ABSTRACT
The single most important benefit of nuclear power is that no carbon dioxide (a green house gas) is emitted. This is a critically important consideration in the context of global warming due to CO2. The substitution of nuclear electricity for coal would reduce the CO2 emissions by 92 Gt (giga tonnes or 10
9 tonnes) over 50 years, and would allow the CO2 emissions to be stabilized at their current level of 25.6 Gt CO2/yr (Pacala and Socolow, 2004).
