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16 May 08
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The new argument being advanced for nuclear energy is that it offers a solution to climate change, or at least to lessen the scale of global warming by reducing future greenhouse gas emissions. But nuclear power would primarily contribute to electricity production and, therefore, would be unable to mitigate about two thirds of global CO2 emissions, which are due to the fuels-used-directly (FUDs) in industry, transportation, and the residential/commercial sectors.[15] The bulk of greenhouse emissions would remain to be addressed.
Nuclear energy can at best hope to substitute for the use of coal, the dominant fossil fuel used to produce electricity. But coal is very abundant and inexpensive, and it will remain so for many decades to come. It is therefore naïve to assume that coal will simply be abandoned on a global scale. Countries with large domestic reserves of low-cost coal and rapidly growing economies will use their coal resources; China for instance plans to increase its reliance on both coal and nuclear energy, with predictions of a doubling of the use of coal for power and heat generation in two decades.[16] Concerns about climate change may slow down and limit the scale of this process at best.
It seems that if no solution to the “coal problem” can be found, then no solution to the climate change problem exists. However, compared to FUDs, almost complete “decarbonization” of electricity production is relatively straightforward and can be done using existing non-nuclear technologies.[17] This may be more attractive than investing in large-scale nuclear expansion.
This is recognized in a major 2006 report by the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission which observed that building new nuclear plants is not an answer to tackling climate change. It concluded that doubling nuclear capacity in Great Britain would make only a small impact on reducing carbon emissions by 2035.[18] The report identified five major problems to continued or increased reliance on nuclear power: the absence of a proven method for safe and secure long-term nuclear waste disposal; the uncertain but high future costs of nuclear energy; nuclear energy’s need for a large, centralized power generation and distribution system that serves to hinder further development of small-scale renewable and distributed energy supplies; as a large-scale supply-side technological ‘fix,’ nuclear energy undermines energy efficiency options; and lastly, the security and safety risks associated with nuclear proliferation.[19] These problems are worth keeping in mind in any debate on the future of nuclear energy in any country.
There are alternatives. For example, a 1998 study performed for the European Union developed a scenario for a European energy system based on renewable energy sources that would reduce CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050 (compared to 1990) and phase out nuclear energy at the same time.[20]A central finding of this and similar studies is that there is no simple, one-size technological solution to energy production that can be applied everywhere. The identified energy systems are very heterogeneous, strongly depending on country-specific conditions: offshore wind electricity dominates in Denmark, while solar-thermal and photovoltaic electricity is strong in Spain and other South European countries. This must be accompanied by substantial reductions in the demand for primary energy in all sectors of modern society. The list of necessary steps is long and these steps have to be taken swiftly. With every year that passes without decisive action, further bottlenecks are created and the costs of changing policy become ever greater.
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04 Nov 07
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