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Uranium 101

URANIUM 101

Electricity Sources

WORLD ELECTRICITY GENERATION

What are the sources of electricity available in the world today?
How cost competitive is nuclear electricity?

What are the sources of electricity available in the world today?

Nuclear power is one of the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly sources of energy available. It is not, however, the only source. In addition to nuclear power, electricity is generated by natural gas, oil, coal, hydro and renewables such as wind and solar power.

Commodity	Advantages	Disadvantages

Coal	relatively low costs plentiful supplies	produces air and water pollution produces ash requiring disposal

Hydropower	no pollution very low operating costs	may cause the modification or destruction of ecosystems virtually all potential hydro locations are already developed


Natural Gas	low generating costs	supply and price can fluctuate produces air pollution, though less than some other sources


Nuclear	does not produce air or water pollution low operating costs	produces radioactive waste requiring carefully controlled storage high initial capital costs

Oil	easy to use and transport	produces air and water pollution suppy and price can fluctuate expensive

Solar	inexhaustible supply no pollution	large scale projects require much land requires expensive photovoltaic cells too small-scale for urban areas

Wind	inexhaustible supply no pollution	large scale projects require much land wind doesn't always blow when electricity demands are high extremely noisy too small-scale for urban areas

How cost competitive is nuclear electricity?

In 2009, the direct costs of US nuclear electricity production were the lowest for baseload (non-hydro) electricity production for the eighth consecutive year. US production costs were 2.03 cents per kWh for nuclear, 2.97 cents for coal, 5.00 cents for natural gas and 12.37 cents for petroleum. For more information go to the Nuclear Energy Institute at www.nei.org.

Nuclear electricity production costs were lower than coal, oil and natural gas in 2009.

A more comprehensive cost analysis conducted by the European Commission (EC) in 2000 took into account both internal and external costs. Internal costs include operating costs such as labour, fuel and supplies, plus capital expenditures, for all elements of the nuclear cycle, from exploration to decommissioning and waste disposal. External costs are the costs reflecting damage to the environment and the negative impact on communities: how much the activity contributes to global warming through greenhouse gases, and how large a "footprint" it leaves on human health.

The EC study concluded that the cost of electricity generation plus environmental factors for nuclear is substantially below that of fossil fuels, and it does not produce any greenhouse gas emissions.

RELATED INFORMATION

Uranium 101 › Fuel Process Animation

Last Reviewed: November 30, 2010