Your correspondent Dr John Law from the Clean Energy Revolution organization (“A
nuclear option to aid the fight for the planet,” December 27; www.ft.com/content/a32de3ee-258c-11ea-9a4f-963f0ec7e134) makes a very similar
erroneous argument as he did three months ago in an earlier letter (“Merkel can
meet emissions targets with tweak to energy mix,” September 24, 2019; www.ft.com/content/7cb2b566-de09-11e9-9743-db5a370481bc).
Both repeat the false arguments promoting presumed
low carbon emission benefits of nuclear power deployment made by Dr James E. Hansen
and his colleagues in another recent letter you published. (“EU must include nuclear power
in its list of sustainable sources”, December 17; https://www.ft.com/content/0b9ea00a-2004-11ea-b8a1-584213ee7b2b
). Dr Hansen is a brilliant analyst of the atmospheric climate change problem,
but his suggested solution of more nuclear power is demonstrably misguided
Both
old nuclear power plants as mentioned by Dr Law, and new nuclear plants advocated
by Prof Hansen require uranium fuel. Uranium is energy intensive in its mining,
milling, enrichment and fuel fabrication, all carbon emission-rich processes.
All
nuclear plants - whether Gigawatt-scale giants or small modular reactors (SMRs)
-will embody huge amount of carbon in their construction materials, especially
concrete.
In a newly completed chapter “Evaluation
of Nuclear Power as a Proposed Solution to Global Warming, Air Pollution, and
Energy Security” in a forthcoming energy book ‘100% Clean, Renewable
Energy and Storage for Everything’ Mark
Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental
engineering at Stanford University - and director of its Atmosphere/Energy
Program - argues cogently:
“There
is no such thing as a zero- or close-to-zero emission nuclear power plant. ..all
plants also emit 4.4 g-CO2e/kWh from the water vapor and heat they release.
This contrasts with solar panels and wind turbines, which reduce heat or water
vapor fluxes to the air by about 2.2 g-CO2e/kWh for a net difference from this
factor alone of 6.6 g-CO2e/kWh.” (https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/WWSBook.html)
He concludes that overall,
emissions from new nuclear are between 78 and 178 g- CO2/kWh, not close to the zero
atomic advocates often claim.
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