Increase in frequency of nuclear power outages due to changing climate

Ali Ahmad ()
Additional contact information
Ali Ahmad: Harvard University

Nature Energy, 2021, vol. 6, issue 7, 755-762

Abstract: Abstract Climate-related changes have already affected operating conditions for different types of energy system, in particular power plants. With more than three decades of data on changing climate, we are now in a position to empirically assess the impact of climate change on power plant operations. Such empirical assessments can provide an additional measure of the resilience of power plants going forward. Here I analyse climate-linked outages in nuclear power plants over the past three decades. My assessment shows that the average frequency of climate-induced disruptions has dramatically increased from 0.2 outage per reactor-year in the 1990s to 1.5 in the past decade. Based on the projections for adopted climate scenarios, the average annual energy loss of the global nuclear fleet is estimated to range between 0.8% and 1.4% in the mid-term (2046–2065) and 1.4% and 2.4% in the long term (2081–2100).

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00849-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natene:v:6:y:2021:i:7:d:10.1038_s41560-021-00849-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nenergy/

DOI: 10.1038/s41560-021-00849-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan

More articles in Nature Energy from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().