This is original version of a piece denying a global nuclear renaissance for Third World Resurgence (March 2010). They published it in two parts: one on India's dangerous love affair with nuclear power and the other on 'Clean' nuclear energy and a nuclear renaissance: hype and hyperbole.

Third World Network No. 235, March 2010



by Praful Bidwai



When the “Atoms for Peace” project was launched in 1953 by United States President Dwight Eisenhower, nuclear power was held out as the bright white hope for the world’s energy economy.

Nuclear power, it was said, would be abundant beyond belief and help the globe decisively overcome its dependence on fossil fuels. It would be safe, clean and self-sustaining. It would be appropriate, indeed the ideal, form of energy—not just for the industrialised countries with their highly centralised power grids, but even for Third World nations with their special needs for decentralised energy. Above all, nuclear power would be eminently affordable and universally economical—“too cheap to meter”.

By the late 1970s, nuclear power had revealed itself to be highly problematic, excessively hazardous, very expensive and extremely unpopular in the US, then and to this day, the world’s most nuclear power-addicted nation, with more than 100 reactors (compared to 59 in France). Two major accidents in the US—a reactor fire at Browns Ferry in Alabama in 1975 and a partial reactor-core meltdown at Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979—sent shivers down the public’s spine.

Three-Mile Island, which released 43,000 curies of krypton into the atmosphere, and just stopped short of becoming a full Chernobyl-style catastrophic meltdown, brought about a considerable tightening of design norms, safety standards and licensing requirements in the US and Western Europe. Suddenly, Wall Street was no longer willing to finance nuclear power generation. No insurance company wanted to insure nuclear reactors. Project after nuclear power project was abandoned in the US. In 1983, the Washington Public Power Supply System abandoned three nuclear plants after sinking $24 billion into them. Next year, a new nuclear reactor at Shoreham in Long Island, completed at the cost of $5.3 billion, could not be licensed and had to be scrapped.

By 1985, Forbes magazine was calling nuclear power “the biggest managerial disaster in history”. Soon, energy expert Amory B Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute would term it the greatest failure in the industrial history of the world, which has lost more than $1 trillion in subsidies, losses, abandoned projects and other damage to the public. US environmental and consumer activist Ralph Nader famously described nuclear power “a menace”.

And then, in April 1986, Chernobyl happened. The accident, which has claimed a death toll estimated at between 65,000 and 95,000, sent shock waves throughout the world. New nuclear reactor construction went into a tailspin in both the West and the East. By the early 1990s, the focus of new nuclear power projects had shifted to Asia—primarily Japan, China, South Korea and India—but with a much-reduced momentum, and amidst public protests and resistance (except in China). The bottom fell out of the nuclear reactor manufacturing industry in the US and Europe.

Already brought to their knees by the absence of reactor orders for about three decades, US electrical engineering giants General Electric and Westinghouse hived off their nuclear reactor divisions and sold large chunks of them to Japanese corporations. Many Western European parliaments (e.g. Germany, Sweden, Belgium) passes laws imposing a moratorium on new nuclear reactors and on phasing out existing ones—unless a reliable solution is found to the menacing problem of safely storing high-level wastes generated by nuclear fission for prolonged periods such as thousands of years.

This time-span is no hyperbole. Many components of nuclear wastes have extremely long half-lives: plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,400 years and uranium-235 a mind-boggling 710 million years. And about 10 half-life cycles must pass before the radiation hazard from a particular substance is reduced to an acceptable level. Science has not found a solution to the waste problem, which is now acknowledged to be thorny, if not intractable.

Under this trajectory, with its long history of accidents, regulatory setbacks and adverse economics, nuclear power seemed set by the late 1990s to enter a phase of terminal decline. By then, global nuclear power generation had achieved less than one-hundredth of the capacity expansion originally projected for it—despite generous subsidies, massive political support, and transfer of real costs from the operator to the public and from present to future generations.

