should nuclear power plants be banned essay

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10 Reasons to Oppose Nuclear Energy

Green America is active in  addressing the climate crisis  by transitioning the US electricity mix away from its heavy emphasis on coal-fired and natural gas power. But all of that work will be wasted if we transition from fossil fuels to an equally dangerous source – nuclear energy. Nuclear fission power is not a climate solution. It may produce lower-carbon energy, but this energy comes with a great deal of risk.

Solar power, wind power, geothermal power, hybrid and electric cars, and aggressive energy efficiency are  climate solutions  that are safer, cheaper, faster, more secure, and less wasteful than nuclear power. Our country needs a massive influx of investment in these solutions if we are to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, enjoy energy security, jump-start our economy, create jobs, and work to lead the world in development of clean energy.

Currently there are 444 nuclear fission power plants in 30 countries worldwide, with another 63 plants potentially under construction. Those plants should not be built for the following reasons:

Ten Strikes Against Nuclear Energy

1. nuclear waste:.

The waste generated by nuclear reactors remains radioactive for tens to hundreds of thousands of years (1). Currently, there are no long-term storage solutions for radioactive waste, and most is stored in temporary, above-ground facilities. These facilities are running out of storage space, so the nuclear industry is turning to other types of storage that are more costly and potentially less safe (2).

2. Nuclear proliferation:

There is great concern that the development of nuclear energy programs increases the likelihood of proliferation of nuclear weapons. As nuclear fuel and technologies become globally available, the risk of these falling into the wrong hands is increasingly present. To avoid weapons proliferation, it is important that countries with high levels of corruption and instability be discouraged from creating nuclear programs, and the US should be a leader in nonproliferation by not pushing for more nuclear power at home (3).

3. National security

Nuclear power plants are a potential target for terrorist operations. An attack could cause major explosions, putting population centers at risk, as well as ejecting dangerous radioactive material into the atmosphere and surrounding region. Nuclear research facilities, uranium enrichment plants, and uranium mines are also potentially at risk for attacks that could cause widespread contamination with radioactive material (9).

4. Accidents

In addition to the risks posed by terrorist attacks, human error and natural disasters can lead to dangerous and costly accidents. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine led to the deaths of 30 employees in the initial explosion and has has had a variety of negative health effects on thousands across Russia and Eastern Europe. A massive tsunami bypassed the safety mechanisms of several power plants in 2011, causing three nuclear meltdowns at a power plant in Fukushima, Japan, resulting in the release of radioactive materials into the surrounding area. In both disasters, hundreds of thousands were relocated, millions of dollars spent, and the radiation-related deaths are being evaluated to this day. Cancer rates among populations living in proximity to Chernobyl and Fukushima, especially among children, rose significantly in the years after the accidents (4)(5).

5. Cancer risk

In addition to the significant risk of cancer associated with fallout from nuclear disasters, studies also show increased risk for those who reside near a nuclear power plant, especially for childhood cancers such as leukemia (6)(7)(8). Workers in the nuclear industry are also exposed to higher than normal levels of radiation, and as a result are at a higher risk of death from cancer (10).

6. Energy production

The 444 nuclear power plants currently in existence provide about 11% of the world’s energy (11). Studies show that in order to meet current and future energy needs, the nuclear sector would have to scale up to around 14,500 plants. Uranium, the fuel for nuclear reactors, is energy-intensive to mine, and deposits discovered in the future are likely to be harder to get to to. As a result, much of the net energy created would be offset by the energy input required to build and decommission plants and to mine and process uranium ore. The same is true for any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions brought about by switching from coal to nuclear (12).

7. Not enough sites

Scaling up to 14,500 nuclear plants isn’t possible simply due to the limitation of feasible sites. Nuclear plants need to be located near a source of water for cooling, and there aren’t enough locations in the world that are safe from droughts, flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes, or other potential disasters that could trigger a nuclear accident. The increase in extreme weather events predicted by climate models only compounds this risk.

Unlike renewables, which are now the cheapest energy sources, nuclear costs are on the rise, and many plants are being shut down or in danger of being shut down for economic reasons. Initial capital costs, fuel, and maintenance costs are much higher for nuclear plants than wind and solar, and nuclear projects tend to suffer  cost overruns  and construction delays. The price of renewable energy has fallen significantly over the past decade, and it projected to continue to fall (14).

9. Competition with renewables

Investment in nuclear plants, security, mining infrastructure, etc. draws funding away from investment in cleaner sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal. Financing for renewable energy is already scarce, and increasing nuclear capacity will only add to the competition for funding.

10. Energy dependence of poor countries

Going down the nuclear route would mean that poor countries, that don't have the financial resources to invest in and develop nuclear power, would become reliant on rich, technologically advanced nations. Alternatively, poor nations without experience in the building and maintaining of nuclear plants may decide to build them anyway. Countries with a history of nuclear power use have learned the importance of regulation, oversight, and investment in safety when it comes to nuclear. Dr. Peter Bradford of Vermont Law, a former member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, writes, "A world more reliant on nuclear power would involve many plants in countries that have little experience with nuclear energy, no regulatory background in the field and some questionable records on quality control, safety and corruption." (15). The U.S. should lead by example and encourage poor countries to invest in safe energy technology.

Please also see the piece  Nuclear Energy is not a Climate Solution

(1) Bruno, J., and R. C. Ewing. "Spent Nuclear Fuel."  Elements  2.6 (2006): 343-49

(2) United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Dry Cask Storage”.  USNRC  (2016)

(3) Miller, Steven E., and Scott D. Sagan. "Nuclear Power without Nuclear Proliferation?"  Daedalus  138.4 (2009): 7-18

(4) Tsuda, Toshihide, Akiko Tokinobu, Eiji Yamamoto, and Etsuji Suzuki. "Thyroid Cancer Detection by Ultrasound Among Residents Ages 18 Years and Younger in Fukushima, Japan."  Epidemiology  (2016): 316-22.

(5) Astakhova, Larisa N., Lynn R. Anspaugh, Gilbert W. Beebe, André Bouville, Vladimir V. Drozdovitch, Vera Garber, Yuri I. Gavrilin, Valeri T. Khrouch, Arthur V. Kuvshinnikov, Yuri N. Kuzmenkov, Victor P. Minenko, Konstantin V. Moschik, Alexander S. Nalivko, Jacob Robbins, Elena V. Shemiakina, Sergei Shinkarev, Svetlana I. Tochitskaya, Myron A. Waclawiw, and Andre Bouville. "Chernobyl-Related Thyroid Cancer in Children of Belarus: A Case-Control Study."  Radiation Research  150.3 (1998): 349

(6) Schmitz-Feuerhake I, Dannheim B, Heimers A, et al. Leukemia in the proximity of a boiling-water nuclear reactor: Evidence of population exposure by chromosome studies and environmental radioactivity.  Environmental Health Perspectives  105 (1997): 1499-1504

(7) Spix C, Schmiedel S, Kaatsch P, Schulze-Rath R, Blettner M. "Case–control study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants in Germany 1980–2003."  European Journal of Cancer  44.2 (2008): 275–284

(8) Baker PJ, Hoel DG. "Meta-analysis of standardized incidence and mortality rates of childhood leukemia in proximity to nuclear facilities."  European Journal of Cancer Care  16.4 (2007):355–363

(9) Ferguson, Charles D., and Frank A. Settle. "The Future of Nuclear Power in the United States."  Federation of American Scientists  (2012)

(10) Richardson, DB, Elisabeth Cardis, Robert Daniels, Michael Gillies, Jacqueline A O’Hagan, Ghassan B Hamra, Richard Haylock, Dominique Laurier, Klervi Leuraud, Monika Moissonnier, Mary K Schubauer-Berigan, Isabelle Thierry-Chef, Ausrele Kesminiene. "Risk of Cancer from Occupational Exposure to Ionising Radiation: Retrospective Cohort Study of Workers in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States"  BMJ  (2015)

(11) "World Statistics."  nei.org.  Nuclear Energy Institute.,Web. 04 Oct. 2016.

(12) Pearce, Joshua M. "Thermodynamic Limitations to Nuclear Energy Deployment as a Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Technology."  International Journal of Nuclear Governance ,  Economy and Ecology  2.1 (2008): 113.

(13) "World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2014."  World Nuclear Industry Status Report . World Nuclear Industry, July 2014. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

(14) "Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis  - Version 9.0. "  Lazard.com . Lazard. 2015.

(15) Lynas, Mark, and Peter Bradford. "Should the World Increase Its Reliance on Nuclear Energy?"  The Wall Street Journal . Dow Jones & Company, 08 Oct. 2012. Web. 10 Jan. 2017.

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Should we abandon nuclear energy? Time for a nuclear power phase-out?

Nuclear energy is one of the most important ressources of our day. We vote and discuss if we should abandon this power for the risks it entails.

Nuclear power stations are used in many countries to generate electricity . It has been claimed to be a good alternative to fossil fuels which can mitigate problems of global warming and dependency on gas exporters . Nuclear technology can produce great amounts of energy in a very efficient way. About 12% of the total electricity generated in the world comes from nuclear fission power reactors. But there is a dark side to nuclear power too. Disasters  such as those of  Chernobyl (Ukraine) and  Fukushima (Japan) remind us of how vulnerable life is to the radioactive pollution from nuclear reactors. Before deciding whether nuclear power should be abandoned it is important to consider how it works and its mains pros and cons. 

How does a nuclear reactor make electricity

In simple terms, nuclear power is generated by a process in which atoms of uranium are split ( nuclear fission ). The neutrons, produced by fission of the uranium nuclei, trigger a chain reaction in other uranium atoms, which are in turn split. This process is controlled using water or graphite as moderators within the core of the reactor, The nuclear core reactor sits inside a steel pressure vessel which is capable of keeping water liquid even at temperatures of over 320°C. The fission products undergo radioactive decay, releasing more heat .  They are the main dangerous wastes from the process. Outside the core reactor the process to transform this energy in electricity is very similar to how coal or gas power stations work. The heat generated from nuclear fission boils water and the steam it produces make turbine generators spin, creating electricity.

Nuclear power pros and cons

The main advantages of nuclear power:

• It replaces fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) which reserves are finite.
• Fossil fuels produce large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions and are to a great extent responsible for global warming and pollution . From this point of view nuclear power contributes to mitigate environmental problems.
• Countries with nuclear capacity are less dependent on gas producers and the fluctuations of oil prices.
• Nuclear power plants have a more steady production of energy than hydro-electric, tidal and solar power generation . This stability contributes to governments energy plans and to ensure supply.  
• Nuclear energy is arguably the cheapest low-carbon option of power generation.

Hoever, there are also disadvantages to the use of nuclear energy.

• The radioactive waste generated in the process is difficult to eliminate and expensive to deal with. If nuclear waste is not dealt with properly it can have very severe consequences on the environment.
• Although accidents are rare, they are extremely lethal and have longstanding negative impacts. 
• Nuclear reactors for electricity generation could be the basis to develop nuclear weapons. 
• The dependency from foreign suppliers does not completely disappear. Gas producers are replaced by uranium producers.
• Nuclear power plants require high initial investments. Their running costs are high. Moreover it is also very expensive to dismantle them once they have been operational. 
• High security costs to preserve them from any potential external attack. 

Many argue that the solution would be to develop nuclear fusion as a cleaner and non-depletable alternative to the current nuclear fission. But until nuclear fusion becomes a reality in practical terms, what should we do? Do the pros of nuclear power outweight its cons? Is this energy as dangerous and harmful as many activists claim? 

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The 3,122-megawatt Civaux Nuclear Power Plant in France, which opened in 1997. GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP / Getty Images

Why Nuclear Power Must Be Part of the Energy Solution

By Richard Rhodes • July 19, 2018

Many environmentalists have opposed nuclear power, citing its dangers and the difficulty of disposing of its radioactive waste. But a Pulitzer Prize-winning author argues that nuclear is safer than most energy sources and is needed if the world hopes to radically decrease its carbon emissions. 

In the late 16th century, when the increasing cost of firewood forced ordinary Londoners to switch reluctantly to coal, Elizabethan preachers railed against a fuel they believed to be, literally, the Devil’s excrement. Coal was black, after all, dirty, found in layers underground — down toward Hell at the center of the earth — and smelled strongly of sulfur when it burned. Switching to coal, in houses that usually lacked chimneys, was difficult enough; the clergy’s outspoken condemnation, while certainly justified environmentally, further complicated and delayed the timely resolution of an urgent problem in energy supply.

For too many environmentalists concerned with global warming, nuclear energy is today’s Devil’s excrement. They condemn it for its production and use of radioactive fuels and for the supposed problem of disposing of its waste. In my judgment, their condemnation of this efficient, low-carbon source of baseload energy is misplaced. Far from being the Devil’s excrement, nuclear power can be, and should be, one major component of our rescue from a hotter, more meteorologically destructive world.

Like all energy sources, nuclear power has advantages and disadvantages. What are nuclear power’s benefits? First and foremost, since it produces energy via nuclear fission rather than chemical burning, it generates baseload electricity with no output of carbon, the villainous element of global warming. Switching from coal to natural gas is a step toward decarbonizing, since burning natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide of burning coal. But switching from coal to nuclear power is radically decarbonizing, since nuclear power plants release greenhouse gases only from the ancillary use of fossil fuels during their construction, mining, fuel processing, maintenance, and decommissioning — about as much as solar power does, which is about 4 to 5 percent as much as a natural gas-fired power plant.

Nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source.

Second, nuclear power plants operate at much higher capacity factors than renewable energy sources or fossil fuels. Capacity factor is a measure of what percentage of the time a power plant actually produces energy. It’s a problem for all intermittent energy sources. The sun doesn’t always shine, nor the wind always blow, nor water always fall through the turbines of a dam.

In the United States in 2016, nuclear power plants, which generated almost 20 percent of U.S. electricity, had an average capacity factor of 92.3 percent , meaning they operated at full power on 336 out of 365 days per year. (The other 29 days they were taken off the grid for maintenance.) In contrast , U.S. hydroelectric systems delivered power 38.2 percent of the time (138 days per year), wind turbines 34.5 percent of the time (127 days per year) and solar electricity arrays only 25.1 percent of the time (92 days per year). Even plants powered with coal or natural gas only generate electricity about half the time for reasons such as fuel costs and seasonal and nocturnal variations in demand. Nuclear is a clear winner on reliability.

Third, nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source. This statement will seem paradoxical to many readers, since it’s not commonly known that non-nuclear energy sources release any radiation into the environment. They do. The worst offender is coal, a mineral of the earth’s crust that contains a substantial volume of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. Burning coal gasifies its organic materials, concentrating its mineral components into the remaining waste, called fly ash. So much coal is burned in the world and so much fly ash produced that coal is actually the major source of radioactive releases into the environment. 

Anti-nuclear activists protest the construction of a nuclear power station in Seabrook, New Hampshire in 1977.  AP Photo

In the early 1950s, when the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission believed high-grade uranium ores to be in short supply domestically, it considered extracting uranium for nuclear weapons from the abundant U.S. supply of fly ash from coal burning. In 2007, China began exploring such extraction, drawing on a pile of some 5.3 million metric tons of brown-coal fly ash at Xiaolongtang in Yunnan. The Chinese ash averages about 0.4 pounds of triuranium octoxide (U3O8), a uranium compound, per metric ton. Hungary and South Africa are also exploring uranium extraction from coal fly ash. 

What are nuclear’s downsides? In the public’s perception, there are two, both related to radiation: the risk of accidents, and the question of disposal of nuclear waste.

There have been three large-scale accidents involving nuclear power reactors since the onset of commercial nuclear power in the mid-1950s: Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Fukushima in Japan.

Studies indicate even the worst possible accident at a nuclear plant is less destructive than other major industrial accidents.

The partial meltdown of the Three-Mile Island reactor in March 1979, while a disaster for the owners of the Pennsylvania plant, released only a minimal quantity of radiation to the surrounding population. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission :

“The approximately 2 million people around TMI-2 during the accident are estimated to have received an average radiation dose of only about 1 millirem above the usual background dose. To put this into context, exposure from a chest X-ray is about 6 millirem and the area’s natural radioactive background dose is about 100-125 millirem per year… In spite of serious damage to the reactor, the actual release had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment.”

The explosion and subsequent burnout of a large graphite-moderated, water-cooled reactor at Chernobyl in 1986 was easily the worst nuclear accident in history. Twenty-nine disaster relief workers died of acute radiation exposure in the immediate aftermath of the accident. In the subsequent three decades, UNSCEAR — the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, composed of senior scientists from 27 member states — has observed and reported at regular intervals on the health effects of the Chernobyl accident. It has identified no long-term health consequences to populations exposed to Chernobyl fallout except for thyroid cancers in residents of Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia who were children or adolescents at the time of the accident, who drank milk contaminated with 131iodine, and who were not evacuated. By 2008, UNSCEAR had attributed some 6,500 excess cases of thyroid cancer in the Chernobyl region to the accident, with 15 deaths.  The occurrence of these cancers increased dramatically from 1991 to 1995, which researchers attributed mostly to radiation exposure. No increase occurred in adults.

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, located near Avila Beach, California, will be decommissioned starting in 2024. Pacific Gas and Electric

“The average effective doses” of radiation from Chernobyl, UNSCEAR also concluded , “due to both external and internal exposures, received by members of the general public during 1986-2005 [were] about 30 mSv for the evacuees, 1 mSv for the residents of the former Soviet Union, and 0.3 mSv for the populations of the rest of Europe.”  A sievert is a measure of radiation exposure, a millisievert is one-one-thousandth of a sievert. A full-body CT scan delivers about 10-30 mSv. A U.S. resident receives an average background radiation dose, exclusive of radon, of about 1 mSv per year.

The statistics of Chernobyl irradiations cited here are so low that they must seem intentionally minimized to those who followed the extensive media coverage of the accident and its aftermath. Yet they are the peer-reviewed products of extensive investigation by an international scientific agency of the United Nations. They indicate that even the worst possible accident at a nuclear power plant — the complete meltdown and burnup of its radioactive fuel — was yet far less destructive than other major industrial accidents across the past century. To name only two: Bhopal, in India, where at least 3,800 people died immediately and many thousands more were sickened when 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant; and Henan Province, in China, where at least 26,000 people drowned following the failure of a major hydroelectric dam in a typhoon. “Measured as early deaths per electricity units produced by the Chernobyl facility (9 years of operation, total electricity production of 36 GWe-years, 31 early deaths) yields 0.86 death/GWe-year),” concludes Zbigniew Jaworowski, a physician and former UNSCEAR chairman active during the Chernobyl accident. “This rate is lower than the average fatalities from [accidents involving] a majority of other energy sources. For example, the Chernobyl rate is nine times lower than the death rate from liquefied gas… and 47 times lower than from hydroelectric stations.” 

Nuclear waste disposal, although a continuing political problem, is not any longer a technological problem.

The accident in Japan at Fukushima Daiichi in March 2011 followed a major earthquake and tsunami. The tsunami flooded out the power supply and cooling systems of three power reactors, causing them to melt down and explode, breaching their confinement. Although 154,000 Japanese citizens were evacuated from a 12-mile exclusion zone around the power station, radiation exposure beyond the station grounds was limited. According to the report submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency in June 2011:

“No harmful health effects were found in 195,345 residents living in the vicinity of the plant who were screened by the end of May 2011. All the 1,080 children tested for thyroid gland exposure showed results within safe limits. By December, government health checks of some 1,700 residents who were evacuated from three municipalities showed that two-thirds received an external radiation dose within the normal international limit of 1 mSv/year, 98 percent were below 5 mSv/year, and 10 people were exposed to more than 10 mSv… [There] was no major public exposure, let alone deaths from radiation.” 

Nuclear waste disposal, although a continuing political problem in the U.S., is not any longer a technological problem. Most U.S. spent fuel, more than 90 percent of which could be recycled to extend nuclear power production by hundreds of years, is stored at present safely in impenetrable concrete-and-steel dry casks on the grounds of operating reactors, its radiation slowly declining. 

An activist in March 2017 demanding closure of the Fessenheim Nuclear Power Plant in France. Authorities announced in April that they will close the facility by 2020. SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP / Getty Images

The U.S. Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico currently stores low-level and transuranic military waste and could store commercial nuclear waste in a 2-kilometer thick bed of crystalline salt, the remains of an ancient sea. The salt formation extends from southern New Mexico all the way northeast to southwestern Kansas. It could easily accommodate the entire world’s nuclear waste for the next thousand years.

Finland is even further advanced in carving out a permanent repository in granite bedrock 400 meters under Olkiluoto, an island in the Baltic Sea off the nation’s west coast. It expects to begin permanent waste storage in 2023.

A final complaint against nuclear power is that it costs too much. Whether or not nuclear power costs too much will ultimately be a matter for markets to decide, but there is no question that a full accounting of the external costs of different energy systems would find nuclear cheaper than coal or natural gas. 

Nuclear power is not the only answer to the world-scale threat of global warming. Renewables have their place; so, at least for leveling the flow of electricity when renewables vary, does natural gas. But nuclear deserves better than the anti-nuclear prejudices and fears that have plagued it. It isn’t the 21st century’s version of the Devil’s excrement. It’s a valuable, even an irreplaceable, part of the solution to the greatest energy threat in the history of humankind.

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What Does Science Say About the Need for Nuclear?

By Jessica McDonald

Posted on November 1, 2019

While Sen. Bernie Sanders has said “scientists tell us” that it’s possible to go carbon neutral without relying on nuclear power, fellow Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker, who backs the use of some nuclear energy, has said the data is on his side. Who’s right? Both have a point, but neither is telling the full story.

Most experts agree that Sanders is correct that it’s technologically possible to decarbonize the grid without using nuclear power. But many researchers also say keeping nuclear on the table makes decarbonization easier and more likely.

Booker, a New Jersey senator and a former mayor of Newark, has called for reaching “100% clean energy” in the electricity sector by 2030. His plan includes a $20 billion investment in next-generation advanced nuclear research and development by the end of the next decade.

During power generation, nuclear plants release no greenhouse gases, but they come with additional safety, security and waste disposal challenges .

He Said, He Said

The candidates’ divide on nuclear power became apparent on Sept. 4 during CNN’s climate crisis town hall , a two-day event in which the 10 leading Democratic presidential hopefuls were quizzed about their approaches to tackling climate change.

After Sanders was asked about his position on nuclear power by a graduate student in the audience, CNN’s chief climate correspondent, Bill Weir, followed up, pointing out that the U.S. gets 20% of its electricity from nuclear, and France gets about 70% . Referencing the amount of land required for solar and wind, Weir asked how it would be possible to go “carbon neutral without nuclear in the short term.”

“I think you can,” Sanders replied . “And I think the scientists tell us, in fact, that we can.” He went on to mention the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 and 1986’s Chernobyl disaster.

Booker, meanwhile, made his counterclaim hours later. “[N]uclear is more than 50 percent of our non-carbon causing energy,” he said. “So people who think that we can get there without nuclear being part of the blend just aren’t looking at the facts.”

Later, in a Sept. 19 interview with the HuffPost , Booker called out his colleagues who oppose nuclear power, saying, “As much as we say the Republicans when it comes to climate change must listen to science, our party has the same obligation to listen to scientists,” he said. “The data speaks for itself.”

“If we had a president who was going to pull us out of nuclear, we’d be more reliant on fossil fuels,” Booker added. “It’s as simple as that.”

As we’ll explain, there is support for each perspective, although Jesse Jenkins , an energy systems engineer and professor at Princeton University, said both politicians are “making stronger claims than there’s a scientific basis.” Sanders, Jenkins explained, can point to published studies that outline how one can get to zero-carbon without nuclear. “Those exist,” he said. And bolstering Booker’s side, he said, is the “predominance of the evidence” that suggests the most cost-effective way of decarbonizing would include “some nuclear.”

The debate over nuclear energy isn’t limited to Booker and Sanders, even if relatively few Democratic candidates have addressed nuclear power in their climate plans. Former Vice President Joe Biden backs nuclear technology research, as does entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who views nuclear as a “stopgap” measure and plans on having next-gen reactors up and running by 2027.

Although not written into her climate plan , Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said during her town hall segment that she would not build any more nuclear plants and would “start weaning” the country off nuclear energy. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also committed to not expanding the number of nuclear plants “unless we can find safe storage.”

Without diving into the details of individual plans, we’ll lay out what scientists know about the role of nuclear energy in decarbonizing the electrical grid.

Nuclear Not Necessary

To start, we’ll consider Sanders’ claim that “scientists tell us” that it’s possible to get to a zero-carbon electrical grid without nuclear power.

“The shortest answer is yes, that’s true. Scientists do tell us that we can,” said Drew Shindell , a climate scientist at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

Ryan Jones , an expert in electricity systems and a co-founder of Evolved Energy Research , a consulting company that models low-carbon transitions, agreed. “Anyone who says that nuclear is 100% necessary on a technical basis, I would claim, just hasn’t looked at the alternatives in enough detail,” he said in an email.

Most experts FactCheck.org contacted, including those who think nuclear power should remain an option, said that from a technical perspective, nuclear is not needed to decarbonize the grid.

But technically possible is not the same as practically feasible, or the most cost-effective. In that regard, many, although not all, researchers say nuclear — or something like it — is likely to be necessary to some degree. And even if nuclear is ultimately not needed, they say, the safer strategy is not to exclude it.

“All the evidence says it is possible to decarbonize the energy system in the U.S. without using nuclear power,” said Jones. But, he added, there are cases, such as places that don’t have good wind resources, in which building new nuclear plants can reduce the cost of decarbonizing. Depending on the region, he said, “getting to 100% renewable energy is either very expensive or necessitates significant new transmission to import resources from elsewhere.”

That’s where nuclear can be helpful. It doesn’t have to be nuclear — Jones said carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, for example, would also work. Sanders’ plan, notably, specifically excludes CCS.

Jones also made a point to note that there is a difference between building new nuclear plants, which he said likely wouldn’t be ready to go until after 2030 anyway, and maintaining the nation’s existing reactors. Much of the future of nuclear power depends on the development of advanced technologies, but there is little disagreement that keeping safely operating plants around for as long as possible would be a boon for the climate. “Maintaining our existing fleet is a good way to keep costs low and an accelerated retirement schedule simply makes it that much harder,” he said.

