Guest post by Michael Dickey (cross posted from his website matus1976.com)
The decline of nuclear power has had a significant effect on global carbon emissions and subsequently any anthropogenic global warming effect. To see the extent of this influence, let us first take a look at total U.S. carbon emissions since 1900.
According to the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, from 1900 to 2006, US carbon emissions rose from 181 MMT (million metric tons) to 1,569 MMT.
Taking a look at US electricity generation by type, according to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. generates 51% of its power from coal, and cumulatively about 71% of its power from fossil fuel sources.
Comparing the energy source to Carbon emissions, the burning of coal to generate electricity alone emits more CO2 than any other single source, about one-third of the total.
As the US Electrical Generation by Type figure shows, about 20% of the U.S. electrical supply comes from nuclear power. Let us now imagine that the U.S. never built any nuclear power plants, but instead built more coal plants to generate the electricity those nuclear plants would have generated.
According to the Energy Information Administration, since 1971, 18.6 billion MW•h (Megawatt hour) of electrical power have been generated by nuclear sources (1). According to the US Department of Energy, every kW•h (kilowatt hour) of electricity generated by coal produces 2.095 lbs of CO2 (2).
As the calculations in the table above show, every MW•h of electricity generated by coal generates 2,095 pounds of carbon dioxide. For 18.6 billion MW•h at 2,095 pounds of CO2 per MW•h, this amounts to 39.0 trillion additional lbs of CO2, or 17.7 billion metric tons. Finally, converting the 17.7 billion metric tons of CO2 to carbon results in 4.842 billion, or 4,842 million metric tons of carbon.
What all this shows is that had this power been generated by coal plants, an additional 4,842 million metric tons of carbon would have been released into the atmosphere. Breaking this calculation down by year, what would this have made our carbon emissions record look like?
Again in blue we see the real world US carbon emissions, but in green we see what the carbon emissions would have been if all the electricity generated by our nuclear infrastructure had instead been generated by coal power plants.
In all, carbon emissions would have been 14.6% higher, with 1,782 MMT of carbon released without nuclear power plants, while only 1,552 MMT are released with our current nuclear infrastructure. This is why many leading environmentalists, such as James Lovelock (author of the Gaia Hypothesis) are vocal supporters of nuclear power.
But this chart is not entirely fair to nuclear power, because the growth of nuclear power was severely derailed by environmentalist hyperbole and outright scaremongering. Because of the attacks by environmentalists on nuclear power, many planned power plants were cancelled, and many existing plants licenses were not renewed. The result, according to Al Gore himself in “Our Choice” was:
“Of the 253 nuclear power reactors originally ordered in the United States from 1953 to 2008, 48 percent were canceled, 11 percent were prematurely shut down, 14 percent experienced at least a one-year-or-more outage…Thus, only about one-fourth of those ordered, or about half of those completed, are still operating.” (3)
Let us take a look then at U.S. carbon emissions if the U.S. had simply built and operated the power plants that were originally planned.
Yup, that’s right people: if the US had simply built and operated the nuclear power plants it had planned and licensed, it would today be producing not only less carbon emissions than it did in 1972, but would in fact be emitting almost half the carbon emissions it is now.
But let’s not forget that the very planning and licensing of nuclear power plants was drastically affected by the anti-scientific opposition. Looking again at the Energy Information Administrations figures, the average sustained growth for nuclear generating capacity was increasing by about 28.8 million Megawatt hours for a 20 year period from 1971 to 1989
Here we see a chart taken from the EIA data which shows the growth of real nuclear generating capacity in blue, and the projected growth in red, had the growth of the previous 20 year period been sustained (remember, this is still only about one-fourth of the intended capacity). In this graph, any year which produced less than the average of the previous 20 years was increased to that average of 28.8 million MW•h.
Now let’s take this projected growth and imagine the U.S. had actually built a nuclear infrastructure at this level. What would our carbon emissions look like?
Incredibly, U.S. carbon emissions today would be almost one-fourth of what they are currently. These numbers are estimated by taking the average yearly increase from 1971 to 1989 in nuclear generating capacity and projecting it to the current day, and since these numbers are only one-fourth of the original planned capacity, the result is multiplied by four. In case you think my numbers are fanciful, let’s see if there are any countries out there that did not get entirely persuaded by the anti-nuclear hysteria, and how that affected their carbon emissions.
After the energy crisis of the 70s, France, which was highly dependent on imported oil for electricity production, decided to divest themselves of Middle Eastern oil dependence. Lacking significant fossil fuel deposits, they opted for a nuclear infrastructure. Today nuclear power generates about 78% of France’s electrical power supply, and it is today the world’s largest exporter of electrical energy. France alone accounts for 47% of Western Europe’s nuclear generated electricity (3).
