According to a new study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), shutting down nuclear power plants in the United States could lead to over 5,000 pollution-related deaths in a single year.
The country is home to 92 reactors and the largest nuclear fleet in the world, many of which have run for over half a century and are nearing the end of their expected lifetimes.
Hence, policymakers are currently discussing whether to retire or upgrade the existing reactors. However, the discussion of nuclear power should now also take air quality into account.
Rise of Air Pollution
The MIT team wanted to investigate how other energy sources, such as coal, natural gas, and renewable energy, would meet the additional energy needs over the course of a year if every nuclear power plant in the nation were shut down.
According to the team's estimate, air pollution would indeed rise as coal, gas, and oil sources ramp up to make up for the loss of nuclear power.
The team estimated that the increased air pollution would have detrimental consequences on human health, leading to an additional 5,200 pollution-related fatalities in a single year.
Black or African American communities, many of whom reside close to fossil fuel plants, were found to be the populations most directly harmed by the increasing pollution.
Fossil fuel use has increased as a result of the closure of nuclear power plants in the past. The shutdown of Tennessee Valley reactors in 1985 resulted in a surge in the use of coal, whereas the closure of a Californian plant in 2012 led to an increase in natural gas.
Initial increases in coal-fired electricity were made to cover the gap in Germany, where nuclear power has been almost completely phased out.
Energy Grid Dispatch Model
The MIT team used an energy grid dispatch model built by the University of California at Davis to determine, hour by hour, the energy demands in 64 locations across the US and examine how the energy grid would react if nuclear power were totally phased out.
The researchers ran the model under various scenarios, including a grid without nuclear power, a baseline grid comparable to today's grid, and a grid without nuclear power but also incorporating the additional renewable sources that are anticipated to be added by 2030.
The program replicates the output of every power plant in the nation and decides whether to increase or decrease a plant's output based on cost. At any given time, plants generating the cheapest energy are prioritized for grid supply above more expensive energy sources.
There are 260 deaths due to air pollution in one year, even under the renewable scenario, as some regions of the nation still experience a slight increase in air pollution.
The team predicts that this excess of carbon dioxide could result in an additional 160,000 deaths over the next century.
"We need to be thoughtful about how we're retiring nuclear power plants if we are trying to think about them as part of an energy system," lead author Lyssa Freese, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), said in a statement.
"Shutting down something that doesn't have direct emissions itself can still lead to increases in emissions because the grid system will respond."
The study was published in Nature Energy.
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