The newly awakened interest in nuclear power seen in some industrial countries is due in large part to its supposed potential to reduce global levels of greenhouse gas emissions. This potential is enabling advocates of nuclear technology to hope and push for a "renaissance" in the sector, following decades of stagnation. Nuclear power plants emit only small amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). Proponents of nuclear power thus consider them a crucial part of any campaign to combat global warming. Or to put it the other way around, the greenhouse gas effect fuels the hope that the decades-long lull in nuclear energy can be halted and reversed.
For example, Wulf Bernotat, CEO of the E.ON Ruhrgas Corporation based in Düsseldorf, asserts, "an energy agenda that looks beyond the short term must address the core conflict between phasing out nuclear power and greatly reducing the volume of CO2 emissions. It is not possible to have both at once. That is pure illusion."11 However, like many other leading figures from traditional power industries, the head of the world's largest privately owned Power Corporation belabours the main argument for continuing to use nuclear-generated electricity. The argument runs that climate protection is doomed to failure without the help of nuclear energy. Those who have good reasons for opposing the renaissance of nuclear power now have to address the question of whether this core conflict exists in the form upheld by proponents of nuclear energy.
An overwhelming majority of experts are now convinced that global warming is a real danger. In order to keep it at a tolerable level for both humans and the global ecosystem - which means a temperature increase of no more than two degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial period - we cannot escape having to dramatically lower CO2 emissions over the coming decades. Climate experts recommend that industrial countries reduce their emissions by 80 percent by the middle of the 21st century and transitioning countries have to at least cut back on their massive increase in emissions. In justifiably striving for prosperity, the highly populated countries of the South may not simply imitate the energy-intensive development route based on fossil fuels taken by the older industrialised countries of the North. The question is then the following: does nuclear energy have the potential to limit greenhouse gas emissions to such an extent and without any alternatives that the undisputed major risks of this technology should be accepted?
The situation is further complicated by the fact that while global warming and the potential for serious accidents at nuclear plants represent different types of risk, each would bring unique and long-term catastrophic consequences in its wake. While global warming will most likely accelerate and trigger different but largely dramatic changes for the worse around the world unless countered in a resolute and comprehensive manner, a major nuclear disaster is based on probabilities that are harder to conceptualise. An accident will also have disastrous, long-term consequences that the affected country would hardly be able to handle alone. The world economy would probably suffer massive repercussions as a result. This was the case after the Chernobyl disaster, which took place at the periphery of major economic zones.
11 Berliner Zeitung, 3 December 2005
According to statistics from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there were 443 nuclear reactors operating in the world at the end of 2005, with a combined electrical capacity of nearly 370,000 megawatts. Expansion has however stagnated for decades in many areas, especially in Western industrial countries. The OECD does not expect this trend to change much by the year 2030, forecasting an annual average increase in global capacity of 600 megawatts and because old reactors are being shut down, this marginal expansion would mean adding around 4,000 to 5,000 megawatts a year, or three to four large plants. According to forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA), itself an OECD organisation, worldwide demand for electricity will increase greatly over the same period of time, and thus the share of nuclear-generated electricity will decline from around 17 percent in 2002 to just nine percent in 2030.
The journal Nuclear Engineering International published a different calculation in June of 2005. Noting that 79 reactors had been on the grid for more than 30 years at that time, it predicted that it would be "virtually impossible to keep the number of nuclear power plants constant over the next 20 years."12 Due to shutdowns pending over the next ten years, 80 new reactors would have to be planned, built, and put into operation - one every six weeks - simply to maintain the status quo. In the decade thereafter, 200 reactors would have to join the grid - one every 18 days. It is thus pure illusion to think that nuclear energy can be used over the short and medium term to counter global warming.
12 Nuclear Engineering International, June 2005
Nevertheless, long-term studies have developed scenarios to examine whether nuclear energy could reduce emissions as part of ambitious global efforts to protect the climate. If the amount of nuclear-generated electricity is increased tenfold by 2075, for example, 35 new large reactors would have to be added to the grid every year until the middle of the century. A comparatively modest expansion strategy to 1.06 million megawatts (1060 gigawatts) of electrical capacity by the year 2050 would mean tripling the output of nuclear power plants over the status quo. This could save around five billion tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2050 as compared to the normal global expansion of electricity generation by coal and gas-fired plants. What these calculations have in common is that they have nothing to do with either nuclear reality or past experience.
