Is nuclear energy green energy

Answer 1

No. The idea that nuclear energy is green is being spread by pronuclear lobby groups like the NEI and CASEnergy Coalition and others. Most environmental groups oppose nuclear energy.

The main reason nuclear energy is not green has to do with the fact that the waste product is still highly radioactive and has to be disposed of safely. Since the life cycle of many of these elements lasts for some hundreds of thousands of years, the idea that there is a safe place to dispose of radioactive waste that will positively remain safe for that amount of time is ridiculous.

There's also the matter of accidents happening at these plants that threaten the lives of everyone who lives within 100 miles of it (not to mention the radioactive plumes that would result from an accident and spread across the globe. The probability of an accident over the life of the plant and the radioactive materials inside it may be low, but all it takes is one disaster to threaten the lives of everyone in the area and leave the survivors (and the generations that follow) with a legacy of cancer and other disease. Pro-nuclear pundits might tell you only 40-something people died from the Chernobyl disaster, but what they don't tell you is that around 100,000 people have died from cancer caused by the accident.

Really though, if you want to know how "green" nuclear energy is, have a look at what is happening at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.

Well, let's look at it from another angle (and, one which many "Green" environmental groups are now embracing). The use of nuclear energy (in its current fission form) has three major cycles:

1. The fuel production cycle
2. The power production cycle
3. The fuel disposal cycle.

Currently, mining uranium to produce new fuel is relatively toxic - it requires a rather complex mining process, particularly one which can produce significant radiation in the local area (particularly, radon gas which is found in conjunction with the uranium ore). The refining process is also somewhat toxic, requiring several nasty chemicals, though in small quantities.

However, the total amount of material to produce enough fuel for a nuclear reactor is relatively small. A single standard reactor uses less than 1 ton of fuel per year, which requires roughly 4,000 tons of raw uranium to produce. Significantly less new uranium ore is required if either old fuel rods are recycled, or a plutonium "breeder" reactor is used to burn the waste plutonium from the uranium fuel rods. (On the order of 90% less raw ore needed in these cases.)

That is, the amount of fuel to produce 1 MWh (MegaWatt-hour, or 1 million Watts of power for 1 hour) for nuclear power is extremely low, 2.4 grams of refined fuel. This 2.4g of Uranium fuel require 10kg of Uranium ore if no "spent" fuel rod recycling is done, or less than 100g of ore if the old fuel rod is recycled. For comparison, 1 MWh using oil requires a bit less than 50 gallons of moderately-refined fuel oil, or roughly 60 gallons of crude oil. For coal, 1 MWh requires about 400kg of coal.

To scale this up to a world-wide level: in 2009, the entire world generated 21 TWh (TeraWatt Hours, or 1 million MWh) of electricity. To generate this amount using uranium fission nuclear power, uses 50 tons of uranium and 2100 tons of uranium ore (or, 210,000 tons of ore, if we don't recycle). For oil, that means 1,260 million gallons of crude oil. For coal, 8.4 billion tons.

Construction of a nuclear power plant itself is also relatively cheap, and quite non-toxic. That is, a nuclear power plant is virtually all steel and concrete, and doesn't use any significant amounts of materials that are toxic, or require toxic manufacturing processes. So, creating a nuclear power plant is very "green".

Operation of a nuclear power plant is relatively complex, but also extraordinarily safe, in terms of environmental impact, and also in terms of risk. Despite earlier hysteria (and, continued hysteria by uninformed or biased sources), nuclear power produces absolutely no environmentally-dangerous substances during normal operation, excepting the spent fuel itself, which is relatively small. In addition, the environmental contamination of a nuclear reactor in an accident (even a catastrophic accident) is very low. Firstly, the risk of such an accident is very, very much smaller than any other current technology power plant (including such "green" ones as hydro and solar). Secondly, safety systems (which include proper public notification) are designed to allow for progressive contamination, rather than catastrophic - that is, radiation releases are gradual, rather than instantaneous, which allow for counter-measures. Thirdly, even in catastrophic accidents, the dangers of specific radiation releases are significantly less than detractors often hype. It is indeed possible to contaminate large areas, but only with very low-level radiation, which poses a very short-term, mild risk. High-level contamination is really only possible in the area immediately around the reactor. The fact is that the danger of radiation is inversely related to its duration - high risk means short duration of that risk. The biggest real problem (from an environmental standpoint) of a nuclear reactor is the large amounts of water required by the plant, and the significant amount of warm waste water produced. This water is not contaminated in any way, but is 40+ degrees warmer than what was taken in. That is, a Nuclear power plant will generally raise water temperatures in a nearby river by 10 degrees or so for up to a dozen miles downstream, which does have a measurable impact on the local fish and plant life in the river.

