Nuclear Power Paves the Only Viable Path Forward on Climate Change

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 07/07/16

James Hansen, et al., report that all four of us have dedicated our scientific careers to understand the processes and impacts of climate change, variously studying ocean systems, tropical cyclones, ice sheets and ecosystems as well as impacts on human societies. We have used both climate models and geological records of past climates to better understand lessons from warmer periods in the Earth history and investigate future scenarios. We need affordable, abundant clean energy, but there is no particular reason why we should favor renewable energy over other forms of abundant energy. Indeed, cutting down forests for bioenergy and damming rivers for hydropower, both commonly counted as renewable energy sources, can have terrible environmental consequences. Nuclear power, particularly next-generation nuclear power with a closed-fuel cycle (where spent fuel is reprocessed), is uniquely scalable, and environmentally advantageous. Over the past 50 years, nuclear power stations, by offsetting fossil fuel combustion, have avoided the emission of an estimated 60 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Nuclear energy can power whole civilizations, and produce waste streams that are trivial compared to the waste produced by fossil-fuel combustion. There are technical means to dispose of this small amount of waste safely. However, nuclear does pose unique safety and proliferation concerns that must be addressed with strong and binding international standards and safeguards. Most importantly for climate, nuclear produces no CO2 during power generation. For example, a build rate of 61 new reactors per year could entirely replace current fossil fuel electricity generation by 2050. Accounting for increased global electricity demand driven by population growth and development in poorer countries, which would add another 54 reactors per year, this makes a total requirement of 115 reactors per year to 2050 to entirely decarbonize the global electricity system by 2050.