Total US nuclear shutdown would increase air pollution mortality: study

The shutdown of all nuclear power in the US would likely result in thousands of additional deaths from increased emissions from coal and other generating fuels, according to a recently published analysis by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California-Davis.

The team developed an energy dispatch model of the US electricity sector, including both generation and the transmission-distribution grid, to quantify increases in emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides and sulfur oxides if all nuclear generation in the country were to be permanently shut. The research was supported in part by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

"Although all nuclear power will not realistically shut down at once, and [neither] will all coal and nuclear power, this study identifies regions with high risk due to a system-wide response to closures," the researchers said in their report, published April 10 in the scientific journal Nature Energy.

"The team fed the model available data on each plant's changing emissions and energy costs throughout an entire year. They then ran the model under different scenarios, including: an energy grid with no nuclear power, a baseline grid similar to today's that includes nuclear power, and a grid with no nuclear power that also incorporates the additional renewable sources that are expected to be added by 2030," MIT said April 10 in a statement on the study, which used air transport models to estimate exposure to those pollutants and reviewed epidemiological research to calculate deaths that could occur as a result.

The analysis concluded that "the increase in air pollution would have serious health effects, resulting in an additional 5,200 pollution-related deaths over a single year," MIT said in its statement.

If greater amounts of renewable power are integrated into the grid "as they are expected to by the year 2030, air pollution would be curtailed, though not entirely," still resulting in 260 additional deaths annually, it said.

The researchers noted that "Black or African American communities — a disproportionate number of whom live near fossil-fuel plants — experienced the greatest exposure" to the additional emissions, MIT said.

The researchers "calculated that more people are also likely to die prematurely due to climate impacts from the increase in carbon dioxide emissions, as the grid compensates for nuclear power's absence," the statement said. Those impacts could result in 80,000 to 160,000 additional deaths over 100 years, the authors said in their report.

"Nuclear energy is a clean and reliable source of carbon-free energy. Every year, nuclear-generated electricity saves our atmosphere from more than 470 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions that would otherwise come from fossil fuels," John Kotek, senior vice president and policy development and public affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, commented April 11 on the analysis. "By keeping existing nuclear power plants online and deploying the next generation of reactors, we can help ensure our nation meets its decarbonizations goals while protecting the health of our communities."

Economic impacts

The potential economic damage due to climate and health impacts of a US nuclear phaseout was also assessed, with the researchers finding it would lead to costs between $50.4 billion and $220.2 billion annually, the authors said in their report.

"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," Lyssa Freese, lead author of the analysis and a graduate student in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, said in the statement. "Shutting down something that doesn't have direct emissions itself can still lead to increases in emissions, because the grid system will respond."