Sasmita Panigrahi completed her Phd at Techno India University, India
Abstract
Many of the world’s largest short-term decarbonisation efforts have been accomplished using nuclear energy. While all forms of energy production have potential downsides, nuclear energy’s reliability, density, and versatility make it well suited as a part of a global clean energy system.
No energy source is always available, but nuclear energy gets pretty close. In the United States, nuclear power plants regularly operate for more than 90% of the year, providing “baseload” clean energy. In the developing and developed world, the availability of clean energy is critical to reducing humanity’s long-term impact on the environment and population.
Nuclear power plants provide clean energy during disastrous weather events and require infrequent refueling, contributing to their high reliability. Nuclear energy’s high capacity factor, a measurement of how much of the time an energy source is generating electricity, makes it ideally suited to providing energy in situations when weather and other resources may not be reliable.
Electricity is only part of the story.
Electricity production accounts for less than 40% of the energy usage and carbon emissions in the United States. Around the world, nuclear power plants are currently used to heat homes and create fresh water in addition to providing electricity. Transportation and industrial energy use, which are heavily reliant on fossil fuels, make up half of total energy usage in the United States and will need to be decarbonized. Nuclear energy has long been seen as a viable replacement for fossil fuel-based heat in many industrial processes and can be used to create electricity and zero-carbon fuels, like hydrogen, for use in decarbonized transportation.
