Nuclear power is no answer to climate change

We shouldn’t warm to nuclear power Western Daily Press May 02, 2014 Allan Jeffery is the assistant co-ordinator of the Stop Hinkley campaign. Here he outlines why he believes nuclear is not the answer to our energy needs

Climate change is widely acknowledged as being one of the most pressing issues for the global community – affecting many aspects of the environment and society, including, human health, ecosystems, agriculture, water supplies, local and global economies, sea levels and extreme weather events.

However, the nuclear industry tries to depict nuclear energy as the most effective way to solve the climate problem. This claim has no basis in fact. Nuclear energy is neither effective nor viable. It is not a sustainable source and it causes devastating problems that humanity is not able to handle.

Looking at the whole nuclear energy cycle, nuclear energy does indirectly generate greenhouse gases. Much less than coal and oil, though not a lot less than gas, but significantly more than sustainable renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, hydro and tidal.

Increasing nuclear generation on a large scale would mean exploiting much lower grade uranium ores. Therefore much more energy from fossil fuels would be needed to mine, enrich and fabricate the uranium fuel, greatly increasing the amounts of greenhouse gases emitted. Using low grade ores to produce the nuclear fuel will produce similar levels of greenhouse gases as burning gas in the power station in the first place.

Nuclear power only produces electricity. Globally nuclear produces about 16 per cent of the world’s electricity production and this is declining. Even if we switched all fossil fuel generation to nuclear by building hundreds of new nuclear reactors we would not solve the problem. Global electricity production is only one of many human activities producing greenhouse gases, and only produces nine per cent of global greenhouse gases. The rest of the emissions are produced by transport, heating, agriculture, cement production and deforestation. To have any significant effect on global warming, global emissions will need to be reduced 50 per cent by 2050. To do this many hundreds of new nuclear reactors will need to be built rapidly. The average reactor construction time for all builds up to 2013, was eight years and many much longer. Worldwide growth in building new nuclear reactors has slowed drastically as investors refuse to buy into the dubious economics of nuclear power………

The potential for renewable energy is vast. Each day the energy that falls on the earth is more than the earth’s global population would use in 27 years.

Solar generated power could provide the current world energy 10,000 times over, cleanly. http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/shouldn-t-warm-nuclear-power/story-21045803-detail/story.html?email-tobe-verified=true#ixzz314D9lCVz