NUCLEAR power is back on the agenda in a big way. US president George Bush wants Congress to make it easier to build nuclear plants, the newly appointed UK cabinet is expected to consider plans for a nuclear renaissance, and at the OECD forum last week in Paris, France, advocates of nuclear power argued passionately that it is the only way to curb global warming.
Countries in North America and Europe (with the exception of France and Finland) turned their backs on nuclear power following the nuclear accidents of the 1970s and 1980s and rising public concern over what to do with radioactive waste. Today, with global warming a major issue, the fact that nuclear plants generate far less carbon dioxide than fossil-fuel plants has given nuclear companies a new selling point – at least in Europe. So should we dust off nuclear power and give it another try?
To answer that question we need to think about what we really want from our energy sources. We want them to have a small environmental impact, yet be able to supply energy on a huge scale. We want costs to be low, the method of generation to be safe and for there to be plenty of available fuel. The International Energy Agency estimates that two-thirds of the extra energy demand over the next 25 years will come from developing countries, so whatever sources we choose must be tradable worldwide. Also, in the post-9/11 world, we want energy sources that cannot be abused by terrorists or rogue states.
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Nuclear scores high on its low CO2 emissions, but it loses out by leaving a nasty legacy: its high-level radioactive waste needs to be secured for tens of thousands of years. Despite 40 years of assurances from the nuclear industry that this is an “engineering problem”, no one has solved it. And it scarcely makes sense to generate more waste when we cannot dispose of what we already have.
Another bugbear for nuclear power is that it appears to be expensive. Its costs have never been calculated to everyone’s satisfaction, partly because government subsidies have muddied the water and partly because “back-end” costs for such things as waste disposal are uncertain. Nuclear power has certainly not won round free-market investors: no plants have been built within deregulated electricity markets.
Perhaps nuclear’s biggest disadvantage is international security. The level of confidence in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and nuclear safeguards is low. North Korea is the latest country to show how easy it is to divert nuclear fuel to make weapons, while nuclear sites are likely to remain targets for terrorists. Such concerns limit where plants can be built.
So are there alternatives to nuclear? The cheapest option by far is to improve energy efficiency by using waste heat from power plants, say. Then there are renewable energy sources, which suffer none of nuclear’s disadvantages, though they have problems of their own.
The chief criticism of renewables is that they will never supply energy on the scale needed. It is true that wind power alone will never do the job. But add in tidal power, micro-hydro and biomass, and the problem starts to disappear. Wind power and biomass are nearly as cheap as coal while other renewables, such as wave power and photovoltaic cells, are moving steadily towards competitiveness.
“Nuclear power appears to be expensive. Its costs have never been calculated to everyone’s satisfaction”
The environmental impact of renewables is generally low, though wind farms have run into problems, especially with people who do not want them spoiling rural views. But there are ways around this, such as building wind farms offshore or siting single or small numbers of turbines near towns, effectively recreating the medieval pattern of windmills.
Perhaps the best evidence of the potential of renewables comes from Germany. It wants to phase out nuclear power by 2025, so is switching rapidly to other sources. It already generates more than 8 per cent of its electricity from renewables, such as wind and biomass, and is the world’s largest user of photovoltaic cells. It is on target for renewables to supply half of all its energy needs by 2050, reducing its carbon emissions to a fifth of their 1990 levels.
Given our limited resources, we must put our money behind the best global solution. Rather than reinvent nuclear plants, we must move towards leaner, more localised, sustainable ways to generate energy. That means more research and development into energy efficiency and renewables and a determined campaign to deploy them.
