Paul Flynn – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Prime Minister

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Flynn on 2014-04-30.

To ask the Prime Minister, pursuant to his oral Answer of 30 April 2014, Official Report, column 824, what the evidential basis is for the statement that nuclear power is carbon-free.

Mr David Cameron

There is a strong consensus in the global scientific community that nuclear energy represents one of the lowest carbon forms of baseload electricity generation.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the life cycle emissions associated with the generation of electricity from nuclear power groups are 16g CO₂ per kWh electricity produced. This is very low compared to the equivalent figure for electricity produced by natural gas turbines, which is in excess of 400g CO₂/kWh, and similar to the IPCC’s estimate for widespread non-baseload form of electricity generation, such as wind.

The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology report ‘Carbon Footprint of Electricity Generation’ states that the operation of the nuclear power station accounts for less than 1% of the total life cycle emissions of nuclear electricity generation.