Total life cycle energy costs calculations are both daunting and require assumptions. Anyone wishing to bend the result in a particular way can simply make the needed assumptions. This is as true of coal, oil and gas as nuclear. For example, while it is true that construction energy expenditures are higher for nuclear than coal, transportation and mining costs are much higher for coal, and then of course, depending on the decision of what to do with the slag heap, coal decommisioning costs can also be high.
Most of the energy costs associated with nuclear can be generated thru electrical power which, in turn can be generated by nuclear plants (e.g. isotope separation). The US isotope separation plants were built to supply naval reactors and weapons, thus they are over-built for nuclear power generation. Life cycle energy costs are much better captured by the experience in France and Japan, which a) don't support a huge nuclear military complex, b) have standard designs c) reprocess. Here is a rather dense life cycle costing that does a fair job of explaining its assumptions http://www.uic.com.au/nip57.htm (and has a short URL!:) The quick synopsis is that the percent of output used as input for energy is about 2% for nuclear with centrifuge isotope separation and 5% with gaseous diffusion, coal varies between 2 and 6%, gas is about 15% because of transportation costs, In terms of CO2 coal is 975 g/kWh, nuclear 22 and gas 608. FWIW. Hopefully, the nice thing about this group is that folks will go read the report. Eli (a Rabett in exile, on the beach and having fun) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
