IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v36y2011i10p6037-6057.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainability indicators for the assessment of nuclear power

Author

Listed:
  • Stamford, Laurence
  • Azapagic, Adisa

Abstract

Electricity supplies an increasing share of the world’s total energy demand and that contribution is set to increase. At the same time, there is increasing socio-political will to mitigate impacts of climate change as well as to improve energy security. This, in combination with the desire to ensure social and economic prosperity, creates a pressing need to consider the sustainability implications of future electricity generation. However, approaches to sustainability assessment differ greatly in their scope and methodology as currently there is no standardised approach. With this in mind, this paper reviews sustainability indicators that have previously been used to assess energy options and proposes a new sustainability assessment methodology based on a life cycle approach. In total, 43 indicators are proposed, addressing the techno-economic, environmental and social sustainability issues associated with energy systems. The framework has been developed primarily to address concerns associated with nuclear power in the UK, but is applicable to other energy technologies as well as to other countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Stamford, Laurence & Azapagic, Adisa, 2011. "Sustainability indicators for the assessment of nuclear power," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 6037-6057.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:36:y:2011:i:10:p:6037-6057
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2011.08.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421100541X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2011.08.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Defu Liu & Liang Pang & Botao Xie, 2009. "Typhoon disaster in China: prediction, prevention, and mitigation," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 49(3), pages 421-436, June.
    2. Kowalski, Katharina & Stagl, Sigrid & Madlener, Reinhard & Omann, Ines, 2009. "Sustainable energy futures: Methodological challenges in combining scenarios and participatory multi-criteria analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 197(3), pages 1063-1074, September.
    3. Arthur, W Brian, 1989. "Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-In by Historical Events," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(394), pages 116-131, March.
    4. Afgan, Nain H. & Carvalho, Maria G., 2008. "Sustainability assessment of a hybrid energy system," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 2893-2900, August.
    5. Dosi, Giovanni, 1993. "Technological paradigms and technological trajectories : A suggested interpretation of the determinants and directions of technical change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 102-103, April.
    6. Cavallaro, Fausto & Ciraolo, Luigi, 2005. "A multicriteria approach to evaluate wind energy plants on an Italian island," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 235-244, January.
    7. Begić, Fajik & Afgan, Naim H., 2007. "Sustainability assessment tool for the decision making in selection of energy system—Bosnian case," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 1979-1985.
    8. Odeh, Naser A. & Cockerill, Timothy T., 2008. "Life cycle GHG assessment of fossil fuel power plants with carbon capture and storage," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 367-380, January.
    9. Polatidis, Heracles & Haralambopoulos, Dias A., 2007. "Renewable energy systems: A societal and technological platform," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 329-341.
    10. Diakoulaki, D. & Karangelis, F., 2007. "Multi-criteria decision analysis and cost-benefit analysis of alternative scenarios for the power generation sector in Greece," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 716-727, May.
    11. Evans, Annette & Strezov, Vladimir & Evans, Tim J., 2009. "Assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 13(5), pages 1082-1088, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Strantzali, Eleni & Aravossis, Konstantinos, 2016. "Decision making in renewable energy investments: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 885-898.
    2. Kurka, Thomas & Blackwood, David, 2013. "Participatory selection of sustainability criteria and indicators for bioenergy developments," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 92-102.
    3. Ribeiro, Fernando & Ferreira, Paula & Araújo, Madalena, 2011. "The inclusion of social aspects in power planning," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(9), pages 4361-4369.
    4. Hottenroth, H. & Sutardhio, C. & Weidlich, A. & Tietze, I. & Simon, S. & Hauser, W. & Naegler, T. & Becker, L. & Buchgeister, J. & Junne, T. & Lehr, U. & Scheel, O. & Schmidt-Scheele, R. & Ulrich, P. , 2022. "Beyond climate change. Multi-attribute decision making for a sustainability assessment of energy system transformation pathways," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    5. Troldborg, Mads & Heslop, Simon & Hough, Rupert L., 2014. "Assessing the sustainability of renewable energy technologies using multi-criteria analysis: Suitability of approach for national-scale assessments and associated uncertainties," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 1173-1184.
    6. Mainali, Brijesh & Silveira, Semida, 2015. "Using a sustainability index to assess energy technologies for rural electrification," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 1351-1365.
    7. Stelios Grafakos & Alexandros Flamos & Elena Marie Enseñado, 2015. "Preferences Matter: A Constructive Approach to Incorporating Local Stakeholders’ Preferences in the Sustainability Evaluation of Energy Technologies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(8), pages 1-39, August.
    8. Khishtandar, Soheila & Zandieh, Mostafa & Dorri, Behrouz, 2017. "A multi criteria decision making framework for sustainability assessment of bioenergy production technologies with hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets: The case of Iran," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 1130-1145.
    9. Wang, Jiang-Jiang & Jing, You-Yin & Zhang, Chun-Fa & Zhao, Jun-Hong, 2009. "Review on multi-criteria decision analysis aid in sustainable energy decision-making," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 13(9), pages 2263-2278, December.
    10. Liu, Gang, 2014. "Development of a general sustainability indicator for renewable energy systems: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 611-621.
    11. Cartelle Barros, Juan José & Lara Coira, Manuel & de la Cruz López, María Pilar & del Caño Gochi, Alfredo, 2015. "Assessing the global sustainability of different electricity generation systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 473-489.
    12. Scott, James A. & Ho, William & Dey, Prasanta K., 2012. "A review of multi-criteria decision-making methods for bioenergy systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 146-156.
    13. Kurka, Thomas & Blackwood, David, 2013. "Selection of MCA methods to support decision making for renewable energy developments," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 225-233.
    14. Klein, Sharon J.W. & Whalley, Stephanie, 2015. "Comparing the sustainability of U.S. electricity options through multi-criteria decision analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 127-149.
    15. Aydın, Hakan & Turan, Önder & Karakoç, T. Hikmet & Midilli, Adnan, 2013. "Exergo-sustainability indicators of a turboprop aircraft for the phases of a flight," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 550-560.
    16. Kurka, Thomas, 2013. "Application of the analytic hierarchy process to evaluate the regional sustainability of bioenergy developments," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 393-402.
    17. Petersen, Alexander M. & Rotolo, Daniele & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2016. "A triple helix model of medical innovation: Supply, demand, and technological capabilities in terms of Medical Subject Headings," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 666-681.
    18. Pin Li & Jinsuo Zhang, 2019. "Is China’s Energy Supply Sustainable? New Research Model Based on the Exponential Smoothing and GM(1,1) Methods," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-30, January.
    19. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/2qaasbmk6u8cj8maoa30ls1roi is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Ciarli, Tommaso & Ràfols, Ismael, 2019. "The relation between research priorities and societal demands: The case of rice," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 949-967.
    21. Giovanna Devetag & Enrico Zaninotto, 2001. "The imperfect hiding: Some introductory concepts and preliminary issues on modularity," ROCK Working Papers 010, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 13 Jun 2008.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:36:y:2011:i:10:p:6037-6057. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.