While we do not see the production in France dropping to half of its 1970s levels as we would have in the U.S. had it continued the transition to a nuclear infrastructure, nevertheless the 40% reductions are close and tremendously significant.
Consider from the presented information what the total potential nuclear generating capacity for the US would be if it sustained the high level growth and achieved its planned capacity.
By the year 2000, the US nuclear infrastructure could have been generating 100% of the domestic electrical supply. This is not an extraordinary claim considering, again, that France generates 78% of electrical energy from nuclear power.
Extrapolating this to the global climate, let’s take a look at the global carbon emissions levels and compare them against a world where the U.S. sustained the first two decades of its nuclear infrastructure growth perpetually and ultimately achieved the original planned capacity.
In green, we see the existing global carbon emissions levels and in purple is the U.S. carbon emission levels if it continued to adopt a nuclear infrastructure. In red then, as a result, we see the global carbon levels would have been almost 15% lower than current levels.
I invite readers to extrapolate then where the total global carbon emissions would be if all the post-industrialized nations had adopted nuclear power – as their natural technological progressions would have dictated – if it were not for the hijacking of this process by anti-scientific hyperbole by scaremongering environmental activists. Many organizations – such as Green Peace, still ardently oppose nuclear power. And these levels, mind you, are only about one-tenth of what the Atomic Energy Commission was projecting based on demand during the 60s, where at its height 25 new nuclear power plants were being built every year, and the AEC anticipated that by the year 2000 over 1,000 nuclear power plants would be in operation in the U.S.. Today only 104 operate.
Let us project an educated guess as to what the resulting reduction in carbon emissions would have been had the European Union (which in 2005 generated 15% of their electricity with nuclear) Japan (34.5% nuclear) and finally, going into the future China and India as they fully industrialize.
All of these facts lead to one conclusion: if manmade global warming is a real problem, then it was in fact caused by environmental alarmism. That is not to say that some environmentalism has not been good, but this atrocious abandonment of reason hangs as an ominous cloud over everything environmentalists advocate. Rational environmentalists, such as James Lovelock, who want a high standard of living for humans and a clean planet are quick to change their minds about nuclear power. Irrational environmentalists who actually do not desire wealthy, comfortable lives for all people on the planet–as well as a clean planet–actively oppose nuclear power. Nuclear power is a litmus test for integrity within the environmentalist community.
If you want to spur the economy, stop global warming, and undermine the oil-fueled, terrorist-breeding, murderous theocracies of the world, the solution is simple: build nuclear power plants.
– Sources –
Energy Information Administration – http://www.eia.doe.gov/
US Electrical Generation Sources by Type – http://www.clean-coal.info/drupal/node/164
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) – http://cdiac.ornl.gov/
CDIAC US Carbon Emissions – http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/emissions/usa.dat
CDIAC France Carbon Emissions – http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/fra.html
(1) – “18.6 billion MW•h (Megawatt hours) of electrical power have been generated by nuclear sources” – Energy Information Administration – http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/pdf/pages/sec8_3.pdf
(2) – “every kW•h of electricity generated by coal produces 2.095 lbs of CO2” – US Department of Energy “Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Generation of Electrical Power in the United States” – http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/environment/co2emiss00.pdf
(3) – Al Gore (2009). Our Choice, Bloomsbury, p. 157.
(4) – “France alone accounts for 47% of western Europe’s nuclear generated electricity” – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2008 World Nuclear Industry Status Report, http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/reports/2008-world-nuclear-industry-status-report/2008-world-nuclear-industry-status-re-1
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With nuclear, gas, coal and oil power all being attacked by irrationality beyond reason, I shall take note of likely future trends and get “ahead of the wave” in selecting a nice, natural cave to live in and try to corner the market in stone age tools ahead of the “green” idiots forcing us all to live like stone age cavemen!
9.0 Earthquake and tsunami: more than 10,000 dead, 20,000 missing, $300B in damage, several % reduction in Japanese GDP, shortages of Japanese manufactured goods (including shutdowns in US auto plants). What part of this damage is due to nuclear power? Almost none. Conclusion: In a major earthquake, nuclear power wasn’t a major contributor to the disaster. What’s on the news: Detection of non-hazardous amounts of radioactivity, a few workers with high, but safe, exposure. What should be on the news? a) Did the design of this plant (and others) anticipate a tsunami? Was this danger reviewed after the recent tsunami in South Asia? b) Loss of power to cool reactor cores and spent fuel will lead to release of hydrogen, explosions, and loss of total containment: How secure is the backup power supply at US plants in natural disaster or terrorist incidents? c) How does this incident compare with Chernobyl and TMI. How much worse can it get based on what has happened so far?
