COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE SUSTAINABILITY OF NUCLEAR AND COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS

The sustainable energy source is the key to the socio-economic development and cleaner environment of any country. Especially the sustainability of a baseload plant is more important as it generates most of the electricity. Coal and nuclear are the two main sources of energy for baseload plants now a day for many countries. The concentration of the study was to analyze and compare the sustainability of various aspects of coal-fired power plants and nuclear power plants. The main points which were discussed involved technology, safety and sustainability, and economy included environmental aspect, fuel availability, safety, risk, etc. The methodology was to collect data from various sources and analyzed it by using the analytic hierarchy process to draw a conclusion regarding the use of both energy technologies in the future. It has been seen that in most cases nuclear was more sustainable than coal power plant under this study.