Page 137 - Managing Global Warming

102 Managing Global Warming

Fig. 3.30 Carbon footprint for various energy sources. If carbon capture and storage (CCS) is
used, then the carbon footprint can be decreased for coal by about sixfold and for gas about
sixfold. (For carbon footprint of NPPs—see Fig. 3.32.)
Courtesy of Dr. J. Roberts, University of Manchester, United Kingdom; based on data from
http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/POST-PN-268/POST-PN-268.pdf.

Comparison of various electricity-generating power plants based on carbon foot-
print is shown in Fig. 3.30, and deaths per terawatt for various energy sources—in
Fig. 3.31.

3.4 Modern nuclear power reactors and nuclear
power plants

Chapter 4 is fully dedicated to nuclear fission power reactors and NPPs. Therefore, in
this Section, only general statistics and discussion on nuclear power are provided.
Nuclear power is often considered to be a nonrenewable energy source as the fossil
fuels, such as coal and gas. However, nuclear resources can be used for significantly
longer than some fossil fuels, and in some cases almost indefinitely, if recycling of
unused or spent uranium fuel, thoria fuel resources, and fast reactors are used. The
major advantages of nuclear power [1,2,30] are:
(1) concentrated and reliable source of almost infinite energy and is independent of weather
conditions;
(2) high capacity factors are achievable, often in excess of 90% with long operating cycles,
making units suitable for continuous baseload operation (Table 3.4 and Figs. 3.24 and 3.26);
(3) essentially negligible operating emissions of carbon dioxide and relatively small amount of
wastes compared to alternate fossil-fuel thermal power plants (Figs. 3.30 and 3.32, and
Tables 3.9 and 3.10);
(4) relatively small amount of fuel required compared to that of fossil-fuel thermal power
plants (Table 3.9); and