3 ms·
Doesn’t the enrichment of uranium require a lot of power? Nuclear is not as carbon free as they lead you to believe.
by tamaharbor 5y ago
Doesn’t the enrichment of uranium require a lot of power? Nuclear is not as carbon free as they lead you to believe.
- philipkglass 5y agoThe old gaseous diffusion enrichment process plants were very inefficient. You may be thinking of those. They're not used today in the West. (I'm not sure if Russia or China still operates such plants.) The last French plant closed in 2012 and the last American plan closed in 2013 [1]. Commercial centrifuge enrichment, a much more efficient process, started in the 1970s [2]. That's what enriches uranium for power reactor fuel today. That said, even with gaseous diffusion enrichment, nuclear power had much lower life cycle emissions per megawatt hour than any fossil generating source. Nothing is 100% "carbon free" over its full life cycle but nuclear power and renewables both have very low emissions compared to fossil combustion [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion#Current_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion#Current_stat... [2] https://www.urenco.com/about/history https://www.urenco.com/about/history [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emissions_of_energy_sources#Global_warming_potential_of_selected_electricity_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emis...