On the Potential of Nuclear Fission Energy for Effective Reduction of Carbon Emission under the Constraint of Uranium Resources Use without Spent Fuel Reprocessing

Urgency to stop further increase of greenhouse gases emissions and reverse the trends, as stated in the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) Report and in Copenhagen discussions, limits the realistic choice of energy technologies to those available now or in the near future of few decades. In the coming fifty years neither nuclear fusion nor carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be expected to give a significant contribution to world energy production. Two perspective intermittent sources such as wind and solar together with nuclear fission energy covering the base load consumption appears to be a combination with a potential to produce a large share of carbon free energy in the total world energy production. This contribution considers the issues, associated with required large scale deployment of nuclear fission energy. A serious question associated with nuclear energy is nuclear proliferation. Spread of uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing installations in many new countries constructing nuclear reactors would be a major concern in present political environment. We investigate whether uranium resources would be sufficient to support nuclear build-up in next 50-60 years sufficiently large to significantly reduce carbon emission without reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. A positive answer would mean that 50-60 years can be available to develop effective international control of nuclear fuel cycle installations. Our results show that a maximum nuclear build-up which would consume currently estimated uranium resources by 2065 without reprocessing could reduce by 2065 carbon emission by 39.6% of the total reduction needed to bring the WEO 2009 Reference Scenario prediction of total GHG emissions in 2065 to the level of the WEO 450 Scenario limiting global temperature increase to 2 degrees of C. The less demanding strategy of the nuclear replacement of all non-CCS coal power plants retiring during the 2025-2065 period would reduce emission by 26.1%.(author).