Shindell said that while Sanders is correct in a strict sense, the “more complete” answer is that eliminating nuclear as an option would complicate the effort to decarbonize, requiring the “most extreme” levels of action in other areas to reach the zero-carbon goal. “The more you take away one zero-carbon option,” he said, “the harder you have to push on the others.”

Global Assessments

When scientists have modeled the ways the planet as a whole can avoid the worst effects of climate change — and limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — nuclear power is almost always part of the solution. In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2018 special report , scientists described 85 pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, or overshooting that threshold and returning to 1.5 degrees or below by 2100. 

Shindell, who was one of the coordinating lead authors on the chapter , told us that it was a rare scenario that met or mostly met the 1.5 degrees limit and didn’t have nuclear power in the mix. “Very few, almost none in fact, can achieve 1.5 without nuclear,” he said. “It’s a very extreme scenario that can do that. And it requires enormous gains in all the zero-carbon sources.”

A large number of scenarios expanded nuclear power, Shindell said, to around double today’s level. He estimated that 90% of the scenarios included nuclear capacity above today’s level, and just one or two scenarios phased out nuclear entirely by 2100.

There are pathways, the report says, that “no longer see a role for nuclear fission by the end of the century.” But none include no nuclear as early as 2030 or 2050.

Because the scenarios are global, the results don’t necessarily mean that the U.S. must keep or expand its nuclear power. And the scenarios are inherently limited to the types of studies scientists do, Shindell said. Still, the IPCC findings suggest that in a broad sense, most roads to success include nuclear reactors.

Consider, too, the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report from 2014, which was the first to include scenarios that excluded certain technologies. In the nuclear phase out scenario, eight of nine tested scenarios were able to reach the target CO2 concentration level of 430-480 parts per million, or the equivalent of reaching 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But the limitation in technology increased the median costs by 7% (see figure 6.24 and table SPM.2 ). The phase out assumed that existing plants could operate until the end of their lifetime, but did not allow for any new nuclear plants beyond those already under construction.

A 2013 study cited in the 2014 IPCC report used an integrated assessment model to learn what might happen globally if nations stopped building any new nuclear plants in 2020. The authors concluded it was “in principle feasible” to transform the energy system and limit carbon dioxide concentrations to 450 parts per million. But they noted that it would require “massive and rapid expansion” of other low-emissions technology, such as renewables and carbon capture and sequestration.

“This underscores the fact that, in general, nuclear energy can be regarded as a choice rather than a necessity, and different regional and national attitudes toward nuclear energy can be accommodated,” the paper reads. “On the other hand, the forced phase-out of nuclear energy by 2020 would increase the required investments into the energy system transformation and would limit future supply-side flexibility, resulting in comparatively higher costs of CO2.”

Local Assessments

On a more local level, such as for individual countries or regions, scientists can perform much more detailed models of the electrical grid or energy system over space and time to determine the viability of various power mixes and their costs. Sometimes, such models are designed to find the lowest-cost option, while others are set up  to test the robustness of the system.

What’s clear from these modeling efforts is that the clearest and cheapest path forward to decarbonization is to rapidly expand renewable power, especially wind and solar. In a variety of studies, including those from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and others , large amounts of renewable power can be added to the grid without sacrificing reliability and without imposing excessively high costs. But there is some disagreement on how far renewables, on their own, can go. 

One prominent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  in 2015 argued that in the U.S., 100% renewable energy is possible at low cost by 2050-2055. But numerous scientists objected to that analysis, and two separate groups, including one with more than 20 authors, published critiques ; the original authors also penned rebuttals .

Christopher Clack, the lead author of the primary critique and the founder and CEO of Vibrant Clean Energy , a company that does high-resolution electrical grid modeling, says he has yet to be convinced that 100% renewables is possible in the U.S. In his view, the concept is theoretically possible, but unlikely to be feasible in practice.

“We can get all the way within a model, but in reality we probably cannot due to the imperfections of forecasts, dispatch, measurements, etc.,” he said. And for him, cost is not an ancillary issue. “If it is not possible at low-cost, it is not possible in reality,” he said, “because alternatives will be used instead.”

Regardless, each time he’s looked at studies that claim to show a successful 100% renewable grid, he’s found problems. Some models, he said, don’t go into granular enough detail, which can “smear out” challenging times for an all-renewable grid, such as an extreme cold snap. Other papers, he said, rely on unproven technology or unrealistic costs.

The fundamental issue for renewables, of course, is weather variability, and how to handle the times when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. In Clack’s view, this challenge  can mostly — but not fully — be solved by adding storage and creating a more connected and responsive electrical grid. In 2016, while working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Clack published one of the first “supergrid” papers in Nature Climate Change , which showed that by building out high-voltage, direct-current transmission lines, the U.S. could lower its electricity-sector carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 80% below 1990’s level, without an increase in the cost of electricity.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory similarly found that existing renewable technology, coupled with a more flexible grid, “is more than adequate” to supply 80% of the nation’s electricity in 2050.

But to actually provide 100% of the nation’s electricity at a reasonable cost, Clack said there needs to be a non-variable source, which could include — but isn’t limited to — nuclear power.

The importance of including some non-variable sources was also underscored in a 2018 review  co-authored by Princeton’s Jenkins. That paper, which appeared in the journal Joule , reviewed 40 studies published since the IPCC’s 2014 report that explored pathways on either a global or local scale for “deep decarbonization,” defined as an 80%-100% cut in current CO2 emissions. It f ound that all 20 of the studies that took an agnostic approach to finding the most affordable way to go about deep decarbonization ultimately selected a power mix that included at least one low-carbon “firm” resource, such as nuclear power or fossil fuels coupled with CCS.

As Jenkins explained it, while wind and solar can do the bulk of the work, as renewable penetration approaches 100%, problems emerge and costs rise sharply. He told us that most storage — largely lithium-ion batteries — can help with daily variation, but is insufficient for when the sun and wind stall for weeks at a time over a large geographic area, or what’s known as the “dark doldrums.” Adding even more storage capacity might be able to do the trick, he said, but that storage would be expensive to build and rarely used. The economics of such a scenario are bleak. Even assuming costs fall to less than a third of today’s, Jenkins’ review calculated that it would cost more than $7 trillion to build out enough lithium-ion batteries to store a week’s worth of electricity in the U.S. That’s almost 19 times the amount spent on the nation’s electricity over one year.

Not everyone holds this view. Daniel Kammen , a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the school’s Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory , objected to the 2015 PNAS paper, but nevertheless thinks that 100% renewables are an achievable goal. “They are wrong,” he said in an email, adding that 100% clean energy is possible with solar, wind and hydro when supported with storage. Kammen, who is a former science envoy to the State Department under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, did not reply to further questions, but pointed to his lab’s energy system model . In 2016 , his group used the model to evaluate costs under a variety of assumptions for a large swath of western North America to reach a target of 85% below 1990 emissions levels by 2050.

Trieu Mai , a senior energy researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said the science remains unsettled over the economic viability of the various zero-carbon power options.

“I do not believe there has been sufficient analysis to conclusively say which technologies are necessary to reach zero emission power or energy systems,” he said in an email. “There is strong consensus in the literature that growth in renewable energy will be required,” he added, “but the extent of this growth (i.e., whether it should reach 100%) is still under debate.”

In the end, the larger question of how to decarbonize the energy system may come down to differences in philosophy rather than the science, which is not clear-cut, and involves assumptions about the future.

“There isn’t a single scientific truth here,” said Jenkins. “It’s a debate about priorities and feasibility, which is defined in a number of different ways by a number of different parties.”

For Jenkins, though, banking only on solar and wind would be a “mistake.” “Given the high stakes,” he wrote in his 2018 review, “it would be prudent to expand and improve a wide set of clean energy resources, each of which may fill the critical niche for firm, low-carbon power should other technologies falter.”

“If we’re really in a ‘climate crisis,’ then you go to war with your full arsenal,” Jenkins said. “You don’t hold anything back. And you don’t purposefully make this crisis harder by limiting our already limited options.”

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Why the United States Should Remain Engaged on Nuclear Power: Geopolitical and National Security Considerations

Commentary by Matt Bowen • September 29, 2020

Nuclear energy has shown much promise and faced considerable challenges since its origins in the mid-20th century. While the United States drove the early charge for safe nuclear power around the globe, its leadership has waned in recent decades. US reactors now under construction—following no orders for such plants in the United States for several decades—have gone well over planned budgets and schedules. And while the United States was once the leading international supplier of reactors, other countries have since stepped forward to fill that role.

Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, as part of its wider work on nuclear energy, is examining the impact of potential American disengagement from nuclear power’s development and where opportunities exist to step back in and shape its future. The program also will assess the US nuclear waste management program and efforts to collaborate with other countries on advanced reactor development as well as options for improvement on both fronts.

This effort includes a two-part commentary on some of the benefits the United States might derive from increasing its engagement on nuclear power. The first in the series explored the important role nuclear energy can play in lowering air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst potential outcomes of climate change. The second part of the series, this piece, examines the geopolitical and national security implications of the United States and its traditional allies effectively ceding the international nuclear energy marketplace to the Chinese and Russians.

The nuclear program’s ultimate goal is to inform readers—policy makers, industry leaders, academics, and others—with objective, research-based analysis. It will strive in the months and years ahead to contribute constructively to a necessary dialogue on the future of nuclear power.

Introduction

Nuclear power in the United States is facing substantial headwinds. However, the urgency and scale of addressing climate change argues for a strong push on all low-carbon technologies, including nuclear energy, as discussed in the first part of this commentary series. [1] Meanwhile, Russia and China have increased the size of their domestic nuclear programs, as well as their export ambitions. [2] As this piece discusses, there are geopolitical implications associated with the United States effectively ceding the international nuclear energy marketplace to these countries. In combination with the potential missed economic opportunities (i.e., a possible $1.5 trillion market), [3] as well as a preference to be the energy technology supplier of choice around the world (or perhaps a preference for countries not to be dependent on Russia and China), [4] there are additional considerations related to US national security.

The purpose of this commentary is not to assess the successes and failures of the global nonproliferation regime or the effectiveness of various US nonproliferation efforts, [5] or to propose new nonproliferation strategies. [6] Rather, the intention is to review the unique role the United States has played in helping erect the global nonproliferation regime and discuss the major elements of the regime that are relevant today for nuclear energy cooperation between the United States and other countries. From there, the commentary examines some of the national security implications associated with potential US disengagement as a nuclear supplier that should be considered by American decision makers as they approach policy making for US nuclear energy and nonproliferation programs.

The Role of the United States in the Creation of the IAEA and the NPT

A global worry after World War II was the spread and potential use of nuclear weapons. A mere four years after the first US nuclear weapons test in 1945, the Soviet Union had tested its first nuclear weapon. The UK followed in 1952 with its own nuclear test. Believing that nuclear secrecy was no longer a credible strategy, and concerned that many countries would launch their own programs and successfully develop nuclear weapons, President Dwight Eisenhower launched an ambitious strategic initiative.

In a 1953 speech to the United Nations, he described the risks of nuclear weapons and elaborated on how those risks could be limited. Notably, he proposed the creation of an international body to monitor nuclear activities. In addition to this global inspection and control regime and a focus on diminishing nuclear weapons stockpiles, Eisenhower proposed that “[e]xperts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.” [7]

The speech (dubbed “Atoms for Peace”) led to the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957 and later to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The NPT was opened for signature in 1968, and can be seen as the legal embodiment of the international bargain that Eisenhower had pointed toward in the Atoms for Peace speech. The NPT still serves as the bedrock of the nuclear nonproliferation regime today, and includes several key provisions within its 11 articles:

• Article I obligated nuclear weapon states (NWS) not to transfer nuclear weapons to other countries and not to assist non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) in acquiring nuclear weapons.
• Article II contained a pledge that NNWS would not develop nuclear weapons. (NNWS were defined in Article IX of the treaty to be states that had not tested a nuclear weapon before 1967.)
• Article III provided that nuclear material (source and special fissionable) in each NNWS would be subject to inspections by the IAEA to verify that it had not been diverted from peaceful purposes. It also contained an export control duty that nations not supply nuclear material or especially designed or prepared equipment to an NNWS’ nuclear program unless IAEA safeguards were applied.
• Article IV stated each nation’s right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
• Article VI committed the NWS to negotiations on nuclear weapons disarmament. [8]

The NPT is best viewed as a bargain between the “haves” (the NWS, which were the United States, Soviet Union, UK, France, and China) and the “have nots” (the NNWS). NWS such as the United States wanted a legally binding commitment by the NNWS not to develop nuclear weapons, and also wanted international inspections on nuclear activities in the NNWS territories to verify that nuclear material was not being diverted to military purposes. The IAEA, for example, would carry out its verification mission in NNWS using a set of technical measures (known as “safeguards”) to verify that nuclear facilities were not misused and nuclear material was not diverted from peaceful uses. NNWS, on the other hand, wanted their right to peaceful nuclear energy purposes enshrined in the treaty (and to receive assistance in this regard, as described below) and also for the NWS to commit to nuclear weapons disarmament.

