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RENEWABLES: Asia Going Rapidly More Nuclear

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jun 26 2004 (IPS) - Asia is going rapidly more nuclear to meet its energy needs, a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency says.

Twenty-two of the last 31 nuclear power plants (NPPs) connected to the world’s energy grid have been built in Asia, the report says. The nuclear option has been "driven by the pressures of economic growth, natural resource scarcity and increasing populations."

Of the 27 new NPPs under construction, 18 are in Asia, while construction has virtually halted in Western European and North American countries with long-standing nuclear power programmes, says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The IAEA reports that although four Western European countries have decided to shut down their nuclear energy plants, "the future of nuclear energy in Europe and North America is still far from clear during a period when energy needs and concerns over global warming are both rising."

Only one new NPP is beginning construction in Western Europe, in Finland. No new NPPs are planned in North America, "although that could change very soon," the IAEA says.

The IAEA is making a renewed case for use of nuclear energy. The Greens can hardly be expected to support this, but the IAEA is holding up nuclear power as a clean and renewable route to energy.

Greens apart the IAEA believes many people support the idea. "There is a lot of assumption of public opposition to nuclear power which may not be there," leading nuclear expert with the IAEA Alan McDonald told IPS in an interview in London Saturday.

As a part of its campaign to promote polling there is a need to do some polling, McDonald said. "In one poll we found most people saying they favoured the idea but thought their neighbours did not," he said.

In Britain some MPs talked of opposition to nuclear energy within their constituencies that was not really there. In one poll in the EU 45 percent thought nuclear energy contributes to global warming, "but only 37 percent got it right that it does not," McDonald said.

The IAEA strongly supports the nuclear way to energy that Asia is taking up now. "The more we look to the future, the more we can expect countries to be considering the potential benefits that expanding nuclear power has to offer for the global environment and for economic growth," IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradei said in a statement.

The statement was issued ahead of a gathering of 500 nuclear power experts assembled in Moscow June 27-July 2 for the ‘International Conference on Fifty Years of Nuclear Power – the Next Fifty Years’.

The conference will examine the status and future of nuclear power 50 years after the first nuclear energy producing plant went into production at a plant near Moscow on June 26, 1954.

The IAEA is not knocking other energy sources, McDonald said. "There can be no one-size-fits-all in energy policy. "In Japan and Korea where there are few alternatives nuclear energy makes sense. In Austria where we are (the IAEA is based in Vienna) two-thirds of our energy comes from hydropower projects, so renewable energy is a big contributor."

New renewables such as wind or solar are usually more expensive, McDonald said. Energy from the nuclear plant being built in Finland will cost 3 cents a kilowatt/hour whereas feasibility studies for wind power had priced the cost at twice as much.

On the other hand "the Danish and German governments are subsidising renewables like wind and solar energy. But different strokes for different folks."

McDonald acknowledged that the two big fears around nuclear power are issues of safety, and what to do with nuclear waste. Chernobyl was a very serious accident, he said, but it arose from a particular fault in design in one kind of reactor.

The few reactors of that design have all been fixed and the safety record is very good with other reactors, he said. The Chernobyl disaster has led also to the setting up of a safety advisory group on best practices.

Regarding fears that nuclear material could be diverted to make weapons, McDonald said "power plants are not good for nuclear weapons." The danger is at the enrichment stage before material is used in power generation, and again at the reprocessing end.

The IAEA has set in motion "a new initiative to look at multilateral control of key points of the fuel cycle," McDonald said.

Progress is being made also in disposal of nuclear waste. At present most nuclear plants store it right at the plant, but some countries such as Sweden and Finland are preparing to deposit waste in deep geological depositories. But most plants have not decided yet what they finally will do with the waste, he said.

According to one ‘low’ IAEA projection, all present nuclear plants will retire on schedule and no new ones are built. By this projection the nuclear share of world electricity will drop from the present 16 percent to 12 percent in 2030.

On its ‘high’ projection nuclear power would generate 70 percent more electricity in 2030 than in 2002, but total electricity produced from all sources would grow much more.

There are 442 nuclear power plants operating at present in 32 countries. The United States has the most, with 104. Lituania gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, followed by France with 78 percent. Only 39 of the 442 plants are in developing countries.