Abstract:In the aftermath of the March 2011 accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the future contribution of nuclear power to the global energy supply has become somewhat uncertain. Because nuclear power is an abundant, low-carbon source of base-load power, it could make a large contribution to mitigation of global climate change and air pollution. Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gi… Show more
“…We selected the cost and sustainability indicators for the MCDMA carefully based on the guidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency in cooperation with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the International Energy Agency (IEA), Eurostat and the European Environment Agency (EEA) [37], which are relevant to the context of Australia. These were: (1) levelized cost of electricity (which is the minimum cost of electricity at which an electricity producer can sell and still secure an economic return), including carbon pricing between 2013 ($23 tonne CO 2 -e À1 ) and 2050 ($140 tonne CO 2 -e À1 ) [24], and additional costs [31], (2) greenhouse-gas emissions [38], (3) air pollutants Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, 2009 [22,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48], (4) land transformation [39,46,[49][50][51][52][53], (5) freshwater consumption [41,48,50,[54][55][56][57][58][59], (6) safety costs [21,60,61] (the probability of severe accidents and the impact of them), (7) solid-waste generation [41,48,[62][63][64][65]…”
“…We selected the cost and sustainability indicators for the MCDMA carefully based on the guidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency in cooperation with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the International Energy Agency (IEA), Eurostat and the European Environment Agency (EEA) [37], which are relevant to the context of Australia. These were: (1) levelized cost of electricity (which is the minimum cost of electricity at which an electricity producer can sell and still secure an economic return), including carbon pricing between 2013 ($23 tonne CO 2 -e À1 ) and 2050 ($140 tonne CO 2 -e À1 ) [24], and additional costs [31], (2) greenhouse-gas emissions [38], (3) air pollutants Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, 2009 [22,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48], (4) land transformation [39,46,[49][50][51][52][53], (5) freshwater consumption [41,48,50,[54][55][56][57][58][59], (6) safety costs [21,60,61] (the probability of severe accidents and the impact of them), (7) solid-waste generation [41,48,[62][63][64][65]…”
“…As oil price hikes and instability of nuclear power plants have persisted recently, the volume of coal in use has been on a constant rise due to a relatively smooth supply and fewer problems arising from its use [1,2]. However, the continued use of coal in coal-fired power plants for energy generation will constantly increase the emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants and ultimately accelerate global warming [3,4].…”
“…Numerous scientific comparisons have shown that nuclear fission is among the energy sources that are least polluting and have the lowest overall environmental impact [10]. Operating nuclear power plants do not produce air pollution nor do they emit CO 2 .…”
Section: Nuclear Energy From Fission Has a Low Environmental Impactmentioning
Abstract. Reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is advocated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To achieve this target, countries have opted for renewable energy sources, primarily wind and solar. These renewables will be unable to supply the needed large quantities of energy to run industrial societies sustainably, economically and reliably because they are inherently intermittent, depending on flexible backup power or on energy storage for delivery of base-load quantities of electrical energy. The backup power is derived in most cases from combustion of natural gas. Intermittent energy sources, if used in this way, do not meet the requirements of sustainability, nor are they economically viable because they require redundant, underutilized investment in capacity both for generation and for transmission. Because methane is a potent greenhouse gas, the equivalent carbon dioxide value of methane may cause gas-fired stations to emit more greenhouse gas than coal-fired plants of the same power for currently reported leakage rates of the natural gas. Likewise, intermittent wind/solar photovoltaic systems backed up by gas-fired power plants also release substantial amounts of carbon-dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas to make such a combination environmentally unacceptable. In the long term, nuclear fission technology is the only known energy source that is capable of delivering the needed large quantities of energy safely, economically, reliably and in a sustainable way, both environmentally and as regards the available resource-base.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.