Again, the purpose of this commentary is not to analyze the successes and failures of the Atoms for Peace/NPT bargain, as others have done. [9] As one expert noted, the important observation is that because of US initiative, “In the nonproliferation realm, Atoms for Peace laid the framework for the [IAEA] and the [NPT]—the cornerstones of the international nuclear nonproliferation regime.” [10] The IAEA’s two objectives are to prevent proliferation and support peaceful nuclear energy use. The civil nuclear energy component of the NPT—Article IV—was an integral part of how the treaty was negotiated and why it was indefinitely extended. As Ambassador Thomas Graham, Jr. reflected, [11] “Article IV was absolutely essential to the negotiation and conclusion of the NPT in 1968… Likewise, Article IV was central to the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995.” In 1995, for example, over two dozen NPT parties had either built nuclear power plants or were seriously considering a nuclear power program. Most nations party to the NPT also had an interest in using nuclear power for purposes other than energy generation, such as in medicine or agriculture.

Development of nuclear energy programs in other countries must necessarily be seen through the lens of the NPT and Article IV as every nation in the world except five (India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, and South Sudan) is a member of the treaty. It is the right of every NNWS under the NPT to pursue peaceful nuclear energy if they choose to do so, so long as they abide by the nonproliferation obligations set out in the NPT. The treaty does not compel states party to the NPT to pursue nuclear energy programs, nor does it mean that nations such as the United States are obligated to supply nuclear reactors or materials to each and every country that is party to the treaty. However, the treaty does speak to obligations to cooperate, especially in NNWS and the developing areas of the world. Article IV.2 stated that all of the parties to the treaty would facilitate the “fullest possible exchange” of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information applied to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Moreover, it stated that countries such as the United States “shall also co-operate… together with other States… to the further development of peaceful nuclear energy purposes.” The NPT explicitly identified NNWS and “developing areas of the world” to benefit from this cooperation.

In 1963, President Kennedy expressed concern that in the 1970s the United States might have to face a world in which “15 or 20 or 25 nations” have nuclear weapons. [12] This scenario never came to pass, and Atoms for Peace, the IAEA, and the NPT deserve some credit in preventing this development. As of August 2020, the number of countries possessing nuclear weapons stood at nine. [13]

Nuclear Export Controls, Cooperation Agreements, and US Leadership

Following Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace speech, the United States carried out programs to accelerate commercial nuclear power development for domestic energy supply. These programs created the civil nuclear energy capabilities that were then offered to other countries as part of the Atoms for Peace/NPT bargain. For example, the US government used cost-sharing arrangements with private companies and other mechanisms to demonstrate different reactor technologies in the 1950s and 1960s as part of the Power Reactor Demonstration Program. [14] These initial public-private partnerships provided the early investment that demonstrated commercial nuclear power technologies and ultimately led to the current fleet of almost 100 commercial reactors in the United States, as well as exports to other countries.

However, the supply of peaceful nuclear energy assistance to other countries was not without controversy, nor was it without incidents that inadvertently contributed to nuclear weapons programs. After the NPT entered into force in 1970, it soon became apparent that additional measures were needed to limit the risk of proliferation.

Perhaps the most consequential instance of proliferation during that period involved Canadian and US nuclear energy assistance to India. In the 1950s, Canada had agreed to assist India with construction of a research reactor and the United States agreed to supply the facility with heavy water for its operation. The agreement, however, predated the existence of the IAEA and the NPT and the facility began operations without international safeguards applied to it. Safeguards were never applied to the reactor at a later time, and India never joined the NPT. India’s government had provided assurances to both Canada and the United States that their assistance with the research reactor would be used only for peaceful purposes. In 1974, India used plutonium that had been separated from the research reactor’s used fuel at a reprocessing facility and detonated a nuclear explosive device, claiming it was a “peaceful nuclear explosion.” The use of nuclear material from a research reactor that had been provided for peaceful purposes—and more generally the problem of what to do with countries that did not join the NPT (less than half of the nations that exist today were party to the NPT in 1974 [15] )—prompted a flurry of efforts to strengthen the nonproliferation architecture.

While the United States and other likeminded countries could not compel countries such as India to join the NPT and foreswear nuclear weapons, they could erect higher export control standards to guard against another such episode in the future and continue to press more countries to join the NPT. In the same year as India’s test, the United States and a small group of countries (Canada, France, Japan, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and West Germany) met to agree on a multilateral set of export control guidelines for the supply of nuclear material, equipment, and technology. The organization, now known as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), published its first set of export control guidelines in 1978 that contained, among other conditions, new restrictions on the export of enrichment, reprocessing, and heavy water technologies. The NSG published a “Trigger List” of nuclear items (so-called because the export of these items would trigger the need for IAEA safeguards) and guidelines that described the conditions that must be satisfied for the supply of items on the Trigger List to other countries. In 1992, the NSG also published a “Dual Use List” of controlled items with both nuclear and non-nuclear applications and a separate set of guidelines describing the conditions of supply for their export. [16] Today, the NSG is the premiere multilateral nuclear export control forum: it provides a minimum set of export control standards that all of the major suppliers are to abide by in order to prevent a “race to the bottom” on nonproliferation commitments.

The US Congress played an important role in strengthening export controls and nuclear cooperation with other countries in the wake of the India test. The 1978 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act (NNPA) required future nuclear cooperation agreements with NNWS to include “full-scope” IAEA safeguards. That is, a NNWS would have to accept IAEA safeguards on all of the nuclear materials within its territory, not solely on individual projects involving US collaboration. This was a direct response to the India case—where some facilities had been under IAEA safeguards and some had not—to prevent in particular non-NPT countries from exploiting the same loophole in the future. The United States and other countries pushed for all of the major suppliers to commit to this condition of supply as part of the NSG guidelines, and in 1992, the NSG announced agreement on this policy objective. [17]

Similarly, there are other instances where the United States has unilaterally strengthened its own export controls and then subsequently worked to raise the multilateral commitments of the major suppliers by pressing for adoption in the NSG. For example, in the 1980s and early 1990s, as part of the export licensing process for nuclear energy technologies, the United States began to consistently request formal government-to-government assurances from recipient countries of peaceful use of the technology and/or to put conditions on the retransfer of the technology to subsequent countries. This went beyond what was required by the NSG at the time, [18] and the United States and other countries worked to negotiate these practices into multilateral export controls. In 1995, the NSG made the technology associated with Trigger List items subject to much the same conditions as the Trigger List items themselves. This meant that countries adhering to the NSG guidelines would also have to obtain government-to-government assurances regarding peaceful uses and retransfers of all listed nuclear energy technologies. This did not prevent supplier nations from requesting stronger nonproliferation commitments as part of these exports, however, and to this day, the assurances that the United States requests from recipient countries regarding the retransfer of certain nuclear energy technologies are stronger than what is required by the NSG. [19]

As a third example, albeit one that is broader than just nuclear export control, the US government launched the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative (EPCI) during the George H.W. Bush Administration in 1990. Implemented under 15 CFR Part 744 of the Export Administration Regulations, the controls are based on the end-use or end-user of an item (known as “catch-all” controls) and can thus require US companies to obtain a license to export items even if those items are not explicitly listed in any US export control regulations. Rather, if the applicant knows (or has reasons to believe) or is informed by the US government that the item poses an unacceptable risk of diversion to nuclear, missile, chemical, or biological proliferation activities, a license is required for its export. The US government maintains a list of foreign entities that it has designated as end-users of concern (e.g., some of these entities are involved in nuclear weapons activities in China, India, Pakistan, or Russia). As one Japanese trade advisor described, “The EPCI started as a unilateral control, but with US leadership, allied countries later incorporated the catch-all controls in their export control systems.” [20] In 2004, the United States and other nations negotiated a catch-all export control provision into the NSG Dual Use list. [21]

These three examples are by no means an exhaustive list, but they illustrate where US leadership has in part led to strengthened multilateral conditions of supply for nuclear exports.

There is also a separate set of nonproliferation considerations that involve the consent rights available to the United States after materials and equipment have been exported to another country subject to a US nuclear cooperation agreement. The United States negotiates nuclear cooperation agreements with other countries in accordance with the requirements of Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (AEA), sometimes referred to as “123 agreements.” Nuclear cooperation agreements provide the legal framework for bilateral cooperation and the export of US nuclear materials and equipment. 123 agreements also contain specific points of influence that can be used to affect nonproliferation aspects of a recipient country’s nuclear energy program after a given export has been licensed.

Subsequent to the 1978 NNPA, nuclear cooperation agreements with NNWS typically contain the nine nonproliferation criteria described in Section 123a of the AEA. These provisions mean that, for example, nuclear material that has been provided by the United States to another nation cannot be enriched or reprocessed without the prior consent of the United States. If the United States supplies either major reactor components or the fuel for a country’s nuclear reactors subject to the nuclear cooperation agreement, the spent nuclear fuel produced by the associated reactors cannot be reprocessed to produce separated plutonium without the consent of the United States. US government officials have in the past called the nonproliferation criteria in US nuclear cooperation agreements, “the most stringent in the world.” [22] US nuclear cooperation agreements also require cooperating partners to apply adequate physical protection measures to exported nuclear materials. The US government consults on these matters with other states, and even conducts bilateral physical security visits at foreign locations with nuclear materials subject to 123 agreements, providing an opportunity for the United States to communicate and share best practices for physical security.

The history of Atoms for Peace and the creation of the IAEA, NPT, and NSG, as well as export control initiatives in more recent decades, are meant to illustrate at least in part the unique and vital role the United States has played in forming, sustaining, and strengthening the global nonproliferation architecture. As the next section discusses, further decline in or a US exit from nuclear power will necessarily mean a reduction in avenues for the United States to exert influence on and shape the nonproliferation regime in future decades.

Rising Competition from China and Russia

As mentioned, the US domestic nuclear energy industry is facing substantial challenges in the US electricity sector. US reactor vendors are also having difficulty competing with other supplier nations to be the vendor of choice for nuclear programs around the world. A 2010 Government Accountability Office report found that the US share of exports of nuclear reactors, major components and equipment, and minor reactor parts fell 36 percent between 1994 and 2008—from an 11 percent share to 7 percent—and the US share of nuclear fuel exports fell from 29 percent to 10 percent in the same period. [23]

As Figure 1 shows, Russia is the leading supplier of nuclear reactors to other countries, and China, with the biggest domestic build in the world, is positioned to play a large role in the future.

Figure 1: Number of nuclear plants under construction and constructed by key countries since 1997

Given that the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor builds in Georgia and South Carolina have gone very badly, [24] if no US advanced reactor efforts succeed, the United States could be left without a reactor option to offer other countries under its nuclear cooperation agreements. This can only decrease the leverage the United States has to negotiate nonproliferation commitments with other countries in future cooperation agreements. This is especially true today as countries interested in nuclear power do not need to sign agreements with the United States in order to access viable supply chains for reactor programs. It is hard to see why countries would allow America to set conditions on their civil nuclear energy programs—let alone higher ones than NSG standards dictate or that other supplier countries ask for—as part of US 123 agreements if the United States is not able to offer nations anything of value in return.

Under a hypothetical future where US nuclear energy capabilities diminish further, countries that make the sovereign decision to pursue civil nuclear energy programs will still have reactor supplier options—they will just not be US ones. The nonproliferation commitments negotiated by the Chinese and Russians in their supply agreements with recipient states are likely to be weaker than what the United States would have otherwise negotiated as an active participant in the international nuclear energy marketplace. As a recent US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) report noted, the conditions of supply in US nuclear cooperation agreements only apply if US designs are chosen by other countries. [25] In particular, NNSA observed, “Over time, if foreign-designed reactors are consistently chosen over US designs, this would decrease the ability of the United States to influence global supplier norms.”

A similar case could be made for nuclear safety and security practices and culture. The United States will have a reduced opportunity to spread its approaches in those critical areas if its presence in the international nuclear energy marketplace is further eroded. Today, the United States must reckon with the reality of other independent reactor suppliers and their ability to fill the void if the United States abdicates its historical role in the international nuclear supplier regime.

Adding to US difficulties, China and Russia make use of financing to support their bids to build their nuclear energy offerings in other countries. The Export-Import Bank of China provides financing to projects abroad, including nuclear reactors. Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative” involves money for power plant construction as part of an estimated $1.1 trillion for infrastructure. [26] China has been in discussions with Indonesia, Pakistan, Romania, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey on nuclear power plants. Similarly, Russia has offered financing for its reactor supply projects, including the ones in Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey.

As long as the terms of a particular reactor deal meet the conditions of supply found in the multilateral nuclear export supply guidelines from the NSG, the United States has no multilateral commitment or treaty to point to and argue for why a given transaction should not proceed. If a given civil nuclear energy program is supplied by China or Russia, none of the consent rights or points of influence in 123 agreements will exist for the United States. The associated national security consideration is whether the United States is comfortable with China and Russia controlling the supply of nuclear reactors, with the attendant ability to influence global supplier norms. Neither country is likely to be as vigilant in strengthening and adapting supplier standards and nonproliferation commitments in the future. [27]

The United States government has been particularly critical and questioning of China’s commitment to nonproliferation in recent decades. The federal government has sanctioned state-owned entities in China for proliferation activities, including sales of dual-use goods to Iran and North Korea. To take perhaps the most prominent example, the United State has sanctioned Li Fangwei, aka “Karl Lee,” multiple times and charged him with using a web of front companies to evade US sanctions. The FBI has asserted that Li Fangwei’s companies have transferred items to Iran that were controlled by the Nuclear Suppliers Group for reasons of nonproliferation. [28] Government officials have raised the issue of Karl Lee in private with the Chinese government dating back to the Clinton Administration, but without action from Beijing. [29]

More recently, China’s supply of nuclear reactors to Pakistan has raised concerns about China’s dedication to its nonproliferation commitments. As Pakistan is not party to the NPT and does not have full-scope IAEA safeguards on its nuclear program, NSG Trigger List guidelines should prevent any country that complies with NSG guidelines from supplying power reactors to it. When China joined the NSG in 2004, it reportedly declared some reactor sales to Pakistan as grandfathered under preexisting contracts, but the latest announcements of new Chinese-supplied reactor builds go beyond these declarations, raising questions again about China’s nonproliferation credentials. [30] These episodes and others help to explain why some are concerned that China’s influence on nuclear supplier norms will grow if current trends in the marketplace continue.

