This 2019 paper, to me, brings up a key under-appreciated climate equity aspect to nuclear phaseouts in Europe.

Even assuming shut-down nuclear is replaced with renewables (it isn’t) this passes enviro, climate, health costs onto other countries. (1) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652618331718

Beylot et al. analyze the carbon emissions associated with mining and processing four raw materials (steel, concrete, copper, aluminum) needed for a French power sector transition over the next few decades under a plan where French nuclear is cut to 50% of the overall mix. (2)

Their findings:

“the cradle-to-gate climate change impacts... required as a response to the energy transition, are assessed to amount between 57 and 650 million tonnes of CO2-eq (≥ 95% probability), and most likely between 150 and 375 million tonnes of CO2-eq” (3)

“there is a 20% risk that the production of steel, Cu, Al and concrete... induce >445 million tonnes of CO2-eq. The corresponding GHGs, *mainly emitted outside France*, would correspond to 8 yrs of climate change impacts by the French energy sector” (4)

Granted, the French energy sector currently produces few climate impacts thanks to its high proportion of clean power.

However, these materials-associated emissions - as well as the air pollution, mining, water impacts they produce elsewhere in the world - are unnecessary. (5)

However, this is also just France alone! Nuclear phaseouts in Europe, even if they are perfectly replaced by clean energy and therefore “climate-neutral” (with large caveats), will come with a larger, non-negligible climate, materials, and enviro cost. (6)

Essentially, decommissioning nuclear plants rather than pursuing lifetime extension generates unneeded emissions *while* exporting very real air pollution, mining, water impacts to low/middle income countries where copper, rare earths for renewable tech are sourced. (7)

All of this to avoid very NOT real, sensationalized radiation/waste fears in developed, wealthy Europe. This is a very compelling international climate and environmental inequity if you ask me - one that’s critically under-discussed in the context of EU nuclear shutdowns. (8)

Side note 1: material intensities presented in this paper strongly corroborate the conclusion renewables are generally more materials-intensive than nuclear (similar concrete intensity, significantly higher steel, Al, Cu demand per unit capacity). Matches my own findings. (9)

Side note 2: this paper does assume that some of the new capacity installed in France by 2050 is new nuclear (45GW out of the 266GW to be built). This means that the climate, enviro costs of a truly non-nuclear power plan would in fact be higher than these results suggest. (10)

This is even more true given that this analysis only considers steel, concrete, Al, Cu.

Solar + wind infrastructure also need major inputs like silver, rare earth metals, nickel which are much more carbon-intensive and currently come with large enviro impacts of their own. (11)

None of this is to say that solar and wind are bad. Renewables, nuclear, hydro, geothermal are ALL part of a broader solution. We can + must also get better at reducing climate, enviro impacts of mineral sector, because we will need LOTS of minerals for full decarbonization. (12)

But recall that replacing existing nuclear plants with new infrastructure rather than extending plant lifetimes represents fundamentally unnecessary additional materials demand.

At best, it's mere replacement that doesn't grow overall clean generation capacity at all. (13)

To repeat: even assuming near-perfect replacement of phased-out nuclear primarily with renewables, European nuclear decommissioning passes on very real enviro, health, climate costs on to communities abroad in order to minimize overinflated perceived risks at home. (14 - END)