re: EPA regs to kill nuclear power

quote:

---

The emission intensity of nuclear is ~3.4% that of natural gas, so even if a state is 100% nuclear, it would still increase its emission intensity by switching to natural gas - by a factor of 29 fold in the real world - by a factor of 1.71 using the EPA's brain dead method of calculation. Its not close to reality but it is still above 1.

---

The issue is states with a mix of nuclear and coal. The nuclear scaling affects the denominator as well as the numerator. Essentially most of that nuclear electricity generation is invisible. If they replace it all with natgas the paper ratio improves.

Let's say a state has 50% nuclear and 50% coal.

In terms of overall intensity the coal is weighted at 97%. The nuclear capacity is very low-emissions but isn't given much weight. Replace the nuclear with natgas and now the non-coal mix gets full-weighted, so even though natgas has a much higher emissions intensity relative to nuclear (I think it's around half of coal) the paper number goes down.