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Positives:

• Low marginal cost of energy production. This means that once a plant is built, it can produce a set amount of energy cheaper than other technologies such as gas. This does not include the cost of the plant, but is a cost to get more energy from existing infrastructure.
• The emissions from full energy chains only amount to approximately 9.2 to 20.9kg CO2/MWhe for nuclear energy, compared to 385kg to 1342kg CO2/MWhe for fossil fuel chains and 9.2kg - 278.7 kg CO2/MWhe for all renewable energies (OECD, 2002). \" Check back on referenced citation for what \"full energy chain\" means, then reword
• Replacement of capacity for plants coming offline may be necessary to prevent building of more fossil fuel plants to replace supply. This basically means that as nuclear power plants reach the end of their life expectancy, they will need to be replaced with something, which could end up being fossil fuels.

Negatives:

• Would take a lot of reactors to help climate change, in the UK, 10 new reactors by 2024 will only decrease emissions by 4%. This is at least in part because of the expected increase in global energy demand.
• Investment in nuclear energy may block investment in other alternative energies that are cleaner.
• Nuclear power plants are expensive to build and upkeep especially when considering waste disposal costs, a cost other fuels don't have.
• At risk of terrorism strike at plants and in transport of waste
• Not considered renewable fuel by the UN because it requires a mined resource that is used up in the process.
• According to some studies, nuclear has low climate change impact when a Life Cycle Analysis is completed. It should be noted, however, that different life cycle analyses often disagree on system boundaries and therefore have different outcomes.
• Some nuclear waste is being dumped into oceans.
• The Oxford Research Group, in an analysis of the security risks associated with the expansion of nuclear energy in the UK found that rather than making a positive contribution, an expansion of civil nuclear power would:
  • Make efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons much more difficult.
  • Increase the risk of nuclear terrorism.
  • Make a negligible short-term contribution to lowering CO2 emissions.
  • Make a negligible contribution to energy security.
• For the UK, it is believed by some that nuclear power is not needed. Germany, they point out, already has more generating capacity from wind-power than the UK nuclear component and within six years will have more solar powered capacity too. It is believed that if the UK pursued similar policies, by 2020 wind would provide well over six times and solar three times the generating capacity major industrial players estimate for a nuclear new build.
• Facilities at nuclear sites in the UK, and presumably other parts of the world, have not been designed to withstand a deliberate crash by a jumbo jet full of fuel, or many other types of attack. This sort of attack would have widespread consequences for both the environment and public health.
• Carbon emissions could possibly be reduced more quickly and cheaply through investment in demand reduction, renewable energy, and combined heat and power.
• Uranium mining causes some radiation exposure, although these risks have been lowered recently in larger operations.
• Unlike other renewables, nuclear has a continuous carbon input from the mining process, although it is low (average value of 4.4tC/GWh, compared to 243tC/GWh for coal and 97tC/GWh for gas)
• Also have commissioning waste and carbon input, which varies based on plants and resource transport.
• As with most alternatives, reduction in the carbon footprint of nuclear energy relies on reducing carbon footprint of whole economy and so relies on the adoption of other alternatives and cannot be viewed as a panacea.
• May discourage small decentralized distribution systems and give impression that there is a large-scale technology fix, discouraging conservation.