Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

Photo by Michael Kappel on Flickr

In the wake of the Fukushima incident, the UK government recently announced its intention to develop Britain's next generation of nuclear energy via a deal with state-owned French and Chinese companies. This would be in line with its policy to have the first new nuclear power stations generating electricity from around 2019.

The UK has a relatively long history in its reliance on nuclear power. Nonetheless in the 1990s, the UK government committed itself to shun the nuclear option. The first nuclear power plants that came into operation in the 1950s, recently passed the international peer review for its decommissioning conducted by the International Atomic Nuclear Agency (IAEA). 

Circumstances have since changed. Greenhalgh and Azapagic (2009) explained that the UK government has committed to an 80% reduction below 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 through the Climate Change Act 2008. Under the auspices of the EU, a target of 15% of energy consumption to be met by renewable energy. Given the latest climate change targets and need for energy security, the UK government has made a dramatic change and proceeded to adopt the nuclear option as part of its energy mix and to meet its obligations in mitigating carbon emissions.

According to the government's white paper on nuclear energy released in 2008, UK’s CO2 emissions would have been some 29 to 59 MtCO2 higher if there had been no nuclear power stations.  If we apply the CO2 emission statistics by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), this would represent 14-28% of the CO2 emissions arising from the energy supply sector in 2008, which appears rather significant. 

UK carbon dioxide emissions, 1990-2012

Source: DECC Statistics

Sovacool (2008) considered 103 lifecycle studies and calculated a mean value of GHG emissions for a nuclear reactor as 66 g CO2e/kWh. While the nuclear power plant does not emit GHG directly, the plant still requires fossil-fuel during the construction, decommissioning, and uranium mining and enrichment phases. Nontheless the rate of GHG is better than coal (960 g CO2e/kWh) and oil (778 g CO2e/kWh) electricity generators, but worse off than renewable sources such as wind (9 g CO2e/kWh) and solar (32 g CO2e/kWh). 

From a scientific perspective, the nuclear option does present itself as a potential solution towards the mitigation of CO2 emissions while meeting mankind's growing energy needs. Nonetheless, regulators would need to ensure that stringent policies on nuclear safety and safeguards would need to be in place. Last but not least, public perception would likely be a key deciding factor on whether a country would consider nuclear energy as an option. 

For those of us who may be curious, here is a video that illustrates how a nuclear power plant typically functions.