Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the root cause of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of
Mexico in April of
.)
The resurgence of nuclear power mentioned at the
beginning of this chapter in the
y
paused for rethinking after Fukushima. It is back on track
in most of Asia, Russia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East,
and in parts of South America. Of the reactors in the
planning stage in the United States before Fukushima,
four are under construction, and if they come in on time
and on budget, more will be built. In Europe, only
Germany and the Netherlands plan to phase out their
nuclear power (the third phase-out for Germany; the
first edition was brie
rst
being after the Chernobyl disaster, the second being the
phase-out of the
first phase-out when they rescinded the
law requiring the phase-out of nuclear, and the third
being the current one).
I will discuss nuclear safety issues later in this chapter.
Before I get to that, I want to set the stage
-
where we are
and why nuclear energy is bene
cial
in a carbon-
constrained world.
At the end of
there were
nuclear power
reactors operating in
countries, producing
%of
world electricity, and
more are under construction.
Because of them, CO
emissions from electricity gener-
ation are three billion tonnes less than they would be
without
them (life-cycle
emissions
are
shown in
Figure
) and air pollution is much less than it would
otherwise have been.
Economic growth is driving demand for more energy,
and concerns about energy supply and cost of fuel dom-
inate the move to more nuclear power. The emission-free
.
