted from levels of particulates in the air in the year 2000 alone, of which energy sources accounted for about30%. Latent deaths from fossil fuel use thus outweigh the deaths resulting from all energy chain accidents, including those from Chernobyl.
