Editorial - Nuclear Energy Offers a Climate Change Solution - 2024

Nuclear Power Industry

Stein opined in mid-April 2024 that dur­ing last Decem­ber’s U.N. cli­mate change con­fer­ence, more than 20 coun­tries from four con­ti­nents launched the Dec­la­ra­tion to Tri­ple Nu­clear Energy. The Dec­la­ra­tion rec­og­nizes the cru­cial role of nu­clear en­ergy in achiev­ing global net-zero green­house gas emis­sions by 2050 and keep­ing the 1.5 de­gree goal within reach.

Among the sign­ers were the U.S., Can­ada, France, Fin­land, the U.K., and 11 other Euro­pean coun­tries, Japan, Korea, Ghana, Ja­maica, Mo­rocco and Mon­go­lia.

Un­equiv­o­cal op­po­si­tion

While sup­port for nu­clear power is gain­ing ground world­wide, many en­vi­ron­men­tal groups still un­equiv­o­cally op­pose nu­clear en­ergy. En­vi­ron­men­tal groups op­posed to nu­clear en­ergy cite “sig­nifi­cant safety prob­lems in­her­ent in re­ac­tor op­er­a­tion, dis­posal of spent fu­els, and pos­si­ble di­ver­sion of nu­clear ma­teri­als ca­pa­ble of use in weap­ons man­u­fac­ture” as the rea­sons to block con­struc­tion of any new com­mer­cial nu­clear fis­sion power plants.

There is no per­fect en­ergy source. Solar and wind power are clean dur­ing op­er­a­tion, but in­ter­mit­tent and can use a lot of space. Oil and gas con­trib­ute to green­house gas emis­sions and health im­pacts. Yes, nu­clear en­ergy gen­er­ates waste and there are con­cerns about pos­si­ble ac­ci­dents or leaks. What of­ten goes un­no­ticed: nu­clear power has been stead­ily im­prov­ing since its be­gin­nings. At­ti­tudes, busi­ness mod­els, and reg­u­la­tions have not kept pace. Here are a few facts of note:

• Safety: Nu­clear power is one of the saf­est forms of en­ergy. Data shows that it is a much safer and health­ier en­ergy source than fos­sil fu­els, which are re­spon­si­ble for roughly one in five to one in six deaths glob­ally ev­ery year. What’s more, most of the world’s op­er­at­ing nu­clear re­ac­tors right now are older, sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion de­signs. These plants pro­vide some of the saf­est en­ergy ever pro­duced, but more re­cently built third-gen­er­a­tion re­ac­tors, and fourth-gen­er­a­tion de­signs un­der de­vel­op­ment will fur­ther im­prove safety.
  
  


• En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact: Nu­clear en­ergy, even con­sid­er­ing older tech­nol­ogy, is one of the least im­pact­ful to the en­vi­ron­ment. It also emits the least green­house gas emis­sions over the life cy­cle and that amount will be even lower on av­er­age as older tech­nol­ogy re­tires.

Less wasteful and more secure

• Waste: Many peo­ple think spent fuel and waste are dan­ger­ous. Nu­clear waste is a solid that is stored in steel and con­crete can­nis­ters de­signed to with­stand earth­quakes, tor­na­does, floods, and at­tacks with pro­jec­tiles. It isn’t the most dan­ger­ous waste or even the lon­gest-lived. A lot of it isn’t even waste. Progress is be­ing made with new types of fourth-gen­er­a­tion re­ac­tors, such as high-tem­per­a­ture gas, so­dium-cooled, and mol­ten salt re­ac­tors that gen­er­ate less waste and, in many in­stances, can re­cy­cle fuel. Every en­ergy source gen­er­ates waste. Nu­clear waste is con­tained and safely stored. Other en­ergy sources send their waste out into the en­vi­ron­ment.
  
  


• Se­cu­rity: Since the early 2000s, there has been ex­treme at­ten­tion placed on pro­tect­ing plants from armed as­sault and cy­ber-at­tacks. Pro­tec­tive mea­sures in­clude phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers, con­trolled and re­stricted ac­cess to iden­ti­fied lo­ca­tions within fa­cil­i­ties, and cat­e­go­ries of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion badg­ing for per­son­nel. Sev­eral tech­ni­cal con­trols ex­ist, such as ra­di­a­tion de­tec­tion por­tals, sur­veil­lance cam­eras, X-ray scan­ners for de­tect­ing hid­den weap­ons or ex­plo­sives, and in­te­rior and ex­te­rior in­tru­sion de­tec­tion sen­sors. The first time an armed group has at­tacked an op­er­at­ing civil nu­clear power plant was Rus­sia’s mil­i­tary ac­tion in Ukraine in 2022. To date, no cy­ber-at­tack on a nu­clear re­ac­tor’s in­for­ma­tion and con­trol sys­tem has com­pro­mised safety.

The clear choice

The ques­tion is, do the prob­lems of nu­clear power out­weigh its po­ten­tial ben­e­fits? I am not say­ing nu­clear en­ergy is the only an­swer to the cli­mate prob­lem. I ap­plaud en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists’ sup­port of re­new­able en­ergy sources. But we must keep in­vest­ing in var­i­ous cli­mate solu­tions, in­clud­ing nu­clear — the clear choice for 24/​7 clean en­ergy. [For more on the subject, see "The Rest of the Story ...." (here).]

Adam Stein is the di­rec­tor of nu­clear en­ergy in­no­va­tion at the Break­through In­sti­tute.