The number of operating nuclear reactors worldwide has stagnated at 420- to 430-odd in recent years. And their contribution to global electricity generation has dropped marginally to about 13 percent of the total—less than 5 percent of world energy consumption as a whole. About a third of the world’s inventory of reactors are due to retire in a decade or so. And only a fraction (about one-third) of those due soon for decommissioning is likely to be replaced by new reactors. This represents a crisis and the near-certain prospect of a decline.

Attempts to find technological fixes to the crisis of nuclear power through higher, more complex routes like fast-breeder reactors—once tomtommed, especially in France, as the most elegant way of generating electricity while producing even more fissile fuel than is consumed—have all failed. Nuclear power seems to have exhausted its innovation potential and now stagnates as a 60-year-old “mature” or “post-maturity” technology without a future.

However, two factors emerged at the beginning of this century, which held out the potential of transforming the prospect of nuclear power. The first was the rise to power of deeply conservative political currents in some Western countries such as the United States, which wanted to give a boost, even if an artificial one, to nuclear power as a solution to the energy crisis amidst growing global depletion of fossil fuels. President George W Bush launched the biggest initiative to promote nuclear power since the 1950s, primarily through loan guarantees that would finance 80 percent of the capital cost of nuclear reactors.

The second factor was the growing temptation to look for “soft” options in resolving the climate change crisis, on which public awareness has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. These options would focus on shifts or switches in existing technologies, rather than new, renewable and inherently green technologies. The switch would permit the world, the developed countries in particular, to continue with their existing patterns of consumption while to a certain extent mitigating the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

Besides “futuristic” technologies like Carbon Capture and Sequestration, or using giant mirrors to reflect sunlight away from the earth, nuclear power would play a significant role in this approach—if only because fission does not directly produce greenhouse gases. Although an overwhelming majority of environmentalists, climate change experts and activists argue against nuclear power, it has found support among a minority of scientists and many politicians and policy-makers, especially those in search of shortcuts, half-measures and less-than-radical, long-term and sustainable solutions to the climate crisis based on low-carbon development and an altered relationship between natural resources and consumption, based on real human needs, as distinct from market demand.

At any rate, these two factors together were meant to produce a global “nuclear renaissance”, a second Golden Age for nuclear power generation, beginning in the First World, with hundreds of new reactors being added to the global total, or at least replacing the 120 to 130 old ones which are due soon to retire as their useful economic life ends after 40 years of operation. In 2005, Bush announced generous annual $18.5 billion loan guarantees for new reactor construction. In 2006, the G-8 summit at Hokkaido in Japan, to which Emerging Economies like China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa were invited as observers, also made a ringing declaration of a “nuclear renaissance” and pledged to promote it vigorously.

Five years after Bush’s loan guarantees were announced, not a single new nuclear plant has been licensed. In a decision that disappointed many of his supporters, President Barack Obama not only continued with Bush’s loan guarantees, but also nearly tripled it in his budget request to Congress to $54 billion. In February 2010, Obama announced guarantees of $8.3 billion for the first nuclear power station that may be built in decades in the US—two reactors in Georgia. Whether these actually get constructed remains to be seen. But it is indisputable that there has been no “nuclear renaissance” in the US.

That is also true of Western Europe, where only two new reactors are under construction post-Chernobyl. One is in France, where nuclear power enjoys much state support and subsidy. The other, more interesting, project is at Oikiluoto in Finland, where it is meant to follow market-based principles with no subsidies or hidden costs. As discussed below, the Oikiluoto reactor has run into trouble. But even it is rescued, there is unlikely to be a “nuclear renaissance” in Western Europe.

In recent years, the nuclear industry has done its utmost to exploit the climate crisis by promoting nuclear power as a “low-carbon” solution and as a safe, affordable and appropriate source of energy. But the prospect of nuclear power has run into a number of obstacles: high and rising costs; uncertainty of financing due to high risks and inventor shyness; long delays in licensing and construction; and numerous safety issues. These issues pertain to hazards to occupational workers and neighbouring populations; the as-yet-intractable problem of safe storage of high-level wastes; and potential for catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl. Not to be discounted is the possibility of nuclear proliferation and the high security risk posed by nuclear installations as targets of attacks with conventional weapons.

