User:Rwbest/Kladblok

Opinions on nuclear energy

See also: Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of energy sources

See also: Life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of energy sources and renewable energy debate

Jacobson argues that if the United States wants to reduce global warming, air pollution and energy instability, it should invest only in the best energy options, and that nuclear power is not one of them. To support his claim, Jacobson provided an analysis in 2009 that intended to inform policy makers on which energy sources are best for solving the air pollution, climate, and energy security problems the world faces. He updated this analysis in his 2020 textbook. Jacobson's analyses suggest that "nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions per unit energy than wind energy".

That analysis accounted for some emission sources not included in previous analyses, The primary emissions due to nuclear energy are called “opportunity-cost emissions.” These are the emissions from the background grid due to the long time lag between planning and operation of a nuclear plant (10 to 19 years) versus a wind or solar farm (2 to 5 years), for example. Of the total estimated emissions from nuclear in the 2009 study (68–180.1 g/kWh), 59–106 g/kWh was due to opportunity-cost emissions. Most of the rest (9-70 g/kWh) was due to lifecycle emissions, and a small amount (0-4.1 g/kWh) was due to the risk of carbon emissions associated with the burning of cities resulting from a nuclear war aided by the expansion of nuclear energy to countries previously without them, and the subsequent development of weapons in those countries. Jacobson raised this last assumption during a Ted talk Does the world need nuclear energy? in 2010, with Jacobson heading the debate in the negative.

Like his PhD advisor Richard P. Turco, who notably coined the phrase "nuclear winter", Jacobson has taken a similar approach to calculating the hypothetical effects of nuclear wars on the climate but has further extended this into providing an analysis that intends to inform policy makers on which energy sources to support, as of 2009. Jacobson's analyses suggest that "nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions per unit energy than wind energy".

This analysis is controversial. Jacobson arrived at this conclusion of "25 times more carbon emissions than wind, per unit of energy generated" (68–180.1 g/kWh), by specifically expanding on some concepts that are highly contested. These include, though are not limited to, the suggestion that emissions associated with civil nuclear energy should, in the upper limit, include the risk of carbon emissions associated with the burning of cities resulting from a nuclear war aided by the expansion of nuclear energy and weapons to countries previously without them. An assumption that Jacobson's debating opponent similarly raised, during the Ted talk Does the world need nuclear energy? in 2010, with Jacobson heading the debate in the negative. Jacobson assumes, at the high end (180.1 g/kWh), that 4.1 g/kWh are due to some form of nuclear induced burning that will occur once every 30 years. At the low end, 0 g/kWh are due to nuclear induced burning. Responding to a commentary on his work in the Journal Environmental Science and Technology in 2013, James Hansen has characterized Jacobson's analysis on this topic of greenhouse gas emissions, as "lack(ing) credibility" and similarly regards Jacobson's other viewpoint of extra "opportunity-cost" emissions as "dubious". With the foundation of Hansen's incredulity being based on French experience, that decarbonized ~80% of the grid in 15 years, completed 56 reactors in the 15-year period, thus raising the fact that depending on the existence of established regulator certainty & political conditions, nuclear energy facilities have been accelerated through the licensing/planning phase and have therefore rapidly decarbonizated electric grids.