[Vision2020] NASA GISS: "Coal and Gas are Far More Harmful than Nuclear Power"

Fri Apr 26 15:06:58 PDT 2013

This work expresses a conclusion I agree with, that nuclear power if
developed properly is an important part of the energy mix needed to best
mitigate catastrophic climate change.
Those in the environmental movement  opposing nuclear power might consider
that this opposition may force nations to burn more coal, oil and gas to
meet the energy needs that nuclear could answer.  Of course they will
answer that massive development of alternative energy sources can supply
enough energy to meet demands, assuming widespread energy conservation
implementation, avoided the problems of nuclear power.

*But I think we should develop every energy option to lower CO2 emissions,
including nuclear, given the gravity of the problem and the daunting
massive future energy demands the world economy is likely to face... The
incredible increase in world energy demand expected during this century is
a runaway train that renders attempts to lower absolute global CO2
emissions a seemingly impossible task.*  *A simple Google search resulted
in this onslaught of sources:*

*
https://www.google.com/search?q=world+energy+demand+projections+2035+iea&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=zPh6UcOEEI2EiwLj34GYAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CFoQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=916
*

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http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/kharecha_02/
Coal and Gas are Far More Harmful than Nuclear Power

By Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen — April 2013

Human-caused climate change and air pollution remain major global-scale
problems and are both due mostly to fossil fuel burning. Mitigation efforts
for both of these problems should be undertaken concurrently in order to
maximize effectiveness. Such efforts can be accomplished largely with
currently available low-carbon and carbon-free alternative energy sources
like nuclear power and renewables, as well as energy efficiency
improvements.

In a recently published paper (ref. 1), we provide an objective, long-term,
quantitative analysis of the effects of nuclear power on human health
(mortality) and the environment (climate). Several previous scientific
papers have quantified global-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions avoided
by nuclear power, but to our knowledge, ours is the first to quantify
avoided human deaths as well as avoided GHG emissions on global, regional,
and national scales.

The paper demonstrates that without nuclear power, it will be even harder
to mitigate human-caused climate change and air pollution. This is
fundamentally because historical energy production data reveal that if
nuclear power never existed, the energy it supplied almost certainly would
have been supplied by fossil fuels instead (overwhelmingly coal), which
cause much higher air pollution-related mortality and GHG emissions per
unit energy produced (ref. 2).

Using historical electricity production data and mortality and emission
factors from the peer-reviewed scientific literature, we found that despite
the three major nuclear accidents the world has experienced, nuclear power
prevented an average of over 1.8 million net deaths worldwide between
1971-2009 (see Fig. 1). This amounts to at least hundreds and more likely
thousands of times more deaths than it caused. An average of 76,000 deaths
per year were avoided annually between 2000-2009 (see Fig. 2), with a range
of 19,000-300,000 per year.

Likewise, we calculated that nuclear power prevented an average of 64
gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) net GHG emissions globally between
1971-2009 (see Fig. 3). This is about 15 times more emissions than it
caused. It is equivalent to the past 35 years of CO2 emissions from coal
burning in the U.S. or 17 years in China (ref. 3) — i.e., historical
nuclear energy production has prevented the building of hundreds of large
coal-fired power plants.

To compute potential future effects, we started with the projected nuclear
energy supply for 2010-2050 from an assessment made by the UN International
Atomic Energy Agency that takes into account the effects of the Fukushima
accident (ref. 4). We assume that the projected nuclear energy is canceled
and replaced entirely by energy from either coal or natural gas. We
calculate that this nuclear phaseout scenario leads to an average of
420,000-7 million deaths and 80-240 GtCO2-eq emissions globally (the
high-end values reflect the all coal case; see Figs. 1 and 3). This
emissions range corresponds to 16-48% of the "allowable" cumulative
CO2emissions between 2012-2050 if the world chooses to aim for a
target
atmospheric CO2 concentration of 350 ppm by around the end of this century
(ref. 5). In other words, projected nuclear power could reduce the
CO2mitigation burden for meeting this target by as much as 16-48%.

The largest uncertainties and limitations of our analysis stem from the
assumed values for impacts per unit electric energy produced. However, we
emphasize that our results for both prevented mortality and prevented GHG
emissions could be substantial underestimates. This is because (among other
reasons) our mortality and emission factors are based on analysis of Europe
and the US (respectively), and thus neglect the fact that fatal air
pollution and GHG emissions from power plants in developing countries are
on average substantially higher per unit energy produced than in developed
countries.

Our findings also have important implications for large-scale "fuel
switching" to natural gas from coal or from nuclear. Although natural gas
burning emits less fatal pollutants and GHGs than coal burning, it is far
deadlier than nuclear power, causing about 40 times more deaths per unit
electric energy produced (ref. 2).

Also, such fuel switching is practically guaranteed to worsen the climate
problem for several reasons. First, carbon capture and storage is an
immature technology and is therefore unlikely to constrain the resulting
GHG emissions in the necessary time frame. Second, electricity
infrastructure generally has a long lifetime (e.g., fossil fuel power
plants typically operate for up to ~50 years). Third, potentially usable
natural gas resources (especially unconventional ones like shale gas) are
enormous, containing many hundreds to thousands of gigatonnes of carbon
(based on ref. 6). For perspective, the atmosphere currently contains ~830
GtC, of which ~200 GtC are from industrial-era fossil fuel burning.

We conclude that nuclear energy — despite posing several challenges, as do
all energy sources (ref. 7) — needs to be retained and significantly
expanded in order to avoid or minimize the devastating impacts of unabated
climate change and air pollution caused by fossil fuel burning.
References

1. Kharecha, P.A., and J.E. Hansen, 2013: Prevented mortality and
greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear
power<http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/kh05000e.html>.
Environ. Sci. Technol., in press, doi:10.1021/es3051197.

2. Markandya, A., and P. Wilkinson, 2007: Electricity generation and
health. Lancet, 370, 979-990, doi:
10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61253-7<http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736%2807%2961253-7>
.

3. Boden, T. A., G. Marland, R.J. Andres, 2012: Global, Regional, and
National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis
Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak
Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A., doi:
10.3334/CDIAC/00001_V2012<http://dx.doi.org/10.3334/CDIAC/00001_V2012>
.

4. International Atomic Energy Agency, 2011: Energy, Electricity and
Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050: 2011 Edition. IAEA
Reference Data Series 1/31. Available at
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/RDS1_31.pdf

5. Hansen, J., P. Kharecha, Mki. Sato, V. Masson-Delmotte, et al.,
2013: Scientific
prescription to avoid dangerous climate change to protect young people,
future generations, and nature <http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha08510t.html>.
PLOS One, submitted.

6. GEA, 2012: Global Energy Assessment — Toward a Sustainable Future.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA and the
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.
Available at http://www.globalenergyassessment.org.

7. Kharecha, P.A., C.F. Kutscher, J.E. Hansen, and E. Mazria, 2010: Options
for near-term phaseout of CO2 emissions from coal use in the United
States<http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/kh04000r.html>.
Environ. Sci. Technol., 44, 4050-4062, doi:10.1021/es903884a.
Contact

Please address all inquiries about this research to Dr. Pushker
Kharecha<http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/pkharecha.html>.

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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