Can Nuclear Power be a part of a sustainable energy system?

Society is looking to nuclear power to help reduce carbon emissions. Maximizing nuclear’s contribution requires continuously improving safety systems and finding a long-term solution to handling nuclear waste.

After decades of negative public opinion and political opposition, investments in nuclear power have regained momentum in several European countries. A primary reason for nuclear power’s renaissance around the world is concern over greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

Is nuclear power really low-emitting?

While all parties agree that the actual electricity generation process produces negligible emissions of greenhouse gases, stakeholders have differing views as to the emissions produced in the so-called ‘lifecycle’ – including the uranium mining and processing, construction, and decommissioning phases.

Vattenfall has commissioned certified lifecycle analyses of its own nuclear operations in Sweden, and our calculations show extremely low emissions of 5.36 g of CO₂ per KWh – comparable to the lifecycle emissions of the best renewable energy sources.

Vattenfall’s low life cycle emissions are based specifically on Vattenfall’s processes and supply chain, and cannot necessarily be extrapolated to all nuclear power. Differences may arise based on such factors as the quality of uranium (and thus the energy required for processing), the electricity mix in the countries where mining, processing and plant construction take place, and the expected lifetime of the constructed plant.

Nonetheless, it is important to note the significant emissions reductions potential of nuclear power. Vattenfall’s nuclear power emits than 1% of the greenhouse gases emitted by conventional fossil-fuelled power plants.

Can it grow?

There is also disagreement whether nuclear power, with its long lead times for permitting and construction, can be mobilized in time to meet emission reductions timetables.

Vattenfall contributed to the 2008 McKinsey & Co. study Pathways to a Low-Carbon Economy, which looked at the potential for different low-emission technologies to expand and thus reduce emissions by the year 2030. Taking into account expected hurdles, the study saw potential for nuclear power to expand between 30% and 70% globally. Such growth would account for between 3.5-7.6% of total necessary emission reductions related to energy – roughly equivalent to the potential contribution of wind power or solar photovoltaics.

Environmental benefits depend on availability and safe operation

Capturing the benefits of nuclear’s low-emission output will require that nuclear plants are available – and availability is primarily a question of safety. Standard maintenance and modernisation can be planned for, but irregularities in safety procedures can extend these outages or even lead to unplanned outages.

Vattenfall’s power plants have experienced well-documented outages in recent years for reasons related to safety (see Vattenfall’s 2009 CSR Report for an extensive review of these events and the related safety procedures). In 2010, as well, delays in the implementation of a large modernisation effort led to low availability in Sweden. One negative impact of these outages has been the temporarily increased emission intensity from Vattenfall’s overall electricity generation portfolio.

Dealing with nuclear waste: permanent storage and the next generation

Spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste is handled both at the nuclear power plants as well as by specialist organisations tasked to provide longer-term interim storage and to deploy and operate final repositories. The internationally preferred option for final storage is a geological repository located several hundred meters underground. Sweden, Finland and France are leading the way in the development and licensing processes for such final repositories. The system being developed in Sweden is intended to keep the waste isolated for a minimum of 100,000 years. We believe that this technology is suitable and credible, but it will be implemented carefully in order to ensure feasibility.