Based on IEA forecasts, and calls by climate researchers at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world would have to save an estimated 25 to 40 billion tonnes of CO2 by the year 2050. If all available means worldwide were poured into expanding nuclear energy, effective immediately, in order to achieve the above scenario of tripling nuclear-based electricity generation by 2050, for example, this would still account for only 12.5 to 20 percent of electricity generation and alleviate the climate accordingly. Although not marginal, it would also not be enough to eliminate the need for other ways to reduce emissions and the price for this success would not only be high in economic terms. It would also mean the following:
- Adding a large number of new sites for potential disasters throughout the world; o Creating new targets for military and terrorist attacks in developing and transitioning countries, including crisis areas;
- Greatly intensifying final disposal problems as well as the danger of unmonitored nuclear weapons proliferation in every region of the world;
- Due to scarce uranium resources, replacing today's standard light-water reactors soon and everywhere by a plutonium-based system featuring reprocessing and fast breeder reactors, which is vulnerable to catastrophic accidents as well as terrorist and military attacks;
- Diverting enormous financial resources from anti-poverty programmes in the world's crisis areas to expanding nuclear infrastructure.
Given the obvious and serious side effects, this type of strategy would only make sense if the climate trajectory could not be countered by other, less problematic means. Based on everything we know now, this is not the case. Realistic estimates state that even ambitious targets of reduced greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved without the help of nuclear energy. According to these estimates, it is possible to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 40 to 50 billion tonnes (25-40 billion tonnes are required) by the middle of the 21st century if the following conditions are met:
- Improve energy efficiency in buildings;
- Raise industrial energy and material efficiency to the standard of technology already available;
- Increase energy efficiency to a corresponding level in the transportation sector;
- Make better use of efficiency allowances for both generation and application in the energy sector;
- Make greater use of natural gas instead of coal or oil (fuel switch) to generate electricity;
- Systematically expand the use of renewable energies from solar, wind, hydro, biomass and geothermal sources;
- And finally, develop and implement clean coal technology on a large scale (separation and storage of carbon dioxide resulting from coal combustion in power plants).
An extensive study commissioned by the German Parliament in 2002 showed that a series of different strategies and instruments can enable an industrial country such as Germany to reduce its CO2 emissions by 80 percent by mid-century. This study showed that improving energy efficiency across the board is just as essential as greatly increasing the use of renewable fuels. By contrast, it found no support for the argument that successful climate protection strategies would have to maintain or expand the use of nuclear power. A large or expanding percentage of nuclear-based electricity generation can even undermine climate protection strategies. It is hard to juggle the crucial elements of renewable energy and energy efficiency with large-scale, centralised, base load power stations such as nuclear power plants. Once they reach a certain level of production, intermittent renewables such as solar and wind sources require plants with flexible capacity control, like modern gas-fired power stations, in order to compensate for fluctuations as well as to reflect changed geographical conditions and a generally less centralised structure of electricity generation.
Moreover, large-scale expansion in nuclear energy - for only expansion, as opposed to the already strenuous task of maintaining current levels, can make nuclear power a real factor in climate control - would bring enormous economic uncertainties. To achieve this expansion, the industry would have to successfully replace today's light-water reactors with breeder technology and reprocessing, which it has already failed to do at previous attempts. Furthermore, no other technology stands under a comparable sword of Damocles: one serious accident or terrorist attack would suffice to permanently puncture acceptance for this technology on national or even international levels. A large number of reactors would probably have to be closed down for precautionary reasons. And finally, interminable debate about nuclear power in major industrial countries only delays the absolute necessity of consistently implementing energy efficiency strategies. All in all, it is both possible and advisable to develop national as well as international policies that minimise the two major risks of global warming and catastrophic nuclear accidents. The specific hazards associated with nuclear energy make every climate strategy that includes it less robust and innovative than strategies without the nuclear option. The oft-mentioned core conflict between nuclear power and climate protection is thus revealed as the creation of nuclear proponents, who are pursuing a different set of interests. The supposed conflict is a contrivance. There is no need to make a senseless choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.
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