Not least, the prospect of nuclear power expansion has come up against social and political barriers, represented by popular resistance to the siting of hazardous atomic installations, which local communities do not want in their neighbourhood. In many societies across the world, nuclear power can only be promoted as an adversarial project against people’s preferences and by stoking suspicion, sullen antipathy and outright hostility.

The nuclear industry has proved a poor learner in controlling costs and reducing the gestation time of power projects. Several studies, including a famous one by MIT researchers, suggest that nuclear power is 30 to 75 percent costlier than electricity from gas, coal or wind. And the cost differential is not narrowing. It took 60 months to build a nuclear reactor in the late 1960s. This period almost doubled to 116 months between 1995 and 2000. (The average for the 1995-2005 period was 99 months.)

In many energy-related technology areas, unit costs fall as technology capacity doubles. The fall has been an impressive 32 percent in solar photovoltaics, 34 percent in combined cycle gas turbines and 17 percent in wind generation. But the learning rate is a poor 6 percent in nuclear power, where no major technological breakthroughs are expected.

Finland is the only OECD country where new nuclear construction has been launched within a liberalised economic environment. There, the Oikiluoto-3 project—based on the European (and now pompously renamed) Evolution Pressurised Water Reactor, designed by the Franco-German company Areva—has run into serious safety and financial problems, with construction running into three year-long delays and a cost overrun of 60 percent or €2.3 billion beyond the original budget. This will lead to an additional indirect cost burden of €600 per person in Finland.

French, Finnish and UK regulators have raised questions with Areva over the control and instrumentation systems of the EPR. “In carrying out individual assessments, we have all raised issues regarding the EPR control and instrumentation systems”, said France’s ASN, the UK’s HSE and Finland’s STUK. The issues centre primarily on ensuring the adequacy of the safety systems used to maintain control of a plant if it goes outside normal conditions, and their independence from the control systems used to operate the plant under normal conditions. The Finnish nuclear safety authority has reported as many as 2,100 quality and safety issues in the reactor.

At stake is the soundness and economic viability of the EPR as an advanced Generation-III+ reactor (along with the Westinghouse AP-1000 design). Contrary to the promise that the OL-3 would follow “market principles” of funding, it borrowed subsidised and low-interest loans. It has nevertheless run into financing and construction problems.

Meanwhile, the AP-1000 design too has fallen foul of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has raised questions about its containment and construction standards. If OL-3 ends up with an even bigger construction bill and higher generation costs, it will set yet another negative example for the global nuclear industry. If it is scrapped, the consequences would be far worse.

Meanwhile, only a handful of big countries like China, Russia and India have announced plans to significantly expand nuclear power generation. China and Russia propose to add 40,000 MW of nuclear power electricity capacity to their grids within the next decade. India has set a target of installing 20,000 MW in nuclear capacity by 2020, up from the present 4,120 MW. These goals may look impressive, but they may not mean much.

Russia has not built a single new reactor since Chernobyl. And it does not seem likely, given its gas and oil resources, that Russia will invest huge amounts in nuclear power and build new reactors at the furious pace of four a year. As for China, even with the addition of 40,000 MW, nuclear power will remain much smaller in China than in South Korea, not to speak of Japan. The share of nuclear power in China’s electricity generation will only rise marginally from the present 1.6 percent to under 5 percent by 2025—hardly the kind of spark that will kindle a global nuclear renaissance.

Among the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), India seems the keenest to promoting nuclear power—witness the zeal with which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pursued the nuclear deal with the US after it was initialled in 2005, to the point of risking the survival of his government in 2008, and the paeans the government sings to nuclear power as the key to “decarbonising the energy economy”.

