The Carbon Free Challenge
It is now generally accepted that the steadily increasing concentration of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is a core factor in climate change. With tough targets, both international and domestic, to reduce emissions, attention has been focussed on alternative forms of energy production, so that those whose reliance upon carbon-based fuels is minimised.
So what are the options? The obvious one is to harness energy from sources like wind and tide. Unfortunately no matter how much electricity you produce in this way; and in the UK renewables still account for less than 5%, you still need equivalent and instant back up capacity from other forms of energy generation. This means for every 1,200 – 1,500 wind turbines built to generate 1000Mw of electrical output (a typical power plant) you also need to build another coal/gas/nuclear plant to generate a further 800 MW of electrical output to make up the deficiencies in times of low winds and high demand. There are other drawbacks and surprisingly it isn’t the greenest option. See below.
Fossil fuels are out. These are the most polluting, and affordable technology to capture the huge quantities of CO2 they produce doesn’t exist yet. So where does that leave us?
Interestingly if you examine the “green” qualities of each fuel by measuring the amount of carbon generated for each kilowatt hour (KW/Hr) of energy produced, taking into account the complete lifecycle of each technology, it is the nuclear option that produces least carbon, just 4g of carbon per KW/hr of electricity generated, which is half the carbon produced by wind.
Information courtesy of the British Nuclear Energy Society using data from the Government’s Energy Technology Support Unit, and confirmed by the OECD. The figures are taken over a complete life cycle of the relevant technology.
So, if one of the requirements for energy in the UK is for it to be green and clean, then the nuclear option has a real role to play in helping us to achieve that goal.