The human ecology of climate change - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 391

true. While it is not this topic's purpose to look at energy resources in detail, because
of the biological and human-ecology consequences of climate change it is necessary
to at least examine them in a broad way to ascertain the approximate greenhouse
gas-emitting potentials of differing energy resources. Fortunately, comparing UK
and France's energy consumption and their respective fossil fuel/nuclear balance can
allow us to make a very simplistic but informative assessment. This comparison is
all the more valuable because France and the UK are geographically close, share the
same European economic grouping, have a similar population size (in 2004, 60.6
million and 60.4 million respectively) and have a similar annual total (fossil and
non-fossil) energy consumption, which for 2004 was 262.9 and 226.9 million t of
oil equivalent (mtoe) respectively (BP Economics Unit, 2005). Yet France consumes
some 29% (60.4 mtoe annum − 1 ) less fossil fuel energy than the UK. This fossil saving
comes from France's nuclear power programme which is far bigger than the UK's.
That there is a fossil saving means that France itself is not expending more fossil
energy (offsetting the fossil savings) in processing or enriching uranium ore or pro-
cessing nuclear waste. It can be argued that there is a considerable amount of energy
expended in mining and transporting uranium ore. Looking at nations from which
uranium ore mining takes place it is difficult to discern any major difference in fossil
fuel consumption on a per-capita basis above that of their economically comparable
neighbours. This is not to say that there is no energy expended in uranium extraction
and refining but that it does not put anywhere near as heavy a fossil fuel burden
on a nation as nuclear power saves. Indeed, one estimate, admittedly assuming effi-
cient fast-breeder reactors, is that a low-grade uranium ore (Chattanooga black shale,
with just 60 g of uranium per t of shale) has an energy equivalent to 1000 t of coal
(McMullan, 1977). Higher-grade ore is better still. So, even without using fast-breeder
reactors, we can see that a tonne of higher-grade uranium ore is worth thousands (or
tens of thousands for even higher grades of ore) of tonnes of coal, hence the energy
used for mining and refining it is nearly proportionally less per tonne of fuel (hun-
dreds or thousands of times less, as uranium is more energy-intensive to refine than
oil). This was reflected in a 2006 estimate provided by a UK 'green' policy forum,
the Sustainable Development Commission. It cited an estimate for carbon emissions
from (non-fast-breeder) nuclear power as being 4.4 tC GWh − 1 compared to 243 tC
GWh − 1 for coal. In short, while nuclear power does not have a zero-fossil carbon
cost it does have a very significant net fossil carbon-saving impact.
The exact magnitude of such savings will become more certain in the coming
decade as assessments are made prior to the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol (see
Chapter 8) that is due (at the time of writing) to begin in 2012.
The other difficulty with the nuclear option is that civil nuclear power can be used
to further military nuclear technologies that in turn undermine international stability.
This is likely to become an increasingly pertinent issue as on one hand developing
nations legitimately seek to become more energy-sustainable, and so explore the
nuclear option, while on the other they may be tempted by the international leverage
that a nuclear military option confers. (Iran in the years subsequent to 2003 is but
one example.)
There is also another similarity between nuclear fission and fossil fuel use, which is
that strictly both are finite or fund resources. This is not always appreciated. Currently