The US-India nuclear deal, endorsed by the International Energy Agency (IAEA) and the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, will allow full civilian nuclear commerce with India although it possesses nuclear weapons and has refused to sign any nuclear restraint/disarmament agreement. All countries can freely export civilian nuclear plant and equipment to India. The primary rationale and objective of the nuclear deal are political and military—rooted in an effort to seal a close “strategic partnership” or alliance between the two countries, under which India would make a decisive break with the legacy of Non-Alignment and independent foreign policy-making. But the deal was presented as a means to long-term energy security, through the promotion of nuclear power. In reality, there is no evidence of any such plan. This was more an afterthought and an attempt at putting a “green” spin on the deal. Under the agreements that India has signed or is about to sign with the US, France and Russia, it plans to install a total of 63,000MW in power capacity by 2030.

India has identified several locations where nuclear power “parks” will be established: Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu, where Russia has been building two reactors of 1,000 MW each, Jaitapur in Maharashtra (to be allotted to France for a possible total of six 1,600-MW reactors), Mithi Virdi in Gujarat and Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh (possibly for US reactors), and Haripur in West Bengal (for Russian reactors).

However, India has a long history of setting targets and not meeting even a fraction of them. Going by past plans, and by spending budgets of the order of $1.5 billion a year for 50 years, India should have had over 50,000 MW in nuclear power capacity by now. It has less than one-tenth of that. The Department of Atomic Energy, which runs India’s nuclear power as well as weapons programmes, has never met the targets it itself sets. It does not complete projects on time.

The last 10 nuclear reactors the DAE built went 300 percent or more over budget. According to DAE plans, India should have had a nuclear power capacity of 8,000 MW by 1980. In that year, the actually installed capacity was 540 MW. Similarly, a target of 43,500 MW was set for 2000. But the installed capacity in that year was only 2,720 MW.

Nuclear power has been advocated for five decades as the ideal solution to India’s energy crisis and as a cost-effective, reasonably safe option for electricity generation in keeping with the country’s needs. But nuclear power has turned to be inappropriate to India’s need for decentralised and distributed energy generation, and far more expensive than electricity from renewable sources, such as wind turbines, as well as from fossil-fuel burning. Nuclear power poses major issues of safety, some of which are generic to that technology, but some of which have a special character defined by the Indian context, where there is no independent regulatory authority or safety audit, and where the operator, planner, licensor, builder and manager of all nuclear projects are all a single agency, the DAE, which also acts as the supervisory and regulatory agency.

So poor is the DAE’s project planning, so irresponsible is its management, and so persistent is its failure in learning from experience, that the Indian nuclear power programme would probably have lost steam and become totally marginal years ago had the DAE also not been responsible for India’s nuclear weapons pursuit, on account of which it commanded political and financial clout. The nuclear tests of 1998 gave the DAE a boost and a bigger budget, but did not lead to a large nuclear capacity addition. That is now being planned though imports of uranium fuel, and of nuclear technology and reactors.

Ironically, India is banking on installing specific reactor types although they have not been approved on their home ground—e.g. the Westinghouse AP-1000 reactor or the EPR in Europe. More important, India has no agency that can independently evaluate the safety of these designs or set standards for the complex parameters for a sound, efficient and safe reactor. This means India is putting the cart before the horse. This is obnoxiously true of Jaitapur in Maharashtra where land has been acquired under emergency provisions although the plant has not received environmental clearance.

There are other problems too. India has limited reserves of uranium ore, only enough to run a water-cooled reactor-based programme with 10,000MW of capacity. The existing uranium mines are running out of ore. They cannot produce enough to feed the 17 operating reactors, some of which are being run at less than their full power rating. A confrontation has broken over the government’s plan to open a new uranium mine in Meghalaya in the Northeast, which is strongly opposed by the local people. Therefore, India is also planning to reach agreements to import uranium from countries like Kazakhstan and Niger.

However, strong sentiment within India’s nuclear establishment favours reliance on indigenous resources rather than imports, in view of past experience with uncertain fuel supplies to two US-built reactors at Tarapur, after India conducted its first nuclear explosion in 1974. But India’s own uranium reserves cannot support an ambitious nuclear power programme, which would go much beyond 3 or 4 percent of the total power generation capacity projected for 2020/2025.

