Energy Externalities Day 4: Nuclear Power
It’s now day 4 of the Energy Externality Game. Diesel generators were next on the list, but I decided to skip over that for the time being and to move on to the more exciting topic of nuclear power. Nuclear power has a long supply chain and needs to take into account U mining, ore processing and upgrading to yellow cake; enrichment and fuel manufacture; construction of enrichment facilities, reactors and power stations; operation of the foregoing; decommissioning and waste storage.
The Externalities of Energy Production Systems (Day 1 Coal)
Energy Externalities Day 2: Gas-fired-CCGT
Energy Externalities Day 3: Biomass-Fired-Electricity
I am proposing to use 12 metrics to measure costs and benefits:
- Fatalities / year / unit of energy produced
- Chronic illness years / year / unit of energy produced
- Environmental costs not covered directly by the system operators
- Foot print of energy system per unit of energy produced
- Energy system costs where energy source transfers costs to the transmission system
- Energy system benefits where energy source provides a service to the transmission system
- Environmental benefits derived from energy system operation
- Taxes raised / year / for total energy produced
- Subsidies paid / year / for total energy produced
- Tax free cost of energy
- EroEI
- Resource availability
For the following 12 electricity generating systems
- Coal-fired (Monday 19 March)
- Gas-fired (Tuesday 20 March)
- Biomass-fired
- Diesel
- Nuclear
- Hydro electric
- Wind
- Solar PV
- Solar thermal
- Wave
- Tidal
- barrage
- lagoon
- stream
- Geothermal
I then go on to provide qualitative assessments of each measure for each electricity system. I have then developed a game whereby we assign a score against each measure on a scale of 1 to 10 where.
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