There is a delineation made by the nuclear industry called "Indirect, from life cycle."
Indirect refers to the greenhouse gas emission as part of the life of the energy source. No other industry would be better prepared to discuss 'life cycles' than the nuclear energy.
The energies for the purpose of Kyoto are those that produce greenhouse gases.
I chose this graph as an illustration of what form of energy needs to be addressed next. The primitives, wood and peat, have already been discussed, now on to the so called civilized energies. Next is coal.It is important to know the language. Here is a definition from the USA EPA regarding metric tons of CO2 equivalent.
6,870 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent--what does that mean?
An Explanation of Units
A million metric tons is equal to about 2.2 billion pounds, or 1 trillion grams. For comparison, a small car is likely to weigh a little more than 1 metric ton. Thus, a million metric tons is roughly the same mass as 1 million small cars!
The U.S. Inventory uses metric units for consistency and comparability with other countries. For reference, a metric ton is a little bit larger (about 10%) than a U.S. "short" ton.
GHG emissions are often measured in carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent. To convert emissions of a gas into CO2 equivalent, its emissions are multiplied by the gas's Global Warming Potential (GWP).
The GWP takes into account the fact that many gases are more effective at warming Earth than CO2, per unit mass.
The GWP values appearing in the Emissions webpages reflect the values used in the U.S. Inventory, which are drawn from the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). For further discussion of GWPs and an estimate of GHG emissions using updated GWPs, see Annex 6 of the U.S. Inventory and the IPCC's discussion on GWPs.
