section_path: Environmental impact/Carbon emissions
section_name: Carbon emissions
paragraph_text: Carbon emissions
  
  Nuclear power is one of the leading low carbon power generation methods of producing electricity, and in terms of total life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy generated, has emission values comparable to or lower than renewable energy. A 2014 analysis of the carbon footprint literature by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that the embodied total life-cycle emission intensity of nuclear power has a median value of 12 g CO eq / kWh, which is the lowest among all commercial baseload energy sources. This is contrasted with coal and natural gas at 820 and 490 g CO eq/kWh. As of 2021, nuclear reactors worldwide have helped avoid the emission of 72 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide since 1970, compared to coal-fired electricity generation, according to a report.