Balancing risks: Nuclear energy & climate change

Daedalus

Volumn 138, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 31-44

  Socolow, Robert H ^a   Glaser, Alexander ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 70350044930     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/daed.2009.138.4.31     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. The authors have benefited from numerous suggestions from Zia Mian. We are also indebted to Jan Beyea, Harold Feiveson, Steven Fetter, José Goldemberg, Robert Goldston, Robert Keohane, Scott Sagan, Sharon Squassoni, and Frank von Hippel for close readings of an earlier draft.
2. Shoibal Chakravarty, Ananth Chikkatur, Heleen de Coninck, Stephen Pacala, Robert Socolow, and Massimo Tavoni, "Sharing Global CO2 Emission Reductions among One Billion High Emitters," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (29) (2009): 11884-11888; www.pnas.org/content/106/29/11884.
3. Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, "Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies," Science 305 (2004): 968-972. Here, we slightly redefine a wedge to refer to 4 billion tons of CO2 per year not emitted in 2050, versus 1 billion tons of carbon not emitted in 50 years in the 2004 paper.
4. For the purposes of this paper it is a detail that the center of gravity of discussions since wedges were introduced in 2004 has moved toward tougher targets. The "two-degrees" target widely discussed today-an average surface temperature rise limited to 2°C greater than its pre-industrial value-requires that global CO2 emissions fall to half of today's value by 2050. For such a tough target, less than 10 percent of the job is done by one wedge.
5. We define a large plant to be one with a capacity of 1,000 MW, that is, 1 GWe, and base load to mean operating 8,000 hours per year. Our reference base load coal plant, somewhat more efficient than the coal plant one can build today, emits 800 grams of CO2 for every kilowatt-hour of electricity, or 6.4 million tons of CO2 per year. The nuclear plant displacing the coal plant has life cycle emissions of about 50 grams of CO2/kWh; its carbon intensity is 16 times less than a coal plant. Rounding off, 700 nuclear plants emit 4 billion tons less a year than 700 coal plants.
6. We assume today's coal and natural gas plants emit 1,000 and 500 grams of CO2/kWh, respectively.
7. Think of a nuclear plant displacing a coal plant half the time and a carbon-free renewable power plant the other half of the time, or, equivalently, a nuclear plant displacing a natural gas plant. Confirming this view, in 2006 the carbon intensity of average power was 56 percent of the carbon intensity of coal power; International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2008 (Paris: oecd/iea, 2008), www.worldenergyoutlook.org.
8. One terawatt-hour is 1 billion kWh.
9. World Energy Outlook 2008.
10. The Future of Nuclear Power (mit, 2003), web.mit.edu/nuclearpower. In mit's highnuclear scenario, 14,100 TWh of nuclear power are produced in 2050, which corresponds to 1,760 GW of base load power running 8,000 hours per year. The mit report calculates 1,609 GW of "equivalent capacity" by assuming constant output throughout the 8,760 hours of the year. The map rescales the mit totals to 1,500 GW of base load power to match the deployment scale chosen here.
11. International Atomic Energy Agency, Considerations to Launch a Nuclear Power Programme, gov/inf/2007/2 (Vienna, Austria: iaea, April 2007).
12. Several nuclear reactors were attacked and destroyed while under construction (that is, without risking radiological contamination): Iraq attacked Iran's Busher reactors during the Iraq-Iran War; Israel destroyed Iraq's Osirak research reactor in 1981 and perhaps another reactor in Syria in August 2007. Attacks on operational reactors were also considered. In 1991, Iraq fired a Scud missile with a cement warhead at Israel, apparently in an attempt to damage the Dimona reactor. The United States considered destruction of North Korea's Yongbyon reactor in the early 1990s to prevent plutonium recovery from the irradiated fuel in the core. India and Pakistan are a notable exception: they have signed an agreement not to attack each other's nuclear installations in the case of war.
13. Separated means unaccompanied by large amounts of radioactivity, and therefore relatively easily accessed. Today, more than 1,500 tons of civilian plutonium have not been separated and are still in spent fuel
14. Under the planned start Follow-on Treaty, the United States and Russia have agreed to reduce their strategic nuclear warheads to 1,500-1,675 by 2016. According to estimates by the Federation of American Scientists, however, each country is expected to retain a total of about 7,000 warheads since they will continue to have non-strategic warheads, weapons in reserve, and weapons awaiting dismantlement. The global stockpile of nuclear weapons could therefore be on the order of 15,000 warheads. In a subsequent reduction, the United States and Russia might reduce to 1,000-1,500 total warheads on each side, which could correspond to 4,000 nuclear weapons worldwide.
15. Breakout describes a scenario in which a host state begins production of fissile materials for weapons purposes (without concealing this effort) at a facility that was previously used for peaceful purposes.
16. International Panel on Fissile Materials, Global Fissile Material Report 2008 (Princeton, N.J.: ipfm, October 2008), Appendix 1A; www.ipfmlibrary.org/gfmr08.pdf. Germany is the only country that managed to stabilize and gradually draw down its plutonium stockpile after having stopped shipping spent fuel for reprocessing (in France and the United Kingdom) in 2005.
