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Why nuclear energy is essential to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission rates
Citation
Alonso, A and Brook, BW and Meneley, DA and Misak, J and Blees, T and van Erp, JB, Why nuclear energy is essential to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission rates, EPJ N Nuclear Sciences and Technologies, 1, (3) pp. 1-9. ISSN 2491-9292 (2015) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
© A. Alonso et al. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
DOI: doi:10.1051/epjn/e2015-50027-y
Abstract
Reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is advocated by the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change. To achieve this target, countries have opted for renewable energy sources, primarily wind
and solar. These renewables will be unable to supply the needed large quantities of energy to run industrial
societies sustainably, economically and reliably because they are inherently intermittent, depending on flexible
backup power or on energy storage for delivery of base-load quantities of electrical energy. The backup power is
derived in most cases from combustion of natural gas. Intermittent energy sources, if used in this way, do not meet
the requirements of sustainability, nor are they economically viable because they require redundant, underutilized
investment in capacity both for generation and for transmission. Because methane is a potent greenhouse
gas, the equivalent carbon dioxide value of methane may cause gas-fired stations to emit more greenhouse gas
than coal-fired plants of the same power for currently reported leakage rates of the natural gas. Likewise,
intermittent wind/solar photovoltaic systems backed up by gas-fired power plants also release substantial
amounts of carbon-dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas to make such a combination environmentally
unacceptable. In the long term, nuclear fission technology is the only known energy source that is capable of
delivering the needed large quantities of energy safely, economically, reliably and in a sustainable way, both
environmentally and as regards the available resource-base.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Refereed Article |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | nuclear energy, climate change |
| Research Division: | Engineering |
| Research Group: | Resources engineering and extractive metallurgy |
| Research Field: | Nuclear engineering (incl. fuel enrichment and waste processing and storage) |
| Objective Division: | Energy |
| Objective Group: | Energy transformation |
| Objective Field: | Nuclear energy |
| UTAS Author: | Brook, BW (Professor Barry Brook) |
| ID Code: | 107161 |
| Year Published: | 2015 |
| Web of Science® Times Cited: | 7 |
| Deposited By: | Plant Science |
| Deposited On: | 2016-03-07 |
| Last Modified: | 2016-07-20 |
| Downloads: | 274 View Download Statistics |
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