HOME / NUCLEAR POLICIES / REPORT POURS COLD WATER ON RENAISSANCE

Report pours cold water on renaissance

Wednesday, 4 July 2007

A new report has concluded that nuclear power should be scrapped from the energy mix unless it can be demonstrated with certainty that it could make a major contribution to climate change mitigation. The nuclear industry described the document as 'fatuous'.

A new report has concluded that nuclear power should be removed from the energy mix unless it can be demonstrated with certainty that it could make a major contribution to climate change mitigation. A nuclear industry spokeman described the document as 'fatuous'.

The report, Too Hot to Handle? The Future of Civil Nuclear Power, from the UK's Oxford Research Group, considered policy scenarios in which nuclear would generate 33% of electricity in many large countries by 2075. The requirement for nuclear power to play such a role was based on the International Energy Agency's projected 50% increase in energy demand by 2030, and the World Wildlife Fund's call for a 60% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from 2000 levels.

The report acknowledges nuclear power's low-carbon credentials and states that its 16% contribution to global electricity saved 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, based on world averages for electricity generation. However, ORG said that its envisaged expansion of nulcear energy to seven new states (including Bangladesh, Congo, Ethiopia and Nigeria) would entail a serious escalation in potential nuclear weapons proliferation, which it said global projects like an international fuel bank or the USA's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership scheme could not counter. ORG said that countries would not accept reliance on foreign-sourced fuel supplies, and that large scale recycling of used nuclear fuel would result in stockpiles of plutonium, "some of which is bound to fall into the wrong hands including those of terrorists."

After an examination of imagined terrorism scenarios and security concerns focused mainly on the misuse of plutonium, ORG concluded: "For the weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism risks to be worth taking, nuclear must be able to achieve energy security and a reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions more effectively, economically and quickly than any other energy source."

According to ORG's calculations, the world's 2075 population of 10 billion would have to employ a worldwide fleet of 2500 power reactors in order to provide a third of electricity to some of the worlds largest countries. That requirement would mean a construction rate of 48 new reactors per year worldwide from now until 2075. ORG authors concluded that "a civil nuclear construction and supply program on this scale is a pipedream" after citing France's push for nuclear energy, which achieved an average of 3.4 reactors per year from 1977 to 1993 before reaching a 78% share of generation.

ORG said: "Unless it can be demonstrated with certainty that nuclear power can make a major contribution to global carbon dioxide mitigation, nuclear power should be taken out of the energy mix."

In response, John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association, said: "The bald conclusion that nuclear power should be taken out of the world energy mix because Congo may be ill-suited to use it will come as a surprise to serious planners in scores of major governments."

Ritch went on to assert that the nuclear industry could indeed produce new reactors at a rate in excess of that the ORG authors specify: "Whereas the authors dismiss as a pipedream the idea that the world's nations might somehow combine to build one reactor a week, the future expansion of nuclear power will probably be even more rapid. On a per-capita basis, if the OECD countries, plus China and India, were to build at France's 1980s start-up rate, the result would be five reactors per week rather than one." He labelled the report "a grab bag of fatuities that blends ignorance and ideology in equal measure."

Further information

Oxford Research Group

WNA's Policy Responses to Global Warming information paper
WNA's The Nuclear Renaissance information paper