17. This is a balanced thermal and fast reactor system in which the plutonium generated in the spent fuel from the fleet of light water reactors is used to fuel a fleet of fast reactors operated in a burner mode. The Future of Nuclear Power, Appendix Chapter 4, 124-126.
18. Shirley Johnson, The Safeguards at Reprocessing Plants under a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty, ipfm Research Report 6 (ipfm, February 2009), www.ipfmlibrary.org/rr06.pdf.
19. Among others, the group included Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard. Catherine Westfall, "Vision and Reality: The ebr-II Story," Nuclear News (February 2004): 25-32.
20. Thomas B. Cochran, Harold A. Feiveson, Frank von Hippel, Walt Patterson, Gennadi Pshakin, M. V. Ramana, Mycle Schneider, and Tatsujiro Suzuki, Fast Breeder Programs: History and Status, ipfm Research Report 8 (ipfm, forthcoming).
21. For this estimate, we assume typical transaction costs for the various steps of the fuel fabrication process, in particular $1,000/kg and $1,500/kg for reprocessing and mox fuel fabrication. For the methodology, see The Future of Nuclear Power, Appendix Chapter 5.D. Our value for reprocessing is conservative. For example, the levelized cost of reprocessing at Japan's new reprocessing plant is about $3,750/kg. In general, fuel costs of nuclear energy are small compared to capital costs. Costs of standard leu fuel add up to about 0.9¢/kWh, which is on the order of 10 to 20 percent of the levelized cost of electricity from nuclear energy.
22. The most common reactor type requires leu (3 to 5 percent uranium-235, as compared to 0.7 percent of this isotope in naturally occurring uranium). leu is not usable for weapons, but the same enrichment facility can in principle produce weapons-grade heu (for instance, 90 percent uranium-235). In principle, nuclear energy can be deployed and used without relying on enrichment or reprocessing. For example, Canada's original candu reactor design, which is natural-uranium fueled and heavy-water moderated and cooled, requires about 25 percent less uranium than a typical light water reactor.
23. Alexander Glaser, "Characteristics of the Gas Centrifuge for Uranium Enrichment and Their Relevance for Nuclear Weapon Proliferation," Science & Global Security 16 (1-2) (2008): 1-25.
24. The current debate gained momentum in October 2003 when The Economist published an article by iaea Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, in which he acknowledged the shortcomings of the current nonproliferation regime; "Towards a Safer World," The Economist, October 16, 2003.
25. John Ritch, The Necessity of Nuclear Power: A Global Human and Environmental Imperative, World Nuclear University, Key Issues in Today's World Nuclear Industry, misctext>Balseiro Institute, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, March 10, 2008, www.world-nuclear.org.
26. For detailed discussion, see: Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Expert Group Report Submitted to the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, infcirc/ 640 (Vienna, Austria: International Atomic Energy Agency, February 22, 2005); Alexander Glaser, Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle, International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, icnnd Research Paper No. 9, February 2009; and Y. Yudin, Multilateralization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Assessing the Existing Proposals (New York and Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2009).
27. From this perspective, Article IV is particularly unbalanced. Besides guaranteeing the "inalienable right... to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination," Article IV also specifies that states with advanced nuclear technologies should cooperate in contributing to "the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of nonnuclear- weapon States Party to the Treaty."
28. Broad international industry-government coordination is a prominent feature of efforts today to accelerate the commercialization of CO2 capture and storage.
29. A new study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimates that "as many as five to nine new nuclear plants could be built in the United States by 2020." The National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, America's Energy Future: Technology and Transformation, Summary Edition (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2009), 112; www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12710.
30. Richard L. Garwin, "Reprocessing Isn't the Answer," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (August 6, 2009); www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/reprocessing-isnt-the-answer.
31. For example, increasing the burn-up of standard leu fuel could improve overall economics of the once-through fuel cycle and also reduce uranium requirements to some degree. Using thorium fuel in new light water reactor types as a partial substitute for standard leu fuel could be another productive field of mid-term research. If implemented sensibly, thorium use would also reduce the total amount of plutonium embedded in spent fuel from light water reactors and perhaps reduce some proliferation concerns of the once-through fuel cycle.
32. Brian Boyer, "Facility Design Can Aid or Frustrate International Safeguards Efforts," Nuclear Power International (June 2009).