Closed nuclear-fuel cycle must to mitigate climate change threat

World scientific community has acknowledged that nuclear energy technology is a mitigating one in the context of climate change threat, but to make it sustainable, closing the nuclear fuel cycle is a must, principal scientific adviser to the government of India, R Chidambaram has said.

"By closing the nuclear fuel cycle with plutonium, the same amount of uranium can produce 50 times power and if we close the cycle with thorium, it is much more," Chidambaram said delivering a lecture on 'Nuclear Energy: Energy Security & Climate Change' at the University of Mumbai yesterday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also endorsed in an official report entitled, 'Mitigation of Climate Change', nuclear energy's status as one of a range of "commercially available climate change mitigating technologies" that contribute to the fight against global climate change.

The report clearly shows how nuclear energy, as a non-CO2 emitting energy source, is not only playing a key role now in mitigating the effects of climate change, but will continue to do so in the future as advanced Generation III and Generation IV nuclear reactors provide long term technological solutions.

"However, closing the fuel cycle has to be emphasised for a sustainable mitigation of climate change threats and global warming," Chidambaram stressed.