Preserving the NPT—perhaps the world’s central security bargain—should be an ongoing objective for the United States. In the years following the treaty’s negotiation, the United States used the offer of peaceful nuclear energy assistance as an inducement for countries to join it. [31] Today, all of the nations of the world are party to the NPT with the exception of only five: India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and South Sudan. The United States and other parties to the NPT will need to continue to uphold their end of the bargain. As the official who led the US government effort to indefinitely extend the NPT in 1995 has noted, “The [NPT] is not a gift from the 184 NPT nonnuclear weapon states to the five NPT nuclear weapon states; it is a political and strategic bargain… Article IV must be faithfully implemented.” [32]

Past US initiatives have contributed to higher multilateral global export control standards and requirements for full-scope safeguards. But what will the future look like for nations embarking on new nuclear power programs in the coming decades if the US role as a supplier diminishes further? A future absence of US engagement in the nuclear supplier regime will unavoidably result in a reduced set of options for the United States to shape supplier norms and nonproliferation, safety, and security aspects of other countries’ civil nuclear energy programs.

In some instances, the approach to nuclear energy engagement with other countries that best serves US interests may be to negotiate nonproliferation commitments in 123 agreements and then supply materials and/or equipment to entangle the associated civil nuclear energy programs in US consent rights. [33] This type of strategy as a whole, however, is only viable if the United States has something of value to export under its cooperation agreements. [34]

The national security implications of further US decline or its exit from international nuclear trade, as discussed in this commentary, deserve serious attention. Trends in the global nuclear energy marketplace and related nonproliferation concerns should be considered alongside other reasons for continued US engagement on nuclear power—including the battle against climate change and air pollution—as federal decision makers craft nuclear policies in the years to come.

[1] Matt Bowen, “Why the United States Should Remain Engaged on Nuclear Power: Climate Change and Air Pollution,” Center on Global Energy Policy, June 2020, https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/commentary/why-united-states-should-remain-engaged-nuclear-power-climate-change-and-air-pollution .

[2] Robert F. Ichord, Jr., “US Nuclear-Power Leadership and the Chinese and Russian Challenge,” Atlantic Council Global Energy Center Issue Brief, March 2018, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/us… .

[3] World Nuclear News, “Future Nuclear Supply Chain Worth Billions, Report Finds,” September 14, 2016, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Future-nuclear-supply-chain-worth-billions-report-finds-1509167.html .

[4] Jane Nakano, “The Changing Geopolitics of Nuclear Energy: A Look at the United States, Russia, and China,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 2020, https://www.csis.org/analysis/changing-geopolitics-nuclear-energy-look-u… .

[5] e.g., Nicholas L.  Miller, Stopping the Bomb: The Sources and Effectiveness of US Nonproliferation Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018).

[6] e.g., Daniel Poneman, Double Jeopardy: Combating Nuclear Terror and Climate Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019).

[7] A transcript of President Eisenhower’s speech can be found on the IAEA’s website: https://www.iaea.org/about/history/atoms-for-peace-speech .

[8] The NPT has 11 articles, but only Articles I, II, III, IV, and VI are discussed briefly (and incompletely) here, as they are the most relevant to the focus of this commentary.

[9] See Atoms for Peace: A Future after Fifty Years? (Joseph F. Pilat, ed.) for various viewpoints on the Atoms for Peace speech and its consequences. For example, in Chapter 2 James Schlesinger (the former US Secretary of Energy, and thus the top manager of the US government’s nuclear complex) notes, “Whether through foresight or lack of outside pressure, it worked for an extended period. Recall the pessimism of the 1950s and 1960s President Kennedy who was “haunted by the feeling” that by 1975 there might be fifteen or twenty nuclear powers… On the nonproliferation front, we have done far better than we anticipated at the time,” and “[w]hat then are we to conclude a half-century after President Eisenhower’s Atoms-for-Peace address? … Dwight Eisenhower was a supreme pragmatist. All in all, he would not be entirely satisfied with the results we have achieved, but also he would not be displeased.”

[10] Joseph F. Pilat, ed., Atoms for Peace: A Future after Fifty Years? (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 3.

[11] Ambassador Thomas Graham, Jr., email communication with the author on December 24, 2019. Ambassador Graham was involved in the negotiation of every major arms control and nonproliferation agreement from 1970 to 1997. Ambassador Graham’s extended quote: “Article IV was absolutely essential to the negotiation and conclusion of the NPT in 1968. Many states were opposed to what was called ‘double discrimination,’ which would have resulted under the NPT in exclusive P-5 control of peaceful nuclear energy as well as nuclear weapons without Article IV. Such states also viewed the peaceful use of nuclear energy as important to their economies. Likewise, Article IV was central to the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995. By this time a large number of NPT parties had an actual or potential commitment to nuclear power energy generation. And virtually all NPT parties were using or had an interest in using nuclear power for purposes other than energy generation, such as in medicine or agriculture.”

[12] John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, “News Conference 52, March 21, 1963,” https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-52 .

[13] Arms Control Association, “Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance,” July 2019, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat .

[14] Electric Power Research Institute, Government and Industry Roles in the Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment of Commercial Nuclear Reactors: Historical Review and Analysis, EPRI Report No. 3002010478 (Washington, DC: EPRI, 2017).

[15] In May 1975, for example, only 91 nations were party to the NPT, and thus were participants to the first review conference (see: https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-the-Treaty-on-the-Non-Proliferation-of-Nuclear-Weapons-NPThttps://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/ ). As the UN website states, “more countries have ratified the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement, a testament to the Treaty’s significance” (see https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/ ).

[16] See the NSG website for the most recent Trigger List and Dual Use List, along with their respective guidelines: https://www.nuclearsuppliersgroup.org/en/ .

[17] For more discussion on the 1992 agreement to full-scope safeguards as a condition of supply and the creation of the Dual Use List in 1992, see Carlton Thorne’s 1997 keynote speech at the first NSG International Seminar on the Role of Export Controls in Nuclear Non-Proliferation. Available at: https://www.nuclearsuppliersgroup.org/en/nsg-documents

[18] See Chapter III, page 17, of the 2017 Nuclear Innovation Alliance report, “Part 810 Reform” for discussion.

[19] James A. Glasgow, Elina Teplinsky, and Stephen L. Markus, Nuclear Export Controls: A Comparative Analysis of National Regimes for the Control of Nuclear Materials, Components and Technology, (Washington, DC: Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, 2012).

[20] Tamotsu Aoi, Historical Background of Export Control Development in Selected Countries and Regions (Tokyo: Mitsui & Co., Ltd., 2016), http://www.cistec.or.jp/english/service/report/1605historical_background_export_control_development.pdf

[21] The public statement coming out of the 2004 NSG Plenary in Gothenburg, Sweden, states: “In order to strengthen further the Participating Governments’ national export controls, the Plenary decided to adopt, inter alia, the following measures… A ‘catch-all’ mechanism in the NSG Guidelines, to provide a national legal basis to control the export of nuclear related items that are not on the control lists, when such items are or may be intended for use in connection with a nuclear weapons programme.”

[22] From Section 123: Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreements: Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, 113th Cong. 579 (2014), statement of Daniel B. Poneman, Deputy Secretary of Energy of the United States: “No government requires more stringent nonproliferation conditions than the United States.”

[23] Government Accountability Office, Governmentwide Strategy Could Help Increase Commercial Benefits from US Nuclear Cooperation Agreements with Other Countries (Washington, DC: GAO, 2010), https://www.gao.gov/assets/320/311924.pdf .

[24] Anya Litvak, “Westinghouse sold an unfinished product, then the problems snowballed,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 23, 2017, https://www.post-gazette.com/business/powersource/2017/10/23/Westinghous… .

[25] DOE-NNSA, “International Safeguards, Security, and Regulatory Aspects of US Light Water Small Modular Reactors,” 2014.

[26] Ichord, “US Nuclear-Power Leadership,” 8.

[27] See discussion in Nicola de Blasio and Richard Nephew’s “The Geopolitics of Nuclear Energy,” Center for Global Energy Policy, Columbia SIPA, March 2017, 24: “Some states have prioritized the nonproliferation mission to the extent that they have conditioned future nuclear trade on it. The United States has been at the forefront of this effort, requiring various forms of commitments from nuclear commercial partners to nonproliferation standards… Still this is not a universal sentiment. Russia moved forward with the construction and fueling of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran during the height of international concerns with the Iranian nuclear program. China has maintained a plan to export nuclear power plants to Pakistan, claiming its contract to do so preexisted its NSG obligations…”

[28] Federal Bureau of Investigation, “‘Karl Lee’ Charged in Manhattan Federal Court with Using a Web of Front Companies to Evade US Sanctions,” April 29, 2014, https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newyork/news/press-releases/karl-lee-charged-in-manhattan-federal-court-with-using-a-web-of-front-companies-to-evade-u.s.-sanctions .

[29] Jeff Stein, “How China Helped Iran Go Nuclear,” Newsweek, July 14, 2015.

[30] Mark Hibbs, “Moving Forward on China, Pakistan, and the NSG,” Armscontrolwonk.org, June 23, 2011, https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1100228/moving-forward-on-china-pakistan-and-the-nsg/ .

[31] Rebecca Davis Gibbons, “Supply to Deny: The Benefits of Nuclear Assistance for Nuclear Nonproliferation,” Journal of Global Security Studies (December 12, 2019).

[32] Thomas Graham, Unending Crisis: National Security Policy After 9/11 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012): 186.

[33] See, for example, a letter to Congress from a bipartisan group of nonproliferation experts on US strategy with regard to Saudi Arabia’s plans for a civil nuclear energy program: https://www.nuclearinnovationalliance.org/ksa-123-non-proliferation-letter-us-congress . US sanctions have also shown some value in helping to deter proliferation in certain cases. See Nicholas L. Miller, “The Secret Success of Nonproliferation Sanctions,” International Organization 68, no. 4 (2014): 913–44; Nicholas L. Miller, “Why Nuclear Energy Rarely Leads to Proliferation,” International Security 42, no. 2 (2017): 40–77. Sanctions can have increased salience if the US supplies another country’s nuclear power program. For example, Section 129 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, cuts off nuclear supplies in the event a country detonates a nuclear explosive device or violates its IAEA safeguards agreement. These acts would thus risk stranding a country’s multibillion-dollar electricity generating assets if the US is supplying them with parts and fuel, providing some measure of deterrence against a country proliferating.

[34] This point is also noted in a 2013 Center for Strategic and International Studies report, “Restoring US Leadership in Nuclear Energy: A National Security Imperative” on pages x–xi: “American leadership was instrumental in shaping the global nuclear nonproliferation regime and nuclear safety norms … . But our nation’s ability to promote nonproliferation and other national security objectives through peaceful nuclear cooperation has diminished … . The national security concern is that much of this new interest in nuclear power is coming from countries and regions that may not share America’s interests and priorities in the areas of nonproliferation and global security. And our leverage to influence their nuclear programs will be weak at best if US companies cannot offer the technologies, services, and expertise these countries need to operate a successful nuclear program … .”

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3 Reasons Nuclear Power Has Returned to the Energy Debate

If we believed our own rhetoric about the climate crisis, support for nuclear would be much higher..

• Climate Change
• United States
• Jason Bordoff

If you still needed proof that nuclear energy has returned to the conversation after decades of disfavor, it came with an unexpected celebrity boost last month. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the Canadian singer Grimes separately used their star power to advocate against the closure of nuclear power plants, echoing growing pressure for California to reconsider plans to shut its last such plant. Over the weekend, Europe also saw a fresh boost for nuclear energy with the leaked draft of a European Commission plan to include zero-carbon nuclear energy on its list of what counts as a “green” investment.

Notwithstanding Germany’s long-planned closure of three of its remaining six nuclear plants on New Year’s Eve, even as Europe struggles with energy shortages , support from celebrities and the EU was just the latest in a string of good news for nuclear energy in 2021. In the United States, private investment in nuclear projects and companies reached eye-popping levels. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm became increasingly vocal in support of nuclear power as a zero-carbon energy source. In Europe, several countries—including France—recently announced new plans to build nuclear reactors in order to meet looming deadlines to decarbonize their electricity systems.

A decade after the Fukushima nuclear accident set back nuclear power’s prospects worldwide, the outlook may finally be brightening for three reasons: the urgency of meeting increasingly ambitious climate goals, significant advances in nuclear technology, and national security concerns about China’s and Russia’s growing leadership in nuclear power.

