"Greens caused gigatons of carbon dioxide to enter the atmosphere from the coal and gas burning that went ahead instead of #nuclear. I was part of that too, I apologize." (Stewart Brand, 2009)
@kravietz This statement is telling the tale hat nuclar power is saving C02. But you need a lot of energy (which is from coal, oil and gas) to prepare the fule rods.
You need a lot of energy too to mine coal, gas, oil as well as rare earth metals required for manufacture of solar panels and wind turbines.
This is all quantified already - overall CO2 intensity of wind farm is 15 gCO2e/kWh, most of which is infrastructure, while nuclear is 5 gCOe/kWh *including* infrastructure, fuel and waste management.
@kravietz I have to admit that I'm not an export o this topic. But the graphs you showed are not really trustworthy for me. Esp. the second one might be from Vattenfall (and thus biased) as it is title "… Vattenfall …".
Also on could admirably argu about whether the "decommissioning" really uses that less C02 - given that you actually recommision and not only burry it in e.g. Asse.
If you are a firm believer in the evil of nuclear power as many people in Germany are, I'm afraid nothing can really change you mind. You will find any detail as an excuse not to accept the data and prefer Greens/Greenpeace convenient narrative.
The fact is however that the latter is not only extremely biased but simply unscientific. And is also the main reason why Germany is currently investing in coal and gas power rather than "wind and solar" unicorn.
> risks of nuclear power are no religion
What about risks of rare earth mining for wind and solar? Or air transport? Or cars? Or gas and oil mining? Or hydro? Did you realize that a single hydro dam failure in China killed ~200k people back in 70's?
> this still does not make it into an option
This for sure sounds like a very rational and non-believer-like argument.
> What is the source
https://www.brightnewworld.org/s/BNW-EEcommittee-nuclear-submission_160919_FINAL.pdf
> then we need to reduce our consume
Yeah, sure:
@kravietz I'm not a "believer", as the risks of nuclear power are no religion.
Maybe nuclear power emits less CO2, this still does not make it into an option. If nuclear power is he only/best way to produce the ammout of power we consume, then we need to reduce our consume.
Anyway: What is the source of these graphs?