Influenced by the growing climate and energy crises, a new round of debate over nuclear energy has opened in a number of the world's major industrialised countries. Encouraged by reactor vendors and their promoters in the media, the vision of a "renaissance of nuclear energy" is also an expression of the imminent need for far-reaching decisions. Most of the world's plants built during the first, and thus far, last boom in nuclear energy are approaching the end of their projected service lives.
Over the next ten years, and especially in the decade thereafter, rapidly shrinking nuclear power output would have to be replaced. Decisions will have to be made on whether to build new, non-nuclear power plants or to extend nuclear-based electricity generation on into the future. Some countries are already questioning whether to keep their ageing reactors on the grid beyond the originally projected operating lives. Extensions are attractive for electrical utility companies that can postpone billion-Euro investment decisions and profit from the cheap production costs of depreciated old reactors. Managers view the inevitable additional risk in subjective terms -they do not expect a serious accident, certainly not at a nuclear power plant run by their own company, and certainly not at one under their own direction -which is where their interests differ from those of the public. Extending reactor service lives creates a disproportionate risk of disaster. If all or most nuclear power plants are operated for longer periods of time, the total risk rises substantially.
These upcoming decisions on how to sustain global energy supply in a world marked by high population growth and extreme discrepancies in wealth extend far beyond the question of how to deal with nuclear energy in the future. Responsibility is borne by all developed industrial countries and many newly developed countries that have not yet made any or significant use of nuclear power. It is clear though that the new energy structure will no longer depend exclusively, and probably no longer primarily, on large power plants. In addition, the future does not lie in resuscitating risky technology from the middle of the last century based on traditional energy economic interests.
There has yet to be a renaissance of nuclear energy. Instead, there is a renaissance of statements about nuclear energy. The upcoming twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster has also provoked a renaissance of criticism of this type of energy generation - and for some people, a renaissance of hope. Social and political debate has been rekindled in a number of countries that will shape the future of nuclear energy. The outcome of this debate is unclear. A single nuclear power project in Finland proves nothing. The number of new construction projects announced around the world is not even enough to keep the global share of nuclear power constant, either in absolute terms or even less so in relative terms. New nuclear power plants have to date only been built where state doctrine supports this type of electricity generation, or where state agencies are willing to provide primary insurance against both safety and financial risks. Those who want to build new nuclear power plants - or are urged to do so by politicians such as in the USA - need government assistance almost as much as the nuclear pioneers did back in the 1960s.
It sounds paradoxical that nuclear energy was successfully introduced to the market because there was not enough of a market to make it uneconomical. Due to the grid monopoly at the time, electricity supply was considered a "natural monopoly", and it was also considered a basic necessity of life and as such was sustained by state-owned, state-supported, or at any rate monopoly-like companies. This meant that in most industrialised countries, the state also set the tone for the introduction of nuclear energy, initially for either overt or covert military reasons and later for partially or exclusively industrial reasons. The government assumed the enormous costs for researching, developing and introducing the new technology to the market, either directly or by shifting the costs to consumers through its ability to influence prices charged by the utility companies. To this day, building new nuclear power plants is not an attractive option for companies in deregulated electricity markets.14
14 Adolf Hüttl: "Ein deutsch-französisches Kernkraftwerk für Europa und den Weltmarkt", speech given at the winter session of the Deutsches Atomforum, Bonn 1992, manuscript.
There are less expensive options that do not carry anywhere near the same type of economic risks. This is why no new nuclear power plants will be built under market conditions even if overall demand for electricity as well as overall power capacities increase - unless governments again assume the major risks as they once did to introduce nuclear power in the first place. This is the route the Finns are taking. Another reason why this route is not generally available is because, in a functioning plant vendors' market, competitors from other branches will not stand on the sidelines for long and simply watch the state provide one-sided support for technology half a century old. The Finnish project is also unique because nearly twenty years after launching development on the European Pressurized Water Reactor, the Framatome ANP builder finally needed to demonstrate its technology in an actual reactor, and its parent companies Areva and Siemens were apparently willing to assume considerable financial risks in order to do so. If we recall, in 1992 Siemens and Framatome called the reactor a "German/French nuclear power plant for Europe and the global market", which would first serve the "home markets" on either side of the Rhine, and later take over "third countries". Construction was supposed to start on the two pilot reactors by 1998. And in 1990, the German magazine Wirtschaftswoche had already announced the end of nuclear stagnation under the headline "Nuclear Renaissance".