Until recently, nuclear power’s outlook seemed bleak. Following Fukushima, Japan suspended nearly all of its 50 nuclear reactors; today, only nine have resumed operations. Several other countries, most notably Germany, decided to phase out nuclear power. Still others, such as Spain, Switzerland, and Italy, scrapped plans to add new nuclear plants. Between 2011 and 2020, a total of 65 reactors were either shut down or did not have their operational lifetimes extended.

In the United States, the number of nuclear reactors peaked at more than 100 in 2012. Since then, 12 reactors have been shut down, while only one was added. (Nuclear power continues to supply about 20 percent of total U.S. electricity generation.) Cheap natural gas unlocked by the shale revolution and dramatic cost declines in wind and solar power have made it harder for nuclear power to compete. Meanwhile, projects to build new nuclear power plants in the United States have ballooned in cost, seen their timelines lengthened, or been scrapped altogether. Two reactors being built in Georgia are now projected to cost twice as much and take more than twice as long to complete as originally estimated. Two other reactors under construction in South Carolina were scrapped in 2017 after $9 billion in expenditures, leaving ratepayers with nothing to show for their money.

So, given all these setbacks, why the sudden new interest in nuclear power?

First, as the urgency to combat the climate crisis grows, there is growing recognition that the pathway to net-zero emissions will be faster, easier, and cheaper if nuclear energy is part of the mix of solutions.

As Grimes explained in her viral video calling for California to reverse its decision to shut the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, “This is crisis mode, and we should be using all the tools that we have.” She went on: “If we push the closure back by a decade, it will help the state decarbonize faster and make the transition to clean energy faster and cheaper.”

The pop star’s claims are backed up by analysis. To achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, global electricity use will need to more than double, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as cars, home heating, and other sectors are electrified. Vast amounts of electricity will also be required to make fuels, such as hydrogen and ammonia, to power sectors that are harder to electrify, such as ship transportation and steelmaking.

All that electricity must then come from zero-carbon sources. Solar and wind power can provide much of that but not all. They are intermittent, as the sun does not always shine nor the wind always blow, and face other limitations, such as the greater amount of land needed. Batteries, whose costs have fallen sharply, can store renewable energy for hours but not yet days or weeks to handle seasonal fluctuations or extended periods of low winds or gray skies.

Thus, the cheapest path to decarbonize electricity is to have some amount—estimates vary—of so-called firm generation: reliable sources that can produce low-carbon electricity on demand whenever it is needed. Today, nuclear power is the only carbon-free energy source operating at scale that can reliably deliver power at any time.

In their Net-Zero America analysis , Princeton University researchers modeled a range of scenarios to decarbonize the country by 2050 and found that all of them require about as much firm generation as exists today, even with dramatic growth in renewable energy. The cheapest pathway they modeled was one in which nuclear power in the United States increases to three times its current level, while the costliest scenario assumed all energy needs would be met by renewables alone.

“Without nuclear investment, achieving a sustainable energy system will be much harder,” the IEA explained.

A recent study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University found that continued operation of Diablo Canyon (which accounts for 15 percent of California’s carbon-free electricity production) beyond its scheduled closure in 2025 would reduce the state’s emissions, bolster grid reliability to mitigate brownouts, and save California $2.6 billion through 2035. Without nuclear power, California’s use of natural gas will go up, even as renewable use also rises, because the state will need to rely on natural gas plants to meet demand in times when energy demand peaks. This is exactly what happened after both the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant and California’s San Onofre were closed nearly a decade ago.

Nuclear power also requires much less land and new transmission infrastructure than renewable energy to produce the same power. The Princeton researchers, for example, found that a net-zero pathway relying only on renewable energy required quintupling existing electricity transmission, while one that relied less on renewable energy required only a doubling. That is important because building long-distance power lines to transport renewable energy remains very difficult , given local opposition (not least because of environmental concerns), incumbent utility power , and government permitting delays. U.S. President Joe Biden has promised to streamline the process of building new transmission infrastructure, and the federal government has several tools at its disposal, but doing so is easier said than done. I served in the White House when then-President Barack Obama tried to accelerate the permitting of seven new transmission lines; only two were completed. The United States needs to produce and transmit vastly larger amounts of renewable energy, to be sure, but given the permitting and siting challenges, it makes good sense to include nuclear power—which faces opposition of its own but has a much smaller physical and environmental footprint—among the zero-emission tools to achieve deep decarbonization.

In Washington, Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on much, but one of the few areas of bipartisanship is the need to invest in nuclear power. The recently enacted bipartisan infrastructure bill included $6 billion to prevent struggling nuclear power plants from shuttering. Without that support, more than half of the nation’s nuclear plants were projected to retire by 2030, according to a report from the Rhodium Group. In addition, the bill included $2.5 billion to support advanced reactor demonstration. The Build Back Better Act (currently on life support in the U.S. Senate given Joe Manchin’s opposition) would increase the production tax credit that could be claimed by nuclear power.

Looking beyond the United States, the need for nuclear power to achieve climate goals is even greater around the world. Nuclear power is the world’s second-largest source of zero-carbon energy today after hydropower. In its road map to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the IEA projects nuclear power generation globally will nearly double. It finds that 100 new nuclear plants need to be built by 2030 alone—just eight short years away. One Chinese study projected that the country could achieve its new 2060 net-zero emissions goal by nearly quintupling its nuclear power generation—an even bigger rise than the study estimated for wind power.

Similarly, in 2019 the IEA found that absent any additional investment in reactor lifetime extensions or new nuclear projects, fossil fuels (especially natural gas) would account for the bulk of the increase in electricity generation to offset the decline in the nuclear power and consumer electricity bills would become more expensive. “Without nuclear investment, achieving a sustainable energy system will be much harder,” the IEA explained.

The second reason for a brighter nuclear outlook is technological advancements that reduce costs, waste, and safety concerns. Companies such as NuScale Power, TerraPower, X-energy, GE, Kairos Power, and others are pioneering advanced reactor designs that incorporate greater inherent safety and could produce power more cheaply than past reactor generations.

There is a range of advanced reactor designs under development. Some continue to be water-cooled like past designs but employ advanced passive safety design features such as natural circulation of the coolant. These features eliminate the safety vulnerability of needing offsite electricity or emergency diesel generators to power pumps for cooling the fuel. Other advanced reactor designs use coolants such as helium, molten salt, and sodium, which—in addition to more robust fuel forms—provide inherent safety benefits compared to traditional reactors that use water as a coolant. TerraPower, a U.S. company backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, just announced plans to build a sodium-cooled reactor in Wyoming to replace coal power. Advanced reactors using coolants other than water typically operate at higher temperatures, enabling greater efficiencies in the conversion of heat to electricity—ultimately producing less radioactive waste relative to the amount of power generated.

Many companies are also planning a modular approach to power plant construction, where some components of the plant are assembled in a controlled factory environment before being shipped to construction sites for installation. This strategy could reduce the time it takes to build a nuclear power plant as well as the costs. Most companies are also pursuing smaller designs that would place less capital at risk for the utilities building them as opposed to the large light-water reactor projects of the past. These so-called small modular reactors could be an important part of nuclear energy’s future.

Nuclear power may also have a brighter future in an entirely different way if nuclear fusion (as opposed to fission) technology becomes commercially viable. Rather than generate power by splitting atoms, nuclear fusion employs the same process that powers the sun—fusing the nuclei of atoms such as hydrogen at extremely high temperatures.

The old joke among nuclear experts is that nuclear fusion is 20 years away and always will be. Yet while fusion is still experimental, real progress is being made. At least 35 private fusion companies have been launched in recent years, raising more than $2.3 billion of funding . In May 2021, an experimental machine in China managed to sustain a fusion reaction at 120 million degrees Celsius for a record 101 seconds. A nuclear fusion start-up spun out of MIT just announced a massive capital raise of $1.8 billion following its successful demonstration in September of its high-temperature superconducting electromagnet, a key milestone on its path to develop an experimental reactor by 2025. In November, another nuclear fusion start-up company, Helion, secured $500 million to build what could be the first electricity-generating fusion facility by 2024. Also promising is TAE Technologies, which raised $880 million and has plans to manufacture prototype commercial fusion reactors by the end of the decade.

The third reason nuclear power is back at the center of the U.S. energy debate is national security, which has motivated recent efforts to invest in advanced reactors and retain the domestic nuclear industry. Since President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous “Atoms for Peace” speech at the United Nations in 1953, the U.S. government has seen a national security component to engagement with other countries on civilian nuclear energy. Participation in the supplier regime for reactor fuels and equipment, for example, affords Washington points of influence to shape nonproliferation aspects of other countries’ civilian programs.

Much has changed since the 20th century, however. The United States is no longer the predominant supplier of reactors; that title is currently held by Russia. Of the 72 nuclear reactors planned or under construction outside Russia’s borders in 2018, more than 50 percent involved Russian companies , and around 20 percent involved Chinese ones; fewer than 3 percent were being built by U.S. companies. China is especially well positioned to play a large role in the global nuclear energy regime given its gargantuan domestic reactor build program. In just over a decade, China looks likely to overtake the United States as possessing the world’s largest reactor fleet.

Two-thirds of new nuclear power capacity will be built in emerging market and developing economies in the IEA’s pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050. Countries around the world have many other capable suppliers to choose from if the United States exits the nuclear power sector—deliberately or otherwise. In that case, it will be Beijing and Moscow setting future norms for nuclear commerce and safety, with potentially negative consequences for nuclear nonproliferation efforts. Last year’s investment of more than $5 billion by the United States in advanced reactors was motivated to some degree by these national security risks, along with those of climate change.

To be clear, nuclear power is by no means a silver bullet and brings with it significant challenges and risks.

Disposal of spent nuclear fuel, in particular, remains a persistent challenge. While countries, including the United States, have opened disposal sites for low-level nuclear waste, progress on disposing of the high-level waste from commercial reactors has been elusive. Finland is now within a few years of potentially becoming the first country to successfully dispose of spent nuclear fuel from its power reactors, and other countries are making tangible progress as well. But in other nations, advances have been slow if at all discernible, and the U.S. program has effectively ceased to make progress in the last decade.

Chernobyl and Fukushima remain seared in the public’s memory, weakening popular support for nuclear energy. Yet nuclear power has resulted in vastly fewer deaths than other energy sources—especially when the basis of comparison is the amount of energy generated. For example, the number of deaths associated with coal-fired energy—including from mining accidents and air pollution—is around 350 times higher than from nuclear plants per terawatt-hour of power produced.

Nuclear power is not without problems. But at the same time, when we refer to climate change as a crisis and existential risk, too often we do not act as if we believe that rhetoric to be true. If we did, we would approach many of the tradeoffs involved in accelerating the pace of climate action differently. When it comes to nuclear power, support would be much stronger if we took our own rhetoric seriously. This is not to ignore the risks and the many other reasons to be skeptical about nuclear power. The question to ask, however, is whether it is easier to address nuclear power’s risks and challenges than to try to achieve net-zero without nuclear in the mix. Available evidence suggests it is.

Electricity use will grow dramatically as we decarbonize the energy system. Including zero-carbon nuclear power as part of a diverse mix of electricity sources will lower total costs, improve reliability and resilience, and help achieve the rapid decarbonization the world so urgently needs.

Jason Bordoff is a columnist at Foreign Policy , a co-founding dean at the Columbia Climate School, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a professor of professional practice in international and public affairs, and a former senior director on the staff of the U.S. National Security Council and special assistant to former U.S. President Barack Obama. Twitter:  @JasonBordoff

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In Global Energy Crisis, Anti-Nuclear Chickens Come Home to Roost

In virtually every country that has closed nuclear plants, clean electricity has been replaced with dirty power.

Why This Energy Crisis Is Different

Climate change and the policies to curb it lie behind skyrocketing gas, coal, and electricity prices in Europe and Asia.

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The controversial future of nuclear power in the U.S.

As the climate crisis worsens, the discussion intensifies over what role nuclear power should play in fighting it.

President Joe Biden has set ambitious goals for fighting climate change: To cut U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030 and to have a net-zero carbon economy by 2050. The plan requires electricity generation—the easiest economic sector to green, analysts say—to be carbon-free by 2035.

Where is all that clean electricity going to come from?

A few figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) illustrate the challenge. In 2020 the United States generated about four trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity. Some 60 percent of that came from burning fossil fuels, mostly natural gas, in some 10,000 generators, large and small, around the country. All of that electricity will need to be replaced—and more, because demand for electricity is expected to rise, especially if we power more cars with it.

Renewable energy sources like solar and wind have grown faster than expected; together with hydroelectric, they surpassed coal for the first time ever in 2019   and now produce 20 percent of U.S. electricity. In February the EIA projected that renewables were on track to produce more than 40 percent by 2050 —remarkable growth, perhaps, but still well short of what’s needed to decarbonize the grid by 2035 and forestall the climate crisis.

This daunting challenge has recently led some environmentalists to reconsider an alternative they had long been wary of: nuclear power.  

Nuclear power has a lot going for it. Its carbon footprint is equivalent to wind, less than solar, and orders of magnitude less than coal. Nuclear power plants take up far less spac e on the landscape than solar or wind farms, and they produce power even at night or on calm days. In 2020 they generated as much electricity in the U.S. as renewables did, a fifth of the total.

But debates rage over whether nuclear should be a big part of the climate solution in the U.S. The majority of American nuclear plants today are approaching the end of their   design life , and only one has been built in the last 20 years. Nuclear proponents are now banking on next-generation designs, like small, modular versions of conventional light-water reactors, or advanced reactors designed to be safer, cheaper, and more flexible.