Aware of this, India’s nuclear planners way back in the 1950s made a virtue out of necessity by proposing a 3-stage nuclear programme for India involving fast-breeder reactors, which would make use of thorium, a material which India has in abundance. (Naturally occurring thorium-232 can be converted through fast neutron bombardment to uranium-233, which can sustain a chain reaction). The first stage of the programme would be based on pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs), from which plutonium would be extracted.

The second stage is to be based on fast-breeder reactors using this plutonium, which theoretically produce more fissile material than they burn. The thorium would be placed in the “blanket” surrounding their core. This would convert it to uranium-233. If depleted or natural uranium is placed in the blanket, plutonium would be produced. In the third stage, uranium-233 would be burnt in the core and thorium would be placed in the blanket.

This programme appears neat, but is based on two crucial assumptions. First, fast-breeders—which are a complicated, high-risk and accident-prone technology using hundreds of critical masses of plutonium or highly-enriched uranium—can be made reasonably safe, technologically robust, amenable to smooth, uninterrupted operation, and commercially affordable.

The second assumption is that thorium can be converted in large quantities into uranium-233 and used in special reactors on an industrial scale. The thorium-uranium 233 reactor sounds like a good idea, but it has only ever been demonstrated on a tiny, laboratory scale. Unless its techno-economic viability is proved on a pilot and then industrial scale, it will essentially remain only a concept.

The first assumption is equally fraught. The world’s experience with fast-breeder reactors has been an unhappy one and impelled most countries to abandon their programmes. France persisted with breeders the longest of all, investing huge sums in large reactors like the Superphenix (1,200MW), launched with great fanfare. Superphenix shut down in 1996 after working at a lifetime average capacity factor of 6.6 percent. “Fast-breeder” is a bit of a misnomer. In practice, nuclear reactors often do not yield more fissile material than they consume.

The problem with fast-breeders is that they concentrate enormous amounts of fissile material in small spaces and their chain reaction is sustained by “fast neutrons”. This produces enormous amounts of heat in the core, which cannot be sufficiently drawn out by water, but needs materials like liquid sodium. Sodium explodes on contact with moisture or air.

India’s own experience with breeders has been embarrassingly unsatisfactory. It built a small 14MW Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) with French assistance. This was expected to be commissioned in 1976, but achieved criticality 9 years later and its steam generator began operating only in 1993. It has so far operated at a load factor of 20 percent and has repeatedly shut down due to sodium leaks and explosions. The first time it continuously operated for more than 50 days was in 2001. Yet, the DAE claims to have “successfully demonstrated the design, construction and operation” of a fast breeder reactor through the FBTR. In a profoundly irrational and unwise decision, the DAE is proceeding to build a much larger (500MW) Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor.

Finally, India’s record in respect of nuclear safety, or what is known of it, is deeply unsatisfactory, with numerous accidents and cases of exposure of occupational workers to radiation doses well in excess of the officially stipulated maximum permissible limits, at least 350 of which were documented from India’s first nuclear stations at Tarapur. {Raja, you might want to mention Ramana’s piece here}

Some of the accidents involved a fire in the turbine room, collapse during construction of a containment dome—a concrete shell which is meant to protect the environment against potential leaks from the reactor—and flooding of a reactor and its building during a maintenance shutdown. Not enough is known about the DAE’s safety procedures and preparedness for mishaps, or its record of accidents and over-exposure to radiation because the Department operates under a veil of secrecy thanks to the Atomic Energy Act of 1962. This allows it to suppress any information that it does not wish to disclose. However, what is known about the way it operates its uranium mines, its transportation of nuclear materials and its waste storage practices raises serious concern.

These failures in safety management are compounded by a general lack of an industrial safety culture, and by the absence of independent oversight, safety audit and public accountability. The true social, health-related and environmental costs of nuclear power in India will only be known—on the basis of which alone can a rational judgment be exercised about the desirability of nuclear power—if the Atomic Energy Act is amended and an independent licensing and safety regulatory agency is created, which reports to Parliament and exercises complete authority over the DAE and its subordinate agencies.