Lastly, the dreaded fuel disposal cycle. Actual disposal of nuclear waste is a technically simple proposition, though it can be expensive (and, has a huge political cost). The amount of fuel which must be disposed of can also be significantly reduced by recycling used fuel into new rods (reducing both the disposal amounts and the new uranium required to be mined). Recycling reduces needed ore by up to 90%, and reduces the final "waste" volume by up to 75%. The remainder of the fuel must be sequestered properly. However, the original requirement for 10,000 year sequestering is stupid (and a product of political, not technical, issues). Proper disposal in an environmentally safe form is a modestly complex technical issue, made simpler by the fact that the total amount to be sequestered can be radically reduced - with proper design and recycling, annual sequestering requirements can be on the order of a few tons at most. To use the above world-wide example of 50 tons of fuel used, after recycling, this would mean under 12 tons would need to be disposed of.

Overall, looking at the total cycle (creation of the power plant, creation of the fuel, running of the power plant, disposal of any fuel), nuclear power has a significantly lower environmental impact and risk than any currently large-scale power production EXCEPT geothermal. Both wind and solar power aren't really usable on the industrial scale right now, and also both have significant environmental impacts that aren't usually obvious to the casual observer. Hydro causes vast environmental damage during construction, and also carries very significant risks. Fossil fuel burning, of course, is nasty.

So, looking at the overall picture, most environmental groups have come to the conclusion that properly designed and runnuclear power plants are certainly a better choice than practically anything else right now. There are two key caveats here: (1) we should be using current reactor designs - so, we should decommissioning all those 30+ year-old reactors, and replacing them with brand-new ones, and (2) the political and regulatory environment has to be much more sane - we need a complete overhaul of our assumptions, with an eye to the technical realities, not to the political or emotional issues.

The short answer is this: of current mass-power-production technologies, nuclear power is indeed "green", more so than any except geothermal. In the long run, however, it should be replaced with better technologies, because it still has some environmental impact, and eliminating this would be a good thing. In other words: (a) quit building any new dams or fossil fuel plants, and build only new nuclear plants and (b) do a lot of research into solar/wind/wave/fusion in the hopes of producing better designs that can be used for commercial power production in an even more green way.

One more thing: the total number of deaths directly attributable to nuclear power (whether during mining, research, or in accidents) over its 60 year lifespan are under 100. Indirect deaths are much harder to measure, but even the most negative estimates are fewer than 100,000 additional cancer deaths total, world-wide. That's under 1,500 per year. Thus sounds like a huge number, but here's some other data (straight from WHO) for comparison on safety (in annual deaths per TeraWatt of power generated, smaller is better):

1. Coal: 161
2. Oil: 36
3. Biofuel: 12
4. Peat: 12
5. Natural Gas: 4
6. Hydro: 1.4
7. Solar (rooftop): 0.44
8. Wind: 0.15
9. Nuclear: 0.04

So, nuclear is 4x safer than wind, 35x safer than Hydro, 100x safer than the best fossil fuel (gas), and 4000x safer than coal.

In many ways, nuclear power's danger mimics that of airline travel: both nuclear power and air travel have very rare accidents, which tend to hurt a modest number of people. Fossil fuels and motor vehicle accidents, however, never have massively spectacular accidents, but consistently kill people in small numbers on a daily basis. Both nuclear power and airline travel are much safer (by several orders of magnitude) than their alternatives, but all we tend to see is those very rare "disasters", and ignore the steady stream of small deaths occurring all the time in the alternatives.