Reference no: EM132308663

Case study: nuclear power

In The Revenge of Gaia (2006), James Lovelock argues that if it had not been for the triumph of romantic idealism at Kyoto, we could all be enjoying the benign benefits of nuclear fusion technology. Nuclear power is easy to produce, creates little waste, most of which is completely harmless, and is free of CO2 emissions, and its radioactivity has negligible effects on human health. In fact, previous nuclear disasters have been disasters in name only – few people have been killed (75 in the 20 years following Chernobyl), with contaminated areas turning into wildlife havens because they scare away hungry farmers and greedy developers. As a major element in a portfolio of low-carbon energy resources, nuclear power will enable reasonable economic development and lifestyle improvements to continue.

The alternative is a Malthusian global depopulation, a serious undermining of everyone’s standard of living and the ending of hope for the developing nations. This view has received support from Jesse Ausubel (2007) who, writing in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology, refers to renewable energy resources as ‘boutique fuels’ that look good in small quantities but that, compared with nuclear power and natural gas with carbon capture, are grossly inefficient and have serious implications for land-use planning. Do you want a wind farm spoiling your view? Furthermore, to produce energy equivalent to that generated by a 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plant would require, from biofuels, 2,500 square kilometres of good farmland or, from solar energy, 150 square kilometres of photovoltaic cells. The US would need to devote land the size of Texas if it met all its energy needs from wind power. However, for Helen Caldicott (2006) and John Turner, from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (McKenna, 2007), these arguments are fallacious and misleading. Land used for turbines can still be used for grazing, and the amount already paved over for roads and car parks in all major countries is immense and growing. Biofuels are problematic too, as many crops take over land that could be devoted to food production, although research on biomass thermal conversion technologies which process agricultural wastes, fast-growing wood and biogenic wastes has produced some very positive results.

With carbon emissions increasing steadily, attention has once more shifted to nuclear energy, although the costs and time required for building new plants and bringing them fully on-stream mean that more extensive nuclear energy generation is a solution for the 2020s, by which time global climate change would have further worsened. There are other problems with nuclear such as the environmental costs and impact of extracting uranium from the world’s dwindling supply. Large amounts of fossil fuels are often still required to mine and refine the mineral, and the link between civil nuclear power and military use is undeniable, as US critiques of the nuclear power programmes in Iran and North Korea eloquently testify. Nuclear waste includes toxic contaminants that cause leukaemia and other cancers and genetic disease. Caldicott questions both the science and politics of nuclear energy and the implicit complacency in the expectation that this technology is the ‘magic bullet’.

Changes will have to occur to the way we think problems through, the way we apply reasoned and moral judgements that seek alternative practical pathways, ways of living and being. Renewable energy, she writes, ‘is quick to build, abundant and cheap to harvest; it is safe, flexible, secure and climate-friendly’ (2006: 164); and, married to a lifestyle respectful of natural resources, human and non-human others, renewable technology will help shape a world that is sustainable and worth sustaining. This is undoubtedly the case, but with the global population certain to increase by around two billion by 2050 and with the global need to address the perennial poverty of global poverty energy, demands are anticipated to increase by around 35 per cent by 2035 with China, India and the Middle East counting for 60 per cent of the increase (IEA, 2012) nuclear energy is back on the global agenda.

The current energy mix is still dominated by heavily subsidized fossil fuels – US$523 billion in 2011 or six times that of subsidies to renewables – and nuclear is a generally accepted low carbon energy source. Between 1978 and 1988, when France adopted its extensive nuclear power programme, carbon emissions fell by an average of 3.7 per cent per annum. France has one of the most carbon-efficient economies in the world. A 1GW nuclear power station can produce up to ten times more power than a 1GW solar plant because nuclear operates 24 hours a day. In addition, next generation nuclear technologies such as thorium liquid salt reactors and integral fast reactors mean that smaller, safer, plants could be built and operate, which would not go into meltdown as happened in Fukushima in 2011. These new reactors could also consume existing plutonium waste and the thorium approach, initially investigated in the US in the 1960s, is not particularly suitable for the construction of nuclear warheads – the reason why the US abandoned the thorium projects at the time. However, the Fukushima disaster in Japan, caused by a massive earthquake and tsunami, has dampened down enthusiasm for nuclear. Radiation levels have been eighteen times higher than anticipated and decommission will take up to forty years and cost tens of billions of dollars (McCurry, 2013). In 2012, Germany decided to close down its existing nuclear power plants and invest more heavily in clean fossil fuel technologies and renewables. Germany is a global leader in solar energy and has been instrumental in stimulating the solar industries in China. For countries such as Denmark, a 100 per cent renewable energy strategy is certainly feasible (Lund, 2007) but, given the global scale of the energy issues we face, there needs to be a range of options facilitated by international cooperation, research and development. Jeong et al. make the following recommendations in order to increase energy sustainability:

For countries with mature nuclear technologies it will be advantageous to deploy fast reactor systems and complete a closed fuel cycle.

Governments and society need to support and promote energy efficient technologies and energy conservation.

International organizations need to prepare plans that actively encourage collaboration and transfer of renewable energy technologies including those relating to carbon sequestration.

Questions:

1-What are the major issues in this case?

2- Why are the issues you identified, major issues?

3- What are the underlying causes of the problems you identified?

4- What should be done to address the problems you identified?