At the start of the 21st century, balanced assessment of all aspects of nuclear energy continues to yield a clear conclusion. It is essentially the same conclusion as that of 30 years ago. The risk of catastrophic accident, which made nuclear energy the most controversial form of electricity generation back then, has not disappeared. New risks from terrorism categorically prohibit the prospect of extending this technology to unstable regions of the world. Expanding nuclear electricity generation on a global basis would lead to a shortage of uranium fuel even faster than maintaining the status quo would - or it would require widespread conversion to breeder technology. A technical re-orientation of this type would effectively be the same as a permanent switch to plutonium systems. It would raise the risk of catastrophic accidents, terrorist attacks, and weapons proliferation to a higher and more critical level. After all, almost all countries have already abandoned the breeder route following setbacks in the past and with or without breeder technology, the final disposal problem still remains unsolved. It will have to be solved, because the problem - which is to say the waste - is already in the world but it can only be a relative solution. This alone would be sufficient reason not to exacerbate a major problem for humanity by increasing the volume of waste.
Nuclear energy cannot solve the climate problem either. Even tripling global nuclear capacity by the middle of the 21st century would only modestly ease the strain on the climate and it would be as unrealistic as it is irresponsible, due to insufficient industrial capacities, enormous costs, and far greater risks. It is much more likely, and early indications already show, that due to the age structure of existing plants, global reactor output will decline significantly over the coming decades. At the same time, there are robust estimates that a global energy strategy relying primarily on greater efficiency in energy management, industry, the transport sector and heating, as well as resolute development of renewable energies, is capable of meeting the reductions in CO2 emissions demanded by climate experts - without recourse to nuclear energy. The associated challenges are admittedly unprecedented and require no less than a global climate policy shared by all major greenhouse gas-producing countries. The purported core conflict of "climate protection or nuclear phase-out" remains - aside from special regional or temporal cases - a fabrication spawned by the nuclear energy industry.
We have seen that there will not be a nuclear renaissance in the foreseeable future without massive government subsidies. This, however, does not exclude the possibility because although utility companies seek to profit from old, depreciated investments, politicians are even more eager to re-open the subject of nuclear energy, as they fear galloping energy prices and anticipate stricter climate controls. These two fears have fuelled debate in the USA for years now, triggered the construction of the new reactor in Finland, stalled the nuclear phase-out in Germany, and recently promoted discussion of new plants in Great Britain. Politicians tend to continue working with the structures and the players that they find familiar. Many politicians will not be reluctant to grant start-up subsidies to the nuclear energy industry yet again, more than half a century after the launch of commercial nuclear power plants - as if this were the most normal thing in the world.
Given half a chance, the new reactor debate will heat up but new reactors will not contribute to a sustained reduction in global warming, nor will they be able to keep energy prices down over the long term. Instead, they will further exacerbate the risk of catastrophic accident and divert attention from climate protection strategies that will truly work. To summarise, as in the heyday of the first nuclear energy debates in the 1970s and 1980s, anti-nuclear forces will again have the better arguments on their side.
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NUCLEAR POWER: MYTH AND REALITY - The publication, by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, of six issue papers on nuclear power is a contribution to the debates on the future of nuclear energy. The publication coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. The issue papers give an up-to-date overview of recent developments and debates concerning the use of nuclear power worldwide. Their aim is to provide informed analyses for decision makers, journalists, activists, and the public in general. Nuclear Issues Paper Series Editor: Felix Christian Matthes Nuclear Power: Myth and Reality. By G. Rosenkranz Nuclear Reactor Hazards. By A. Froggatt The Nuclear Fuel Cycle. By J. Kreusch, W. Neumann, D. Appel, P. Diehl Nuclear Energy and Proliferation. By O. Nassauer The Economics of Nuclear Power. By S. Thomas Nuclear Energy and Climate Change. By F. Ch. Matthes Co-published by NUCLEAR ISSUES PAPERS AT THE www.boell.de/nuclear
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