Closing nuclear plants risks rise in greenhouse gas emissions

• Looming climate breakdown is opening fresh divisions among environmentalists over nuclear energy, with a major advocacy group calling for struggling nuclear plants to be propped up to avoid losing their low-carbon power.
• Nuclear is the single largest source of low-carbon electricity in the US. But a third of nuclear plants are unprofitable or scheduled to close, risking a rise in greenhouse gas emissions if they are replaced by coal or natural gas, a major Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report has found.
• US emissions could increase by as much as 6% if struggling plants are shuttered early, the report warns. This scenario has put pressure on many environmental groups to re-evaluate their intrinsic opposition to nuclear energy as a dangerous blight that must be eradicated.
• A third of US nuclear power plants are set to close down or are unprofitable largely due to a major shift to cheaper natural gas. As nuclear provides more than half of the US’s low-carbon energy, this situation “raises serious concerns about our ability to achieve the deep cuts in carbon emissions needed to limit the worst impacts of climate change”, the UCS report states.