COVER STORY | CONTAINING CARBON
Boosting nuclear’s low-carbon story
Nuclear’s low carbon story will be boosted alongside other alternative sources of generation, as cross-industry initiatives start to take out the remaining carbon burden of generating and delivering power
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS OFFER LOW carbon generation, but they are large pieces of infrastructure and as such they have to take account of carbon emissions that arise from sourcing their materials, and during construction, operation and decommissioning. Among options for power generation, nuclear’s life-cycle
carbon emissions are similar to those from offshore wind, according to figures from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It estimates emissions for those two sources as12t/MWh. There is very little difference between them and the source with the lowest emissions, onshore wind, which has emissions of 11t/MWh. Nuclear’s carbon toll is half that of hydropower (24t/MWe) and between a half and a fifth that of solar PV, which can have lifecycle emissions as high as 45t/MWh. Of course all these emissions levels are tiny compared
with fossil fuel generation. Coal life cycle emissions are 820t/MWh and methane gas emissions are 490t/MWe in the same IPCC ranking. (The IPCC assessment is in fact in ‘equivalent tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions’, because it takes account of different greenhouse gases, whose effect may be many times that of carbon dioxide.)
But this number is not fixed for all time. The race to a
decarbonised society affects companies in the supply chain just as it does power generation companies themselves. This gives all low-carbon sources an opportunity to move closer to true zero carbon as successive generations are built.
What does that mean for nuclear? The UK’s PWR new- build programme provides a useful timeline for comparison.
Carbon life cycle assessment ‘First concrete’ for Hinkley Point C took place in March 2017, although civil works had been under way for some time before then. Work on its successor, Sizewell C, is expected in the middle of this decade with a construction period that would take startup to the second half of the 2030s. During these two decades big steps are being taken in reducing the carbon load for its components. In 2021 NNB Generation Company HPC Ltd, Hinkley
Point C’s owner, released a life cycle assessment of the carbon emissions from the plant along with other impacts – Life cycle carbon and environmental impact analysis of electricity from Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant
Above: The construction of Hinkley Point C will use vast amounts of carbon-intensive materials like concrete and steel
14 | September 2023 |
www.neimagazine.com
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