Interesting reading at a time when the nuclear power PR people are getting lots of positive stories in the popular press:
“If you believe newspapers and watch the news, nuclear power is part of the answer to global warming. Nuclear power is greenhouse-gas emission friendly, we’re told.
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But nuclear power only looks greenhouse-friendly from a distance. If you take a closer look, it’s far from a solution to the climate crisis.
The first problem is the widespread idea that most greenhouse gases come from electrical power. Unfortunately for all of us, that’s not the case. In 1999 the International Energy Agency estimated the world emissions from electrical networks at less than 39 per cent of total emissions.
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Going on the figures on the World Nuclear Association website, if the present global output of electricity were obtained entirely from nuclear reactors, and as efficiently as best practice allowed, the uranium in all the known rich-ore bodies in the world that they list would keep them going for just under nine years. Thereafter, the world would have no nuclear power stations operating and therefore no power stations at all.
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In other words, nuclear power isn’t neutral when it comes to greenhouse gases. On the contrary, greenhouse gases are emitted at every step along the way to generating nuclear power.
In dismissing solar power, Homer has to overlook the recent United Nations report saying that an 800-square-kilometre area of the Sahara could generate enough electricity for the whole world. He is, of course, still entitled to his opinion that solar is a pipedream. But so too is the popular notion that nuclear power is greenhouse-gas friendly.”
Debunking nuclear myth of greenhouse friendliness, The Age.