Such an agency must formulate transparent rules, procedures and norms on the basis of the Precautionary Principle, expert advice and state-of-the-art understanding of the best practices prevalent in the nuclear industry. It must subject them to public debate. It must make a serious environmental impact assessment based on transparent public consultation and hearings before approving a project site. And it must conduct health surveys both before project construction and periodically thereafter to assess health impacts. None of these is on the cards as India rushes into nuclear power expansion.

India is trying to do this by luring foreign investors, who want a law which limits the liability of the nuclear industry in the event of accidents. The Indian government has drafted the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill to do this. But it makes no sense to cap the liability for a potentially catastrophic mishap in an accident-prone, highly hazardous industry, whose radioactive fallout can produce cancers and contaminate large areas for centuries.

Each of the 430-odd nuclear reactors worldwide can experience a reactor-core meltdown, like Chernobyl. Till 2007, 63 potentially catastrophic nuclear accidents were documented in them, including hair-raising Loss of Coolant Accidents (LOCAs). In a LOCA, the coolant—usually water, which must continuously draw out heat from the core—is lost through leaks, evaporation or chemical reaction. Unless the LOCA is contained, the core overheats, and a runaway chain reaction can lead to a meltdown.

Although this probability is low, its consequences are catastrophic—hundreds of early deaths from burns and acute radiation poisoning, and tens of thousands from cancers over decades; environmental contamination, and poisoning of vegetation and animal life.

The economic damage from Chernobyl, in which an estimated 65,000 people died from cancers, is $390 billion. Should a Chernobyl occur in Germany, the damage, according to an independent expert study, would be $2,400 to 6,000 billion—equivalent to Germany’s GDP.

Capping the liability for such large-scale damage violates two vital safety tenets: the Precautionary Principle and the Polluter Pays Principle. The first says no activity with inadequately understood hazards should be undertaken. Under the second, those causing damage must compensate the victims. These principles and the absolute liability notion have been upheld by the Supreme Court of India in many judgments as deriving from Articles 21 (right to life), and 47 and 48A (improving public health and safeguarding the environment ) of the Constitution.

The nuclear liability Bill violates these principles. It artificially caps total liability for an accident at 300 million Special Drawing Rights, or about Rs 2,300 crores and the operator’s liability at Rs 500 crores. The difference is to be made up by you and me. This is outrageous.

The Bill lets nuclear equipment suppliers and designers off the hook. The notions of strict liability and product liability demand that they pay damages in case the equipment is poorly designed or manufactured. Equally obnoxious is the 10-year limit to liability: many forms of radiation injury, including cancer and genetic damage, reveal themselves only 20 years after exposure.

These flaws stem from two 1960s nuclear conventions meant to promote and subsidise nuclear power when it was seen as safe and deserving of subsidy. But we now know that nuclear power is inherently hazardous, because it involves high-pressure, high-temperature processes and great energy intensity. A nuclear reactor is a complex system, whose sub-systems are tightly coupled. A mishap in one sub-system gets instantly transmitted to others, potentially causing a runaway reaction. Nuclear power poses the radiation danger at every step—routinely, even without accidents. The costs of the damage, including treatment, are hard to estimate.

That’s why developed countries like Germany, Japan, Austria and Sweden impose unlimited liability on the operator, supplier and transporter, etc., and often demand a $3 billion-security deposit.

However, the UPA has latched on to the 1997 Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, as if it enjoyed wide acceptance. It isn’t actually in force yet—five states need to ratify it, but only four (Argentina, Morocco, Romania and the US) have. The IAEA’s mandate is to promote nuclear power as safe and economical. It trivialises Chernobyl. The CSC follows the Paris-Vienna model and raises total liability per accident to a miserly $986 million.

The sole justification offered for India’s nuclear Bill is that without a low liability cap, no foreign nuclear operator will invest in India. But this is a question-begging argument. Indians don’t need nuclear power at the expense of safety or Constitutional principles. The Rs 500-crore operator liability (even if raised, according to a new proposal) won’t remotely compensate for Indian lives.

The Bill represents capitulation to US and Indian corporate pressure, and a retreat from the state’s responsibility to protect citizens against hazards. The US, having given India the nuclear deal, is now furiously lobbying to extract nuclear contracts for American corporations. This must stop.