“We’ve innovated so little in the past half-century, there’s a lot of ground to gain,” says Ashley Finan, the director of the National Reactor Innovation Center at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Yet an expansion of nuclear power faces some serious hurdles, and the perennial concerns about safety and long-lived radioactive waste may not be the biggest: Critics also say nuclear reactors are simply too expensive and take too long to build to be of much help with the climate crisis.

Bombs into plowshares

A test reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, where Finan now works, produced the first electrical power from nuclear energy in 1951 . Its success was soon trumpeted in President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous “atoms for peace” speech to the United Nations in 1953. Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist who runs the non-profit Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, points out that the speech was given shortly after a thermonuclear test blast in the Soviet Union, when atomic fears were at a peak .

“Basically, he said this is too doom and gloom—give me something good to say,” Makhijani explains. Eisenhower’s speech ushered in a new nuclear era: Global interest in nuclear power spiked, and countries around the world began building large reactors, often with technology and expertise from the United States.

By 1996, nuclear power provided 17.6 percent of the world’s electricity. Today, that’s down to about 10 percent. The Fukushima accident in 2011 is a major reason for the decline. Japan’s 48 nuclear reactors have largely stayed offline since then; Germany has closed 11 of its 17 reactors and intends to close the remaining six by 2022. Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland are also phasing out their nuclear programs.

The United States, still the world’s largest producer by far of nuclear electricity, currently has 94 reactors in 28 states . But after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, when a reactor partially melted down near Middletown, Pennsylvania, enthusiasm for nuclear energy dimmed.

The average age of American power plants, which are licensed to run for 40 years, is 39; in the last decade, at least five have been retired early, largely because maintenance costs and cheaper sources of power made them too expensive to operate.

The most recent closure came just last week, on April 30, when the second of two reactors was shut down at the Indian Point power plant, on the Hudson River north of New York City. Until a few years ago, those reactors had supplied a quarter of the city’s power . Nationwide, the EIA predicts that nuclear power generation will decline 17 percent between 2018 and   2025 .

Late and over budget

While environmental opposition may have been the primary force hindering nuclear development in the 1980s and 90s, now the biggest challenge may be costs. Few nuclear plants have been built in the U.S. recently because they are very expensive to build here, which makes the price of their energy high.

Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, led a group of scientists who recently completed a two-year study examining the future of nuclear energy in the U.S. and western Europe. They found that “without cost reductions, nuclear energy will not play a significant role” in decarbonizing the power sector.

“In the West, the nuclear industry has substantially lost its ability to build large plants,” Buongiorno says, pointing to Southern Company’s effort to add two new reactors to Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia. They have been under construction since 2013, are now billions of dollars over budget —the cost has more than doubled—and years behind schedule. In France, ranked second after the U.S. in nuclear generation, a new reactor in Flamanville is a decade late and more than three times over budget .

“We have clearly lost the know-how to build traditional gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants,” Buongiorno says. Because no new plants were built in the U.S. for decades, he and his colleagues found, the teams working on a project like Vogtle haven’t had the learning experiences needed to do the job efficiently. That leads to construction delays that drive up costs.

Elsewhere, reactors are still being built at lower cost, “largely in places where they build projects on budget, and on schedule,” Finan explains. China and South Korea are the leaders. (To be fair, several of China’s recent large-scale reactors have also had cost overruns and delays .)  

“The cost of nuclear power in Asia has been a quarter, or less, of new builds in the West,” Finan says. Much lower labor costs are one reason, according to both Finan and the MIT report, but better project management is another.

The MIT study suggests that standardizing reactor designs and building the same reactor many times is a key to reducing costs. One way to do that may be with small modular reactors (SMRs) , which are generally considered to be less than 300 megawatts , compared to the 1,000 megawatts of a traditional nuclear power plant. Their smaller size, Buongiorno says, may allow these reactors’ components to be built in factories, allowing for economies of production, and reducing construction times and uncertainties. The small reactors could either be used individually or combined to make a single large power plant.

In the U.S., a company called NuScale has recently received design certification approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its SMR, the first and only company to do so. Its reactor is a miniaturized version of a traditional reactor, in which pressurized water cools the core where nuclear fission is taking place. But in the NuScale design, the whole reactor is itself immersed in a pool of water designed to protect it from accidental meltdown.

NuScale hopes to build 12 of these reactors to produce 720 megawatts at the Idaho National Laboratory as a pilot project. It’s been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, which has approved up to $1.4 billion to help demonstrate the technology. NuScale plans to sell the plant to an energy consortium called Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems.

Last year, eight of the 36 utilities in the consortium backed out of the project, citing the cost. The company recently announced the project would be delayed to 2030, and the cost would rise from $4.2 billion to $6.1 billion .

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Nuclear opponents point to this latest disappointment as yet another example of why nuclear isn’t up to the task.

“If your first SMR isn’t built until the late 2020s, and then you have to turn it on, not to mention set up a whole new global supply chain, are you going to reach zero emissions by 2035?” asks IEER’s Makhijani. “You can’t make a significant contribution in time.” He adds that the industry’s long history of overruns and delays are especially problematic when considering climate commitments. “There’s no room for significant mistakes.”

A variable and uncertain grid

On an electric grid, supply has to precisely match the constantly fluctuating demand; at the moment, there are no large storage reservoirs for electrons, like the ones we have for water. Renewables make this balancing act harder , because they produce a fluctuating supply of electricity—when it’s cloudy, or the wind isn’t blowing, the grid needs more energy from other sources.

The future of nuclear power will depend in part on how well it can balance a grid that increasingly relies on renewables. Nuclear has traditionally been considered a baseload source of energy—the reactors run as often as possible to spread their enormous fixed costs over the largest number of kilowatt-hours. Unlike gas turbines, which can be turned on and off in seconds to “follow the load,” reactors take an hour or more to cut their production in half.

It’s not that reactors can’t follow the load; they’re just slower. “They can and do, because they have to,” Buongiorno says. “It’s just never an attractive economic proposition.”

Last fall, the DOE awarded $80 million each to two companies working on advanced reactor designs intended in part to address this problem. The first, TerraPower, a startup founded by Bill Gates, is working on a sodium-cooled reactor   that, instead of using its heat directly to drive a turbine and generate electricity, stores the heat in a tank of molten salt, where it can be tapped to generate electricity when needed.

The second grant went to a company called X-energy for a gas-cooled reactor that operates at very high temperatures, producing steam that would be suitable for industrial processes as well as generating electricity. That kind of “load-switching,” Finan and Buongiorno both say, can help nuclear reactors manage variable demand for electricity—while at the same time helping to decarbonize industry. Small reactors might even be sited right next to a factory that requires both heat and electricity. The high-level radioactive waste they produce, however, would need to be transported to a centralized location for management.

But while promising, none of these new designs are moving quickly enough to meet Biden’s targets. DOE officials called their decision to support these two pilot projects, which aim to be fully operational by 2028, “their boldest move yet.”

Meanwhile, there’s a more direct way to balance the variability of renewables: store electricity in batteries. The market for utility-scale battery storage is exploding; it increased by 214 percent in 2020 , and the EIA predicts that battery capacity will surge from its current 1,600 megawatts to 10,700 by 2023.

Makhijani thinks nuclear power isn’t going to be needed to balance the grid. A study he conducted in 2016 for the state of Maryland found that increased battery storage, combined with incentives to consumers to reduce their electricity use at peak times, would almost allow utilities to balance the variability of renewables.

They’d just need to store a little energy as hydrogen , which can be produced by running renewable electricity through water and then converted back to electricity in a fuel cell. That process is currently very expensive , Makhijani says, but “as long as it’s not giant amounts, it’s affordable.”

A window of opportunity

Worldwide, nuclear power could be a significant player in the coming decades. China, the largest greenhouse gas emitter, increased its nuclear output 6 percent in 2020 and currently has 17 new reactors under construction , according to the World Nuclear Association, a trade group. India is building six. The U.S. is unlikely to match that anytime soon.

Experts differ sharply on the need to build new nuclear power plants in the U.S. Some models   suggest that it would be possible with the right policy incentives to meet Biden’s 2035 target for decarbonizing the grid by building out only renewables.

Existing nuclear plants are another story. The benefit of keeping them online for now is more widely accepted—although Makhijani, for one, argues that their carbon-free energy could be replaced more cheaply by investing in new wind and solar.

Because they’re already built, these reactors are essentially sunk costs, and since most have been online for decades, they’ve already depreciated. Still, in many places their energy has to compete on the market, which some may fail to do. That was one factor behind the decision to shut down Indian Point, the plant’s owner, Entergy Corporation, has acknowledged .

The status of existing plants has big implications: Including Indian Point, seven gigawatts of nuclear power are in danger of going offline before 2026 due to depressed electricity prices.  

“Taking out nuclear power plants completely destroys gains with renewables,” Buongiorno says. When the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which produced about 8 percent of California’s electricity, closed in 2013, the local cost of electricity increased, and carbon dioxide emissions in California increased by 9.2 million tons the following year.

The MIT report found that in the next decade, the most cost-efficient, reliable grid comes from an energy mix. “Our analysis shows a big share of nuclear, a big share of renewables, and some storage is the best mix that is low-carbon, reliable, and at the lowest cost,” Buongiorno says.

Co-author Michael Corradini, the former director of the Wisconsin Energy Institute, says federal policies that reward the most cost-effective, low-carbon energy—regardless of the technology—make the most sense. Taxing carbon is one example of a technology-neutral energy policy; a renewable energy standard, of the kind Biden proposed in his infrastructure package, might be another. “If you tax carbon, people are going to switch fuels to things that are more economical,” Corradini says.  

At the end of the day, “we need an all-of-the-above policy.”

Lois Parshley is a freelance journalist. Follow her on Twitter @loisparshley .  

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Should Nuclear Energy Be Phased Out of Use?

General reference (not clearly pro or con).

The World Nuclear Association, in an Aug. 2020 article, “Nuclear Power in the World Today,” available at world-nuclear.org, stated:

“The first commercial nuclear power stations started operation in the 1950s. Nuclear energy now provides about 10% of the world’s electricity from about 440 power reactors. Nuclear is the world’s second largest source of low-carbon power (29% of the total in 2017). Over 50 countries utilise nuclear energy in about 220 research reactors. In addition to research, these reactors are used for the production of medical and industrial isotopes, as well as for training.” Aug. 2020

Nuclear Engineering International, in a July 8, 2020 article, “Nuclear Power to 2030: Key Countries,” available at neimagazine.com, stated:

“Thirty-two countries currently operate nuclear reactors to generate electricity. While some countries such as Armenia and Slovenia operate just one reactor each, the USA operates 95 and France 57. Countries with significant nuclear power capacity are: USA, France, China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea with more than 25 gigawatts (GW) installed capacity each. Canada and Ukraine operate around 13GW each. The UK, Germany, Sweden, Spain, India and Belgium have 5–10GW installed nuclear power capacity each. Another 16 countries have one or more reactors each, with installed capacity ranging from 0.4GW to 4GW. Several countries have upcoming decommissioning during 2020–2030 and 12 countries are set to have less nuclear power in 2030 than they do today. While some of these are decommissioning old nuclear plants and do not have new capacity coming up, some countries are proactively phasing out nuclear power and switching to renewables. Germany has already reduced its nuclear capacity to less than half its total in 2010 and is on course to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Belgium, Taiwan, and Switzerland are implementing similar programmes to phase out nuclear power by 2030. Meanwhile, Belarus, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, are in the process of acquiring new nuclear capacity with Belarus scheduled to commission its first reactor in 2020. UAE is the latest country to add nuclear power to its power mix with a 1345MW reactor due to start up this year. Overall there are 49 nuclear reactors being constructed and set to add 53.5GW capacity during 2020–2025, of which 13.4GW or 25% is set to be commissioned in China alone through 13 new reactors. India, South Korea and UAE are the other countries with significant nuclear capacities under construction and scheduled to be commissioned during 2020–2025. These three countries are set to add 17.2GW during the period.” July 8, 2020

Gregory Jaczko, PhD, former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), in a May 17, 2019 article, “I Oversaw the U.S. Nuclear Power Industry. Now I Think It Should Be Banned.,” available at washingtonpost.com, stated:

“Fukushima provided a good test of just how important nuclear power was to slowing climate change: In the months after the accident, all nuclear reactors in Japan were shuttered indefinitely, eliminating production of almost all of the country’s carbon-free electricity and about 30 percent of its total electricity production. Naturally, carbon emissions rose, and future emissions-reduction targets were slashed. Would shutting down plants all over the world lead to similar results? Eight years after Fukushima, that question has been answered. Fewer than 10 of Japan’s 50 reactors have resumed operations, yet the country’s carbon emissions have dropped below their levels before the accident. How? Japan has made significant gains in energy efficiency and solar power. It turns out that relying on nuclear energy is actually a bad strategy for combating climate change: One accident wiped out Japan’s carbon gains. Only a turn to renewables and conservation brought the country back on target… This [nuclear] tech is no longer a viable strategy for dealing with climate change, nor is it a competitive source of power. It is hazardous, expensive and unreliable, and abandoning it wouldn’t bring on climate doom. The real choice now is between saving the planet or saving the dying nuclear industry. I vote for the planet.” May 17, 2019