Someone commented on “land will never be inhabitable again”.
This is simply not true. Chernobyl is nearing normal levels (you can visit, but I wouldn’t recommend living there for a year), and I guess all those people currently living in Hiroshima are just figments of our collective imagination?
@ur momisugly “How about all the uranium miners who have been killed” – a simple price floor on uranium (doubling it) would make it economically feasible to extract it from seawater with virtually no increase in the cost of actual nuclear power plants. This would also solve any “we’ll run out in 50 years!” nonsense doomsayers.
@ur momisugly “BUT CO2 IS NOT BAD” – CO2 is not the only bad thing produced by fossil-fuel burning plants. I challenge you to inhale burning coal straight into your lungs.
Yes, nuclear is a much worse option if a bunch of random fears you learned from movies about it were true. Luckily, they aren’t.
The environmental decision on nuclear power generation should not be solely focused on carbon dioxide emissions but rather on heat energy and water released to the atmosphere. Nuclear power plants are not as efficient as coal fired power plants so emit more heat energy and water into the atmosphere.
In the electric power generation process both yellow cake and coal change potential energy into kinetic energy when the heat is released as useable electricity and rejected as water vapor and water aerosols via the evaporative cooling towers.
The electricity is converted back into specific heat when consumed by the end devices and illumination. The water vapor rises and is converted back into specific heat when it is condensed to rainfall in the cooler atmosphere. The aerosols form clouds and coalesce into rainfall at somewhat lower altitudes. The specific heats warm the atmosphere.
Coal fired power plants have considerably lower capital and operating costs. Nuclear power plants have lower cost fuel. Coal fired power plants have a considerably better catastrophic failure record. The hazard zone from a catastrophic failure of a coal plant is much smaller than a nuclear plant. From a national security perspective, the US has much larger reserves of coal than yellow cake.
Natural gas as fuel for electric power generation beats both coal and yellow cake in almost all aspects. However, natural gas is a much better source of feedstock for petrochemical plants. Coal can be used for feedstock but is very costly to convert into a synthetic gas.
Many things need to go into selecting a fuel for electric power generation. Simply claiming that nuclear power generation plants do not cause global warming so should be selected is myopic.
Do you really expect people to be logical and consistent? Particularly the anti-nuke and anti-fossil fuel people whose zealotry is driven by feelings and not facts? Dealing with the real-world, and the messy trade-offs it entails, is not one of their key strengths.
Am I missing something here but isnt Co2 simply a beneficial plant food whereas nuclear material will either kill you or make you seriously unhappy depending on exposure?
Yes I know nukes are meant to be be safe and perhaps they really are as safe as human ingenuity can make them however if the worst case scenarios actually play out and safety systems fail the radiation fallout could be disastrous. So what is the choice here?
A method of generation that sprays out life giving CO2 plant food or a method that may just may kill lots of people and produces a wholly poisonous and polluting waste product, Hmmm, now let me think…still thinking…er…uhm I think on balance I would go for the harmless plant food.
Now dont get me wrong, I am not a greenshirt watermellon Luddite and fossil fuels will not last forever but why not use fossils up while letting real science loose to do what real science does best. Lets face it tradition fission plants are the past, they are an old technology used primarily to produce the working parts of the Wests biggest foreign policy stick and maybe thorium will work better cleaner safer but IHMO there is nothing in this world a finer and awesome sight(just walking through a DRAX turbine hall is an almost religious experience)than a massive DRAX power station kicking out industrial quantities of cheap reliable power and equally massive amounts of lovely plant food, I love both these products.
I have always had the dream of building a new type V double bank triple expansion steam engine with the newest materials big and powerful enough to make the titanic engines look like portable generators. What a sight they would be eh? And a line of them in a big generating hall, oh well one can dream!
Hmmmm. Let’s see. Countries where “anti-nuclear power hysteria” doesn’t exist. What might those countries have in common. France, former soviet states, Scandinavian countries, Japan.
I can’t think of anythi….
Oh. Wait.
They all have highly centralized energy policies enacted by governments which invest tax money in infrastructure rather than waiting around for the private sector to invest in incredibly expensive and risky ventures that have a huge time scale for a ROI.
Too bad all those anti-government libz and environmentalistz in the U.S. are always crying about “government overreach” and “government interference in the economy.” If they hand’t been doing so, we might have more nuclear power here.
