[Approx. Read Time: 3 minutes]
Myth: Nuclear Power Emits Massive Amounts of Greenhouse Gases
I have heard many times before that Nuclear Power emits a lot of greenhouse gases. In all actuality Nuclear Power emits NO greenhouse gases while producing electricity, but if you look at the entire life cycle of nuclear (mining, construction, etc.) you will see that it does emit a minimal amount of CO2 because of the labor involved in manufacturing and the construction of the units. This is the same for all other forms of energy producing sectors as well, including wind, solar, and hydro.
Yes–you read that correctly, all forms of energy production releases some sort of greenhouse gases in their life cycle. If you think about it for a minute, this statement makes total sense. Humans release CO2 into the atmosphere, we even breathe out CO2, and since we have to work at these facilities all facilities will release some CO2. Manufacturing and construction of the facilities will also emit CO2. The truth of the matter is, we can’t possibly have 100% CO2 free energy, but we should produce large amounts of energy while keeping our CO2 emissions to a minimum. Luckily, we have that technology available to us today and that is nuclear power!
Lets look at the graph below, it illustrates the amount of CO2 energy the US has avoided by the use of nuclear power production.
How about the rest of the energy industries you ask? Well lets look at the graph below to see how much energy is avoided by other energy producing industries. You can see that nuclear power far exceeds the amount of avoided CO2 by the top “renewable” energy productions.
Nuclear power accounts for 73.6 percent of all the energy production methods considered to be CO2 free. The graph below shows you how much energy is produced by nuclear power compared to other CO2 free emitting energies. This is one of many reasons why we should have a big portion of our energy come from nuclear power, but this is not to say that we should not keep using the other forms of clean energies. In fact, in order for the US to have the greatest benefit, the US will need to use all forms of CO2 free emitting energies, but for the most part the main producer and base power producer should be nuclear power.
This is great information to have but one might ask, “How much CO2 is released by nuclear?” Great question! The answer is in the graph below. It illustrates the amount of CO2 that is released during the life-cycle of energy production from 8 different energy industries. As you can clearly see nuclear power is a close 3rd place but is very comparable to both Wind and geothermal. Now lets combine the information above with the amount of energy produced from nuclear and you have a clear winner of where our country needs to get their base power from…Nuclear Power!
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized Exelon and Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), together with Raytheon for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions under its Climate Leaders program.
