"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.
@kirschwipfel As for decommissioning - yes, you *could* argue. But when arguing let's present *data* rather than baseless whataboutism.
@kravietz "Don't trust any statistic you did not forge yourself." Without deep knowledge about which decommission scenario has been evaluated, this it hard to take as granted. And if the figures are from Vattenfall: They are biased for sure.
Just to give you some background: 20 years ago I was also very closely associated with Greens in Poland (who were influenced by German Greens). I shared all the arguments against nuclear, I personally experienced Chernobyl in 1986 etc.
However, with my background in chemistry some of their arguments sounded... a bit silly. So I started to double check in scientific sources. And gradually I became very much disillusioned in Greenpeace and the likes. They are scammers.
