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Is the net output of CO₂ from Nuclear Energy lower than the net output of other energy sources?
A:
- Low range estimate: 1.4 g CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hr
- Mean estimate: 66 g CO2 equivalent per kWh
- High range estimate: 288 g CO2 equivalent per kWh
This is from a metastudy of 103 studies
You can access the full text from this page on the Nuclear Information and Resource Service
Here is a link to the PDF: Sovacool, B. K. 2008. Valuing the greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power: A critical survey. Energy Policy v. 36 (8): 2950-2963.
For comparison, a natural gas-fired power plant might emit 515.29 g CO2 per kWh (per wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station#Carbon_dioxide; (conversion to metric mine & therefore mistakes are as well.) Coal and Oil-fired plants will emit more CO2 than a natural gas plant.
ETA: After more thorough checking, confirmed the neighborhood for CO2 equivalents emitted throughout the life cycle for natural gas and coal plants from Jarmillo et al. "Comparative Life-Cycle Air Emissions of Coal, Domestic Natural Gas, LNG, and SNG for Electricity Generation" in Environmental Science and Technology from 2007, link: http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~gdrg/readings/2007/09/13/Jaramillo_ComparativeLCACoalNG.pdf Natural Gas midpoint: 499 g CO2 equivalent per kWh Coal midpoint: 953 g CO2 equivalent per kWh These are close enough to the wikipedia figures (although not exactly the same) that it appears wiki is also using the lifecycle emissions. Again, the conversion to metric is mine & etc.
A lot of science and policy work treats nuclear power as having 0 CO2 emissions, but that's not quite true, and especially is less true if the higher emissions numbers are more correct. //
- I'm not sure "maximum" and "high estimate" are meant to refer to the same concept. Anyway, please take notice that nowadays gaseous diffusion is not used anymore. Lowering worst estimates by around 60-70 g/CO2 – mirh Apr 28, 2017 at 12:41
- The study cited above is Benjamin Sovacool's now (in)famous meta study. Sovacool is an ardent opponent to nuclear power and this study has been severely criticized. First: it does not include 103 studies, because the majority of those were discarded. The actual number is about 20. Second... of these 20, van Leeuwen & Smith's wildly inaccurate study is included 3 times directly and 1 time indirectly. van Leeuwen & Smith have been even more criticized for missing the goal wildly, peer review finding them to be off the mark up to 8000%. – MichaelK Oct 27, 2017 at 11:09 //
Answer: Yes, lower than combustion based sources like coal, oil, and gas. Not lower than renewable sources like solar and hydro.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory performed a similar study to that posted by @FlyingSquidwithGoggles. This might be a less biased source (NIRS page header says "Nuclear Power: No Solution to Climate Change" and contains much anti-nuke literature).
After screening articles by their criteria, they ended up with ~300 article inputs to the data, and ~1000 data points total.
Here are some of the figures listed by source: (Min, Median, Max)(in g CO2/kWh).
- Hydro: 0, 4, 43
- Solar: 5-7, 22-46, 89-217
- Nuclear: 1, 16, 220
- Nat Gas: 290, 469, 930
- Coal: 675, 1001, 1689
