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ShareGoing by the rhetoric of nuclear energy supporters, the world is witnessing a nuclear renaissance as the grim reality of climate change dawns on it. On this view, nuclear fission will displace coal, gas and other fossil fuels and save us from disastrous global warming. President Bush lent weight to this rhetoric by announcing lavish subsidies and loan guarantees for the nuclear industry, and set aside $18.5 billion in appropriations last year.
However, in place of the 30 atomic stations the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expected to be built, not one has been fully licensed. Two have already been cancelled. The American nuclear industry has still not recovered from past disasters, and hasn't ordered a single new nuclear reactor since 1973.
In other OECD countries, the situation isn't much better.
More than 110 of their reactors will retire within a decade, and less than a quarter of that number are planned. Several European countries are phasing out nuclear power because of its high economic costs and environmental problems.
It's mainly in Asia that nuclear power plants are being promoted.
Yet, it's unlikely that nuclear power's global contribution will be maintained at the present low level of under 6 percent of primary energy and 16 percent of electricity.
A few environmentalists likes James Lovelock advocate nuclear power.
But they don't represent the broader ecological movement, which remains focused on nuclear energy's intractable problems - radiation,potential for catastrophic accidents, and wastes, which remain dangerous for thousands of years, and which science hasn't found a way of storing safely, leave alone disposing.
Nuclear power is super-expensive. An MIT study finds it 30 to 60 per cent costlier than coal or gas-based electricity. Dieter Helm, Oxford's leading economic expert on energy, says nuclear power will never pass the market test.
It's specious to hold that nuclear power can counter global warming. Electricity generation accounts for only 9 percent of global greenhouse emissions. Even if all power plants were to turn nuclear, GHG reductions would be negligible in relation to the cuts needed to prevent climate change.
The alternative isn't fossil fuels, but renewable sources and energy efficiency. India has 10 times more untapped mini- and micro-hydropower than indigenous uranium can generate. India's wind-turbines have more than twice the capacity as nuclear power.
Solar power is coming of age and is already competitive in remote villages most starved of energy. That's where we need to concentrate if we're ecologically responsible and economically sound.
Praful Bidwai is a political analyst