Ah, but this analysis is based on data and rational thinking. Butthe Age of Reason is over, people!
We are now living in the Age of Feelings. Hence PMS. Ooobs, sorry, I meant PNS.
It’s not about CO2.
It’s about a new totalitarian doctrine.
http://green-agenda.com
Flyingorc – So you’re saying that the reports of a dangerous deterioration in Chernobyl’s “sarcophagus” are wrong?
May I remind those who think coal is cheap that this cost kept cheap by miners paying with their blood.
Emotional twaddle? Not at all:
“The Senghenydd Colliery Disaster, also known as the Senghenydd Explosion, occurred in Senghenydd [1], near Caerphilly, Glamorgan, South Wales on 14 October 1913, killing 439 miners. It is the worst Mining accident in the United Kingdom, and one of the most serious in terms of loss of life globally since.”
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senghenydd_Colliery_Disaster
And that doesn’t take the long-lasting diseases into account which affet miners (google ‘black lung disease ..’)
So think before you condemn more generations to such a dangerous life – and think how ‘cheap’ coal will suddenly become if miners were paid the danger geld they surely deserve.
Or are you planning to go down the mines to hew coal yourselves?
It’s interesting that US carbon emissions flatlined from about 1973 to 1988. The latter year is when construction of nuclear power plants began to slacken, according to a subsequent graph. Yes, there’s a connection between anti-nuke politics and carbon emissions taking off again. I don’t consider that carbon a problem, but it certainly casts doubt on the wisdom of those who brought it about, and it highlights a lost opportunity to have less dependence on foreign oil.
i think we need a real BIG north american nuclear disaster before people finally understand that Nuclear Power in the way of Uranium and Plutonium is NOT the way of the future. It’s unfortunate that with the Chernobyl disaster and the ever evolving Fukushima disaster, people still don’t quite grasp the instability of Nuclear Power and the deadly consequences should something go wrong.
Watts. I would appreciate it if this site could publish an article on the subject of Thorium since little is known about it. If one already exists, is there a link to it?
Anthony, are you trying to achieve a reputation as a “luke-warmer”? What is the purpose of this post by Michael Dickey– that we “should” lower our “carbon” output? Isn’t that CO2? What is “carbon”? Do we want to lower it? Do we need to lower it? Has it been proven that we have “harmed” the environment in any way by increasing the output of CO2 (not “carbon) into the atmosphere? Is small warming, if any is actually proven (has it? completely? truthfully? no possible falsification?), any harm to our planet? Weren’t global living conditions better during a warm environment? Listen to the commenters. Keep the integrity of WUWT.
Also listen to those who are knowledgeable about energy generation through nuclear power, too.
Michio Kaku is a co-author on string theory. I have been trying to chew my way through a book on string theory but after watching Michio Kaku on the news about the Japanese nuke issue me thinks I will add the book to my garage sale.
Frank says: How much worse can it get based on what has happened so far?
Henry said;
I have noted that the Chernobyl disaster has in fact not yet been resolved. It needs to be re-encapsulated but they don’t have the money for it. I would have thought that after the Japan disaster, which, in severity, is beginning to look as bad as the Chernobyl disaster, nobody in their right mind would still want to propogate nuclear energy. Rather stick to using natural gas. The extra carbon dioxide is just fine!
A bigger carbon footprint is better!
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
This article is bunk! The AGW theory is dead and I’m not happy you even posted this weak and hysterical screed here. Our nuclear plants and our NRC are poorly run and the NRC itself is incompetent. We need a massive scientific effort on the scale of the Manhattan Project to power this country. We can build the sodium tank farm solar project outlined in Scientific American 3 years ago and that would provide a great deal of energy. there are also other areas to explore that never get mentioned.
Flying Orc- your lies about Chernobyl, not even wrong. You should put a muzzle on it.
The radiation there is severe in the exclusion zone, and will be for thousands of years.
Still no solution for storing spent fuel safely. There is no Nuclear plant that a private insurance company will insure. The results of radiation exposure take 20-30 years to become fully obvious (of which makes it difficult to isolate as the direct cause).
So the true costs of Nuclear power (most of which are being pushed into the future) do not make it a viable option. You can see when a disaster strikes, just like war, the first casualty is the truth. We can’t have a technology where you get BS when something goes wrong.
Wow – what an impressive array of comments.
Even a few commenters whose opinions I normally respect seem to jump the shark when it comes to the evil, scary monster “nuclear”.
