Some needed perspective on all the anti-nuclear hype over the past couple of weeks.
From virtually the moment that reports first hit the international media that there were problems at the Fukushima nuclear plants, speculation about the impact that the accident would have upon the future of nuclear power overwhelmed accurate information about the actual nature and severity of the accident.
Even in the worst case, involving the full meltdown of multiple reactors and a significant breach of containment, there are no credible scenarios wherein the Fukushima accident could conceivably have racked up a similar human, economic, or environmental toll. Nonetheless, Fukushima was the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl and anti-nuclear activists were quick to make the comparison. Never mind that the Chernobyl disaster resulted from an explosive fire at an uncontained reactor of a far more dangerous design that exposed vastly more people to vastly more radiation than Fukushima could ever possibly result in.
Absent Fukushima, developed world economies were not going to build much new nuclear power anytime soon. The deliberations in Germany have involved whether to retire old plants or extend their lifetimes, not whether to build new plants. The decade long effort to restart the U.S. nuclear industry may result in the construction of, at most, two new plants over the next decade.
By contrast, even a much more serious accident would have been unlikely to delay the construction of new nuclear plants in the developing world for long. For major emerging economies like China and India, energy is still too scarce and expensive for much of their populations and economies and they will likely continue to build new nuclear plants as fast as they can in the coming decades.
In the end, what it all looks like is business as usual, for nukes specifically and the global energy economy more generally. Despite the claims of proponents, present day renewables remain too expensive and undependable for any economy in the world to rely upon at significant scale. So Germany, despite its vaunted solar feed in tariffs, will rely more heavily upon coal, which it has in abundance, as it retires its aging nuclear fleet. The US, already in the midst of a natural gas boom, will use more gas. And China and India, desperate for every kilowatt of power they can produce, will develop every available energy resource they have as fast as they can, including nuclear.
In the short term, we may see a modest uptick in carbon emissions in some developed economies. A recent Breakthrough Institute analysis concluded that Germany would see a four percent increase in its annual carbon emissions if it phased out its nuclear fleet. The US would see a one percent increase if it phased out its Mark 1 reactors and replaced them with gas and a five percent increase if it replaced all of its reactors.
Acceptance of, and even vocal support for, nuclear power under such circumstances would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. But as many leading greens have come to terms with the potentially catastrophic risks of climate change, they have begun to reconsider the far more modest risks associated with nuclear power. There is no credible path to global emissions stabilization absent enormous quantities of new nuclear power. It is, quite simply, the only low carbon energy technology available today capable of producing large quantities of low carbon baseload power on the scale that the rapidly growing global economy demands. Unfortunately, to meet that demand, nuclear as usual will not suffice. What we will need in order to actually displace the world's enormous and rapidly growing fossil fueled infrastructure is nuclear power that is faster, safer and cheaper. While the Fukushima accident hasn't improved the prospects for that in the short term, the generational shift in attitudes toward nuclear power that the reaction to the accident has revealed may provide a much more hospitable climate for nuclear innovation in the long term.
