The title says it all, of course. Today's Reuters news has a small item detailing Japan's new nuclear builds and it's direct effect on cutting climate changing greenhouse gases. Anyone who REALLY cares about climate change needs to look at this table and draw the conclusions that new nuclear leads to a drop in the use of dangerous fossil fuels. But let's parse the numbers first, shall we?
The table is here for those that like...tables. But he is my Executive Summary:
Between 2014 (less than 5 years from now) and 2022, Japan plans to add 13 brand spanking new nuclear reactors to it's grid.
These reactors will put out 20 GWs or more non-CO2 electrical generation. And these plans are issued, in part, post financial crisis.
More importantly, if you look at this chart detailing the effect of nuclear on burning fossil fuel, you can see why nuclear is so important:
here (Daily Kos won't let me link to the public Reuters image library).
This chart shows the decrease in dangerous fossil fuel generation as directly proportional to the capacity factor of the new nuclear builds. No 'renewable' source outside of limited hydro can play the same role. In otherwords, one can plan to reduce fossil fuel to exact specific percentages based on deployment of new nuclear power plants and reactors.
The decision by the Japanese to increase nuclear, however, seems motivated by energy security and finance rather than CO2 or particulate output. While of course nuclear is going to shutdown some coal plants, the goal is to reduce Japan's dependence on oil and natural gas. While this is laudable, it is an incorrect priority as coal burning has so much more an impact negatively on the environment. Coal is cheap, as the Japanese buy it from China (less) and Australia (more). Oil and LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) has to travel from the Middle East and Iran to get to Japan.
There are experts in the Japanese planning commissions that think, however, this number, 42% by 2020 is far to low and they want to implement a "Chinese style" new build program, increasing nuclear's share of generation to 65%, not unlike S. Korea's current plan.
All this goes to show that only nuclear has any real shot at seriously reducing dangerous fossil fuel consumption.
D. Walters