There are four nuclear power plants in my state, New Jersey. The Nuclear Energy Institute estimates that NJ’s nuclear power plants did not emit: 186,800 tons of SO2, 50,000 tons of NOx and 29.7 million metric tons of CO2 for the year 2007 while providing 32,010,376 Mwh of electricity.
Here’s some information to make comparisons: the 50,000 tons of NOx avoided is equivalent to the emissions produced by 2.6 million automobiles; there are 3.7 million registered cars in NJ; and average per capita electricity consumption in the 1990’s was estimated to be 12 Mwh per US household annually, likely to have increased since then (source: Vaclav Smil, Transforming the 20th Century: Technical Innovations and their Consequences, 2006).
Nuclear energy theoretically supplies electricity to 2,667,531 homes in NJ without contributing significant carbon emissions.
[...] Nuclear Regulatory Agency has revised its Generic Environmental Impact Statement for nuclear power plants [...]