WORLD CANNOT AFFORD NUCLEAR CLIMATE SOLUTION
By Jeremy Lovell
Reuters, UK
June 27 2007
LONDON (Reuters) – The world must start building nuclear power
plants at the unprecedented rate of four a month from now on if
nuclear energy is to play a serious part in fighting global warming,
a leading think-tank said on Wednesday.
Not only is this impossible for logistical reasons, but it has
major implications for world security because of nuclear weapons
proliferation, the Oxford Research Group said in its report "Too Hot
To Handle – The future of civil nuclear power".
The report fired a series of broadsides against the growing momentum
for more nuclear-generated electricity to help cut climate-warming
carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.
"A world-wide nuclear renaissance is beyond the capacity of the
nuclear industry to deliver and would stretch to breaking point the
capacity of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to monitor
and safeguard civil nuclear power," it said.
The report comes less than a week after the World Energy Council —
the global organisation of electricity generators — said nuclear
power had to be a significant part of the new energy mix both to beat
global warming and guarantee security.
Nuclear power now provides about 16 percent of a world electricity
demand that is set to at least keep pace with the growth in population
— predicted to rise by more than half to 10 billion people by 2075.
The report said that if it was to play a significant part in curbing
carbon emissions, nuclear power would have to provide one-third of
electricity by 2075.
That, it said, meant building four new nuclear plants a month, every
month, globally for the next 70 years.
Not only had top civil nuclear power France, which gets 78 percent
of its electricity from 59 nuclear reactors, never got remotely near
that rate of construction, but the implications for wholesale weapons
proliferation were overwhelming, it said.
"Unless it can be demonstrated with certainty that nuclear power can
make a major contribution to global CO2 mitigation, nuclear power
should be taken out of the mix," the report said.
Proponents say nuclear power emits little of the carbon dioxide that
scientists say is the major cause of global warming, while opponents
point to the lethal toxicity that lingers for thousands of years.
The report said there were 429 reactors in operation, ranging from
103 in the United States to one in Armenia, with 25 more under
construction, 76 planned and 162 proposed.
It noted not only major nuclear expansion plans in boom economy China
— which is already building two coal-fired plants a week — but
nascent interest across the oil-rich Middle East and the likelihood
of demand from across Africa and Asia.
Surging demand would place great strains on supplies of uranium ore —
probably leading to exploitation of poorer grades and therefore more
carbon expended on extraction and refining.
This would push development of fast breeder reactors which produce
more radioactive fuel than they consume, solving the fuel problem
but creating a security nightmare, the report said.
The report said if the 2075 scenario came about then 4,000 tonnes
of plutonium would be being processed into reactor fuel each year —
twenty times the current military stockpile.
The probabilities were large that some of this plutonium would end
up in the wrong hands and be used as a "dirty" bomb even if it was
not used to make a sophisticated nuclear device.