%26quot;Again, it is not clean in carbon terms. If you count the entire fuel cycle of nuclear̶digging the stuff up, enriching it, transporting it, building the very concrete intensive reactors which as they cure release CO2—nuclear is not carbon neutral.%26quot;
Her answer to the question is towards the end of the interview.
http://www.motherjones.com/interview/200...
Additional Details
1 week ago
It doesn%26#039;t seem like anyone has looked at Lovins answer to the question:%26quot;MJ: Would you rather live next to a nuclear power plant or a coal burning plant?
HL: The nukes. Coal plants spew out mercury and the nuclear safety record is actually not that bad. The real harm is the entire fuel cycle.%26quot;
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Other Answers (13)
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I have lived within a couple of miles of each type.
With scrubber technology coal fired plants can be relatively clean, but they still pollute more than nuclear plants for no other reason than the government enforced emissions limits for the harmful emissions from coal fired plants is much higher than the emissions limits for the harmful emissions from nuclear power plants.
My questions in response to Hunter Lovins would be:
- Don%26#039;t they dig up and transport coal as well?
- Aren%26#039;t coal fired plants also made with concrete?
- Unless all the trucks and mining machines and cranes and the entire economy stops running on oil tell me one method of electricity production which doesn%26#039;t in some way depend on fossil fuels?
- And finally, to produce the equivalent energy from coal takes 8000 times the volume and produces 8000 times the waste as Uranium, wouldn%26#039;t it be a bit more expensive to dig up, process and manage 8000 times more fuel over the lifespan of a generating station?
I think I would choose the nuke plant or at least somewhere which was consistently upwind of the coal fired plant ... and consistently upwind of Hunter Lovins!
http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf11.html
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebH...
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/Sevi...