Research Quantifies Value of Existing Nuclear Power Plants in Push for Decarbonization

May 15, 2023

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
May 15, 2023

A Pacific Northwest National Laboratory analysis quantifies for the first time the value of existing nuclear power plants in the U.S. in the context of meeting deep decarbonization goals.

PNNL detailed the research findings in a recent post on its website, noting that the research was led by PNNL Earth scientist Son Kim with the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI), a partnership between PNNL and the University of Maryland.

The report notes that nuclear power is currently the single largest carbon-free source of electricity in the United States.

Nuclear plants in the U.S. slated to close by 2050 “could be among the most important players in a challenge that requires all carbon-free technology solutions that are available—emerging and existing—the report finds. New nuclear technology also has a part to play, and its contributions could be boosted by driving down construction costs,” PNNL said.

“Our existing nuclear power plants are aging and with their current 60-year lifetimes, nearly all of them will be gone by 2050. It’s ironic. We have a net zero goal to reach by 2050, yet our single largest source of carbon-free electricity is at risk of closure,“ said Kim.

Kim used the Global Change Analysis Model developed at PNNL to model multiple scenarios of extending the lifetime of the existing nuclear fleet into 2100.

Kim’s research, which was published in Nuclear Technology, put a value on lifetime license extensions from 40 to 100 years at $330 billion to $500 billion in mitigation cost savings under a scenario that limits global temperature to 2°C.

Mitigation cost savings, or the carbon value, are amounts of dollars saved in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Legacy nuclear reactors alone have a carbon value of $500 billion if operational for 100 years, PNNL noted. Every gigawatt of energy, or one nuclear power reactor, translates to $5 billion later saved. Because that gigawatt was produced without any carbon emitted into Earth’s atmosphere, no money would need to be spent to mitigate its effects, PNNL said.

Kim determined that lifetime extensions of existing nuclear power reactors from 60 to 80 years, without adding new nuclear capacity, contributed to a reduction of approximately 0.4 gigatons of carbon emissions per year by 2050.

The total cumulative difference in CO2 emissions between 2020 and 2100, in a scenario with lifetime extensions and future deployment of nuclear power plants (as compared to a scenario with a moratorium on new nuclear power plants), amounts to as much as 57 gigatons of carbon.