Nuclear Must be Part of the Low-Carbon Energy Mix in the UK.

Nuclear Power Industry

Date posted: 09/24/17

Agneta Rising reports that concerning David Lowry’s criticisms of nuclear energy (Letters, 17 September in the The Guardian’s), it is true that nuclear plants stop generating temporarily for maintenance and repair, but the same is true for most other forms of electricity generation. However, on average these outages represent a much smaller quantity of lost generation compared to the day-to-day intermittency of wind or solar. Nuclear plants spend a high proportion of the time generating at their maximum capacity. On emissions, some proponents of both nuclear and renewables do fall into the habit of referring to their technologies as “zero-carbon”, even though there are some greenhouse gas emissions produced with all forms of generation. But there is remarkable academic agreement that the emissions from nuclear, wind, solar and many other non-fossil generation sources are similarly low per unit of electricity generated and these emissions are tiny fractions of those associated with burning coal and gas. We desperately need to cut emissions in our electricity mix to as low as possible. The nuclear industry’s Harmony program has a goal of 25% of the world’s electricity being supplied by nuclear energy by 2050. The remaining 75% would need to be supplied by a broad mix of other almost zero-carbon generation options, alongside energy storage and smart grids to help deal with intermittent generation and variable demand. We should work together for a strong, clean future for electricity generation rather than quibble while coal burns.