However, what about the global nuclear industry’s claim about “decarbonising” the energy economy and contributing to the fight against climate change? This is based on dubious assumptions and extravagant claims. Nuclear power only generates electricity and is irrelevant to other sectoral uses of energy such as transportation and heating, etc. According to the International Energy Agency’s global energy scenario, the contribution of nuclear power consumption would still be under 10 percent even if nuclear power capacity were to be doubled by 2050. Even such a massive expansion would help reduce CO2 emissions by only 4 percent.

What the world needs is not marginally reduced emissions, but deep cuts in them—40 percent by 2020 and 95 percent by 2050. Nuclear power cannot significantly contribute to bringing these reductions about.

In order to make a substantial reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from power generation, an infeasible number of nuclear reactors would have to be built by mid-century. According to a report from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (US), between 1,900 and 3,300 nuclear plants would need to be built worldwide by 2050, in conjunction with renewable energy measures, in order to stabilise carbon emissions at their 2000 levels. Realising this scenario would mean building about one reactor each week for the next 40 years. The rate of construction for the past decade and more is 3 to 4 reactors a year.

Researchers from Princeton University have hypothesised “a less ambitious scenario in which about 700 large nuclear plants would need to be built by 2050—two every month—in order to reduce the expected increase in carbon emissions by 15 percent. An additional 300 plants would be needed just to replace the current fleet that will retire over the next few decades. Even this number would be difficult to build by 2050. In addition to the construction of nuclear plants, this huge amount of nuclear capacity would require about 11-22 large enrichment plants, 18 fuel fabrication plants and 10 more disposal sites the size of Yucca mountain.” This too is infeasible given the nuclear industry’s capacity and its record.

The global nuclear industry cannot quickly raise the pace of construction from 3-4 reactors a year to 25 or more. In particular, because of the 30 year-long hiatus in the US in new reactor construction, it would be impossible to move to high rates of construction without exorbitant subsidies.

Nuclear power expansion also carries a significant risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons: the scientists and engineers who gain expertise in these technologies could use it for military purposes. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons production share a good deal of infrastructure.

It is of course true that nuclear reactors, which produce energy based on the fissioning of uranium atoms, do not directly emit GHGs. But each step of the so-called nuclear fuel cycle, right from uranium ore mining and processing, to fuel fabrication and reactor construction, from spent fuel reprocessing to eventual decommissioning and waste storage, involves emissions. Therefore, nuclear power can only make a modest contribution to containing or reducing GHG emissions.

In practice, the experience of countries like Japan suggests that overall GHG emissions can rise sharply (threefold in this case) even as nuclear power capacity increases by 40,000 MW (as it did in Japan between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s). The life-cycle emissions per kilowatt-hour from a nuclear power plant in the US are estimated at 16-70 grammes per kWh of CO2. This is much lower than emissions from coal-burning (about 1,000 grammes per kWh). But it compares poorly with biomass (29-62 grammes), wind (11-37 grammes) or hydroelectricity (17-22 grammes).

This should put rest to the claim that nuclear power is the least emissions-intensive energy technology available. Renewables are already on the market and growing. Besides, the promise of energy efficiency enhancement in many industrial and domestic appliances remains attractive. Numerous measures to improve energy efficiency are now available.

According to Amory Lovins of the US-based Rocky Mountain Institute, “each dollar invested in electric efficiency displaces nearly seven times as much carbon dioxide as a dollar invested in nuclear power, without any nasty side effects”.

Nuclear technology’s future does not appear bright. Nuclear power will only become more polluting in the future since increased nuclear production will decrease the supply of high-grade uranium and much more energy is required to enrich uranium at lower grades. At the same time, the International Atomic Energy Agency has already acknowledged that current uranium resources are not sufficient to meet increased demand in the future. A report from the Oxford Research Group predicts that in 45 to 70 years, nuclear energy will emit more carbon dioxide than gas-fired electricity. So much for contributing to the fight against climate change.—end--