Well here’s the thing. I work in a nuclear facility. Before I could even start here I got a significant amount of training. Every individual here has more training and knowledge about their jobs than anywhere else I’ve ever worked. This is the first workplace I’ve ever seen where workers take SAFETY as more than a passing joke, where SAFETY MEETINGS actually mean safety instead of an excuse to smoke and drink coffee.
Our little operation is scary to some. We’ve had people apply for work, look around at what happens here, and flee. Our neighboring businesses don’t even park their vehicles on our side of their property. There has never been a break-in attempt, those Nuclear signs are scarier than having a police cruiser parked in the lot.
As for radioactivity, I’ve taken meters home and had some fun comparing my workplace environment to the natural environment. There is a higher reading, for example, at Banff’s main street than in my office, which is a few feet away from a 62 curie source. I get a measurable reading in my basement. I haven’t managed to take a meter on an airplane yet.
Reactors are not inherently dangerous. Those commenters above who insist that this is so are just plain wrong. The production, usage, and storage of nuclear material is NOT inherently dangerous, mostly because everyone who works in the industry is hyper-aware of the risks, dangers, and consequences. The very things that would make nuclear a safer form of power generation have been hobbled and crippled by ignorant (but well meaning) people over the years. Fuel reprocessing, breeders, etc. have fallen by the wayside because of the irrational and ridiculous terror of the mushroom cloud.
As others have pointed out above, the original designs for reactors involved using them for weapons. Current designs involve using nuclear for power generation, not creating weapons grade byproducts.
Anyone above who has compared Fukushima with Chernobyl really needs to give their heads a shake and learn some facts. How can you compare a massive explosion caused by deliberate action by an insanely reckless individual at a poorly designed, uncontained graphite moderated reactor with what is going on in Japan? There is still a worst case failsafe they can employ, but they don’t want to definitively destroy what is left of the reactor. Small amounts of radiation leakage that are either happening or possible are nothing compared to the naturally occuring radioactives in our environment. NOTHING.
It doesn’t matter one whit if you find some online anti-nuke site telling you the horrors of what COULD happen. What COULD happen is another Bhopal, or another few dozen coal miners trapped underground, or a few people killed at a well blowout, or another CO2 bubble emerging from a lake and wiping out entire villages, or another tsnunami wiping out millions, or more floods washing people into the sea from Bangladesh, or… any of the numerous and effective ways people die.
It is not physically possible for Fukushima to become another Chernobyl. It’s inexcuseable that so many people still think Three Mile Island was a disaster. Or even anything. It was a relatively minor industrial incident that was blown so far out of proportion it should make your head spin when you think about it. More people were injured in the oil industry LAST WEEK than ever in the history of nuclear. Where are the headlines? Where are the calls to stop using petroleum?
TheFlyingOrc … tell that to the kids with deformities, leukemia etc. etc.
My dad worked on several nuclear reactors as a pipefitter. Why are we wanting to build high risk reactors when we could be building salt reactors, shutting down the coal plants, and become less dependent on foreign oil, etc.? Maybe we could even build our own things again…i.e. television sets, etc. and give Americans something to be proud of again and OUT distance ourselves from everyother country on the earth by being clever instead of trying to be a bunch of insane money mongers trying to save a buck!
Look at all that O2 in CO2. I think O2 is being given a free pass in this issue.
It occurred to me that if we got rid of all the O2, it would prevent any more CO2 from forming. That would mitigate the warming and save the planet… taa daa !
Sometimes my insight is truly “breath-taking”… just as it would be in having success with this scenario. /sarc.
@HenryP:
March 30, 2011 at 9:00 am
==================
The CO2-climate change pseudo-scientific hoax as been a real bonanza of revival for the nuclear industry, as it has converted many, many greens (or merely greenishes) who are concerned about CO2, like George Monbiot, to the fantasy that nuclear power is nice and cheap and clean. So all the enthusiasts of nuclear power here should recognize that global warming propaganda has had at least some positive effects for their cause.
As for me, I now think nuclear power in the present state is the worst possible source of energy. I would much rather see all electricity produced with coal, whose combustion can now apparently be made relatively clean with current technologies to trap real pollutants (CO2 is irrelevant) than further proliferation of nuclear plants.
According to the US Department of Energy, there are now 63,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel sitting in overcrowded pools inside US plants, and we are in the midst of another major reactor catastrophe, the second big mess of this kind in 25 years. So I fully agree with you: how anyone can keep saying that nuclear power is “clean” and “cheap” and “safe” is well beyond me.
“The death of a nuclear reactor has a beginning; the world is watching this unfold now on the coast of Japan. But it doesn’t have an end.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/weekinreview/20chernobyl.html
What’s a pound?