Technology

But the mining, milling, and production of nuclear fuel, as well as the construction and decommissioning of nuclear plants, emit greenhouse gases at levels ranging from 10 to 130 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of power — lower than fossil fuels but higher than wind and hydroelectricity (and roughly on par with solar).

That's interesting. The article they link gives a bit more detail:

These energy intensities translate into greenhouse gas intensities for LWR and HWR of between 10 and 130 g CO2-e/kWhel, with an average of 65 g CO2-e/kWhel.

While these greenhouse gases are expectedly lower than those of fossil technologies (typically 600–1200 g CO2-e/kWhel), they are higher than reported figures for wind turbines and hydroelectricity (around 15–25 g CO2-e/kWhel) and in the order of, or slightly lower than, solar photovoltaic or solar thermal power (around 90 g CO2-e/kWhel).

The wide range for nuclear apparently comes from difficulties in estimating the carbon footprint of mining/processing the uranium, but that nuclear is sort of in the middle of the pack in carbon footprint relative to renewables in spite of the fueling costs is good to know.

I suppose these sort of numbers may change dramatically in years to come. Take solar. A lot of focus seems to be on the efficiency of panels, which would almost certainly lower the carbon cost per unit of energy as it improves, but a breakthrough in panel longevity would also do that in an amortized emissions sort of way.