Michaja Pehl, Anders Arvesen, Florian Humpenöder
Alexander Popp, Edgar G. Hertwich, Gunnar Luderer
2017 · Nature Energy
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Yes, solar has emissions. But in your previous message you implied that it is larger than it is by making a deceptively long list of items. These are the number of total CO2 emited per energy produced (gCO2e/kWh): - Nuclear and eolic, 4. - Solar, 6. - Gas CCS, 78. - Hydro, 97. - Coal CCS, 109. Citation, as requested: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-017-0032-9 Implying that solar, nuclear or wind have emissions nowhere near gas or coal is not fair play.
I was curious about total life cycle CO2 output and found an study in Nature. It looks like: - Hydropower + Bioenergy -> 100 gCO2eq kWh−1 - Traditional fossil fuels -> 78–110 gCO2eq kWh−1 - Nuclear, Wind and Solar -> 3.5–12 gCO2eq kWh−1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-017-0032-9
The myth of nuclear being not low-carbon has been wholly rejected by a large and significant meta-analysis of the IPCC itself, as clearly seen in Table A.III.2 in [1], which puts nuclear at 12 gCO₂-eq/kWh, the lowest on the list except for wind at 11. Solar is around 40. Natural gas is 490. Coal is 820. The data are plotted here [4] directly from that table. It's no surprise either. When uranium has 2,000,000x more energy per mass than any chemical, and when splitting atoms has nothing to do with carbon emissions, it's very difficult to make it high-carbon through lifecycle issues. I went deep with someone a while back on here who claims that nuclear was closer to 100…
gCO₂/eq than the IPCC number of 12g CO₂-eq/kWh, and they realized they were using 1950s energy values for gaseous diffusion enrichment instead of much-more-efficient centrifuges. Another source verifying that nuclear is very low carbon include [2] (which is a writeup for [3]). Tell me nuclear is expensive. Tell me you're concerned about accidents. Tell me what about the waste. But do not tell me nuclear is not low carbon. This is an absolutely unjustifiable belief propagated in public almost exclusively by institutional anti-nuclear organizations with a long and storied history of using incorrect information to make nuclear look bad. The real clincher to this argument is that we all agree there are no direct carbon emissions in fission. Splitting uranium makes no CO₂. So it's all lifecycle stuff. And in a 100% nuclear future, 100% of the mining, transportation (electrified), enrichment, etc. would be nuclear powered and so the carbon emissions would be literally 0. Same can be said for all other non-combustion sources. [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5... [2] https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-wind-nuclear-amazingly-low... [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-017-0032-9 [4] https://whatisnuclear.com/img/lifecycle-carbon-emissions-300... (plot of data from [1]) > Furthermore, the massive risks of nuclear are inescapable for any right-thinking person. Furthermore, the almost eternal nuclear waste problem is still there and still has not been solved. That is the story at least. Fortunately we have scientific methods to help prevent us from fooling ourselves even when things are postulated that seem wrong. The actual fact is that nuclear is way safer than mainstream energy sources (gas, biofuel, oil, coal), and is perfectly on par with wind and solar. If this sounds crazy, please dig into the data! I admit it is surprising, but it is true. When you look at the data [5], nuclear is actually amazingly safe. So much so, that it's irrational even in the face of nuclear accidents to not shut down all fossil and replace it with nuclear from a public health perspective. This is because the toll of air pollution (both from fossil and biofuel) kills about 8M people every single year. I invite everyone to read the WHO reports on the impact of Chernobyl and compare with 8 Million deaths per year and tell me who's right-thinking! [5] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy > Because gas can be used to compensate when there is no wind and no sun. Yeah except gas emits 490 gCO₂-eq/kWh when the wind is not blowing and sun is not shining and that is wholly incompatible with solving climate change, even if we cover the whole country with wind, solar, and gas plants. With nuclear you get 0 carbon 100% of the time in any geography or season. Check electricitymap.org [6] for live emissions data and take a look at nuclear-heavy ontario and france compared to germany for real-world live proof of this. [6] https://www.electricitymap.org/ Lastly, nuclear waste is a solved problem already. Did you know that zero people have been injured or killed by stored nuclear waste in dry casks (which is where we put them now)? You can walk right up to them [7]. We have a long-term solution like Onkalo [8] but even in the interim it's crazy to not build zero carbon energy even though we have properly handled commercial nuclear waste for 70 years. Again, remember that our current energy systems today are killing 8 million people per year. [7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvvIzH2W6g [8] http://www.posiva.fi/en/final_disposal/onkalo
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