Note that this is based solely on nuclear's share of the electric supply. It should be pointed out that nuclear supplies only 1/50th (a 2% share) of the total final global ENERGY consumed. All renewables supplied 16% as of the end of 2012. That means the numbers in this presentation account for only 4% of global final energy use.
Title page
Mitigation of Human-Caused Climate Change
John P. Holdren
Director, The Woods Hole Research Center
Teresa & John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy, Harvard U President, American Association for the Advancement of Science
A Tutorial at the Learning Centre of
The UN Commission on Sustainable Development
United Nations, New York 5 May 2006
2 pages on nuclear
• If world electricity demand grows 2%/year until 2050 and nuclear share of electricity supply is to rise from 1/6 to 1/3...
– nuclear capacity would have to grow from 350 GWe in 2000 to 1700 GWe in 2050;
– this means 1,700 reactors of 1,000MWe each.
• If these were light-water reactors on the once-through fuel cycle...
– enrichment of their fuel will require ~250 million Separative Work Units (SWU);
– diversion of 0.1% of this enrichment to production of HEU from natural uranium would make ~20 gun-type or ~80 implosion-type bombs.
• If half the reactors were recycling their plutonium...
– the associated flow of separated, directly weapon- usable plutonium would be 170,000 kg per year;
– diversion of 0.1% of this quantity would make ~30 implosion-type bombs.
• Spent-fuel production in the once-through case would be...
– 34,000 tonnes/yr, a Yucca Mountain every two years.
Conclusion: Expanding nuclear enough to take a modest bite out of the climate problem is conceivable, but doing so will depend on greatly increased seriousness in addressing the waste-management & proliferation challenges.
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