Greenpeace, in an article accessed on Oct. 5, 2020, “Nuclear Energy,” available at greenpeace.org, stated:

“Nuclear energy has no place in a safe, clean, sustainable future. Nuclear energy is both expensive and dangerous, and just because nuclear pollution is invisible doesn’t mean it’s clean. Renewable energy is better for the environment, the economy, and doesn’t come with the risk of a nuclear meltdown… New nuclear plants are more expensive and take longer to build than renewable energy sources like wind or solar. If we are to avoid the most damaging impacts of climate change, we need solutions that are fast and affordable. Nuclear power is neither. We can do better than trading off one disaster for another. The nuclear age is over and the age of renewables has begun… Nuclear energy is diverting attention and investment from the sustainable energy solutions we need. It’s time to stop building new nuclear facilities, phase out the ones that exist, and focus on clean energy for the future.” Oct. 5, 2020

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan, in a July 2020 committee report, “Abolition of Nuclear Power: An Appeal from the Catholic Church in Japan,” available at cbcj.catholic.jp, stated:

“[W]e would like to call for the immediate abolishment of all the power plants in Japan… Because of the prediction that a new disaster will occur due to another earthquake or tsunami, all the 54 nuclear plants in Japan are at risk of horrific accidents like the latest one. Therefore, in order to prevent human-generated calamities associated with natural disasters as much as possible, it is essential to eliminate nuclear plants. Although nuclear plants have been supplying energy in the context of ‘peaceful use’ to society until now, they have also released an enormous amount of radioactive waste such as plutonium. We are going to place the custodial responsibility of these dangerous wastes on future generations for centuries to come. We must consider this matter to be an ethical issue… We should choose anew a simple and plain lifestyle based on the spirit of the Gospel, in cases like saving electricity. We live in the hope that science and technology will develop and advance based on the same spirit. These attitudes will surely lead to a safer and more secure life without nuclear plants.” July 2020

Carolina Lucas, PhD, Green Member of Parliament for Brighton Pavilion, Rebecca Harms, Former Member of European Parliament and Dany Cohn-Bendit, Member of European Parliament, in a Feb. 17, 2012 article, “Why We Must Phase Out Nuclear Power,” available at theguardian.com, stated:

“Fukushima, like Chernobyl 25 years before it, has shown us that while the likelihood of a nuclear disaster occurring may be low, the potential impact is enormous. The inherent risk in the use of nuclear energy, as well as the related proliferation of nuclear technologies, can and does have disastrous consequences. The only certain way to eliminate this potentially devastating risk is to phase out nuclear power altogether… [W]e should not wait for another disaster to finally convince us to give up on nuclear power.” Feb. 17, 2012

Bob Perciasepe, President of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, as quoted in an Oct. 1, 2018 article by Julia Pyper, “Trump Signs Legislation to Promote Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technology,” greentechmedia.com, stated:

“Advanced reactors can dependably generate zero-emission electricity and useful heat, and they are scalable to produce large quantities of energy from a very small footprint. New designs hold the promise of being more affordable, even safer, and are expected to produce less waste than the current generation of reactors. To meet our climate and clean energy goals, we must seek stable solutions that endure political transitions and maintain an ambitious pace to reduce emissions.” Oct. 1, 2018

Bob Perciasepe, President of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, in a Sep. 28, 2018 article, “One Small Step for Congress,” available at c2es.org, stated:

“Modeling to date clearly shows that we need nuclear power, renewables, carbon capture, and improved energy efficiency to achieve large-scale, economy-wide emission reductions. It is absolutely necessary to pursue all promising zero-emissions technologies with equal vigor. Importantly, existing nuclear power plants are a critical bridge to our advanced nuclear future. Keeping the U.S. nuclear fleet in place for as long as practical helps avoid backsliding in emissions, helps maintain our domestic nuclear expertise, and buys us the critical time necessary to develop, deploy and commercialize the next generation of nuclear reactors and other zero-emission technologies.” Sep. 28, 2018

Michael Shellenberger, Cofounder of Breakthrough Institute and founder of Environmental Progress, in a Feb. 27, 2019 article, “Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet,” available at quillette.com, stated:

“Strange as it sounds, nuclear power plants are so safe for the same reason nuclear weapons are so dangerous. The uranium used as fuel in power plants and as material for bombs can create one million times more heat per its mass than its fossil fuel and gunpowder equivalents… Because nuclear plants produce heat without fire, they emit no air pollution in the form of smoke. By contrast, the smoke from burning fossil fuels and biomass results in the premature deaths of seven million people per year, according to the World Health Organization. Even during the worst accidents, nuclear plants release small amounts of radioactive particulate matter from the tiny quantities of uranium atoms split apart to make heat… Thanks to its energy density, nuclear plants require far less land than renewables. Even in sunny California, a solar farm requires 450 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a nuclear plant. Energy-dense nuclear requires far less in the way of materials, and produces far less in the way of waste compared to energy-dilute solar and wind.” Feb. 27, 2019

Jessica Lovering, PhD, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director at Good Energy Collective, as quoted by Julia Pyper in a Sep. 27, 2018 article, “How to Jump-Start a Micro Nuclear Reactor Industry in the US,” available at greentechmedia.com, stated:

“Wind and solar are really coming down in cost, they’re really expanding their deployment, and that’s great, but it’s not enough to get us to really deep decarbonization and a bigger transition away from fossil fuels. When you look at modeling grids or modeling energy transitions…having nuclear to complement renewables is a really great system; it’s really reliable, it’s really cheap and it’s really low-carbon. Nuclear has been this really big, risky, expensive project in the past. So moving nuclear more toward this manufactured project that a small city or a university or a hospital could buy off the shelf and have it delivered in a year and a half and plug in, and have it just generate power right away, that’s a very different model than nuclear’s had in the past.” Sep. 27, 2018

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Distilled Periodical

A green nuclear deal:why the u.s. should expand nuclear power.

On February 7, 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced House Resolution 109 into consideration, “Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.”  In order to combat climate change, the bill calls for “meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emissions energy sources” (1). News coverage of the bill describes how it calls for a future powered enirely by renewable sources:  solar, wind and hydroelectric (2). Although nonbinding and thus unable to spur any direct government action, the bill poses the question: in the face of climate change, what should the U.S. do to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions?

Nuclear power     can provide large amounts of carbon-free electricity more rapidly than renewable technologies, and it can do so with commercially viable technology, without geographic constraints, and without a huge change to the current U.S. electrical grid.

Even though nuclear waste poses a serious and unique challenge, the potential harm to human society by not using nuclear power outweighs the dangers associated with waste.

Finally, although a rapid expansion of nuclear power would most easily be accomplished with already licensed reactor designs, the U.S. government should promote the prototyping in licensing of advanced reactor designs.

Finally, advanced reactor designs currently under construction, such as the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor, involve passive safety features—safety mechanisms that do not have to be actively triggered.

Works Cited

• House Resolution 109, 116th Cong. (2019).
• Geuss, M. (2019, February 07). Green New Deal bill  aims to move US to 100% renewable energy, net-zero  emissions.
• U.S. Energy Information Administration - EIA  - Independent Statistics and Analysis. (n.d.).  Retrieved from https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.  php?id=427&t=3
• Kurtzleben, D. (2019, February 07). Rep. Alexandria  Ocasio-Cortez Releases Green New Deal Outline.
• IPCC (2018). Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC  Special Report on the impacts of global warming of  1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global  greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context  of strengthening the global response to the threat of  climate change, sustainable development, and efforts  to eradicate poverty.
• Goldstein, J. S., & Qvist, S. A. (2019). A bright future:  How some countries have solved climate change and  the rest can follow. New York: PublicAffairs.
• Quéré, C. L. et al. (2018). Global Carbon Budget 2018.  Earth System Science Data,10(4), 2141-2194.
• Steinberg, D. et al. (2017). Electrification &  Decarbonization: Exploring U.S. Energy Use and  Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Scenarios with  Widespread Electrification and Power Sector  Decarbonization (NREL/TP-6A20-68214). National  Renewable Energy Laboratory.
• Pehl, M., Arvesen, A., Humpenöder, F., Popp, A.,  Hertwich, E. G., & Luderer, G. (2017). Understanding  future emissions from low-carbon power systems by  integration of life-cycle assessment and integrated  energy modelling. Nature Energy,2(12), 939-945.
• Clack, C. T. et al. (2017). Evaluation of a proposal for  reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water,  and solar.  Proceedings of the National Academy of  Sciences,114(26), 6722-6727.
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Nuclear energy protects air quality by producing massive amounts of carbon-free electricity. It powers communities in 28 U.S. states and contributes to many non-electric applications, ranging from the  medical field to space exploration .

The Office of Nuclear Energy within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) focuses its research primarily on maintaining the existing fleet of reactors, developing new advanced reactor technologies, and improving the nuclear fuel cycle to increase the sustainability of our energy supply and strengthen the U.S. economy.

Below are some of the main advantages of nuclear energy and the challenges currently facing the industry today.

Advantages of Nuclear Energy

Clean energy source.

Nuclear is the largest source of clean power in the United States. It generates nearly 775 billion kilowatthours of electricity each year and produces nearly half of the nation’s emissions-free electricity. This avoids more than 471 million metric tons of carbon each year, which is the equivalent of removing 100 million cars off of the road.

Creates Jobs

The nuclear industry supports nearly half a million jobs in the United States. Domestic nuclear power plants can employ up to 800 workers with salaries that are 50% higher than those of other generation sources. They also contribute billions of dollars annually to local economies through federal and state tax revenues.

Supports National Security

A strong civilian nuclear sector is essential to U.S. national security and energy diplomacy. The United States must maintain its global leadership in this arena to influence the peaceful use of nuclear technologies. The U.S. government works with countries in this capacity to build relationships and develop new opportunities for the nation’s nuclear technologies.

Challenges of Nuclear Energy

Public awareness.

Commercial nuclear power is sometimes viewed by the general public as a dangerous or unstable process. This perception is often based on three global nuclear accidents, its false association with nuclear weapons, and how it is portrayed on popular television shows and films.

DOE and its national labs are working with industry to develop new reactors and fuels that will increase the overall performance of these technologies and reduce the amount of nuclear waste that is produced.  

DOE also works to provide accurate, fact-based information about nuclear energy through its social media and STEM outreach efforts to educate the public on the benefits of nuclear energy.

Used Fuel Transportation, Storage and Disposal

Many people view used fuel as a growing problem and are apprehensive about its transportation, storage, and disposal. DOE is responsible for the eventual disposal and associated transport of all used fuel , most of which is currently securely stored at more than 70 sites in 35 states. For the foreseeable future, this fuel can safely remain at these facilities until a permanent disposal solution is determined by Congress.

DOE is currently evaluating nuclear power plant sites and nearby transportation infrastructure to support the eventual transport of used fuel away from these sites.

Subject to appropriations, the Department is moving forward on a government-owned consolidated interim storage facility project that includes rail transportation . 

The location of the storage facility would be selected through DOE's consent-based siting process that puts communities at the forefront and would ultimately reduce the number of locations where commercial spent nuclear fuel is stored in the United States.  

Constructing New Power Plants

Building a nuclear power plant can be discouraging for stakeholders. Conventional reactor designs are considered multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects. High capital costs, licensing and regulation approvals, coupled with long lead times and construction delays, have also deterred public interest.

Microreactor (left) - Small Modular Reactor (right)

DOE is rebuilding its nuclear workforce by  supporting the construction  of two new reactors at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia. The units are the first new reactors to begin construction in the United States in more than 30 years. The expansion project supported up to 9,000 workers at peak construction and created 800 permanent jobs at the facility when the units came online in 2023 and 2024.

DOE is also supporting the development of smaller reactor designs, such as  microreactors  and  small modular reactors , that will offer even more flexibility in size and power capacity to the customer. These factory-built systems are expected to dramatically reduce construction timelines and will make nuclear more affordable to build and operate.

High Operating Costs

Challenging market conditions have left the nuclear industry struggling to compete. DOE’s  Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) program  is working to overcome these economic challenges by modernizing plant systems to reduce operation and maintenance costs, while improving performance. In addition to its materials research that supports the long-term operation of the nation’s fleet of reactors, the program is also looking to diversify plant products through non-electric applications such as water desalination and  hydrogen production .

To further improve operating costs. DOE is also working with industry to develop new fuels and cladding known as  accident tolerant fuels . These new fuels could increase plant performance, allowing for longer response times and will produce less waste. Accident tolerant fuels could gain widespread use by 2025.

*Update June 2024

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Nuclear Power

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Nuclear Energy

• Green energy
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Should nuclear power be banned?

Nuclear power is one of the latest ways to make energy. Although it is non-renewable it provides 6.3% of the world’s energy and 15% of the world’s electricity. It is designed to extract energy from the nucleus of a Uranium atom. Unlike fossil fuels, nuclear power doesn’t give off any greenhouse gases but produces radioactive and nuclear waste.

France, Japan, and the United States of America generated 56.5% of nuclear power. In 2007, there were 439 nuclear power reactors operating around the world in 31 different countries. “The United States produces the most nuclear energy, with nuclear power providing 19% of the electricity it consumes, while France produces the highest percentage of its electrical energy from nuclear reactors – 78% as of 2006. The Nuclear energy policy differs between European Union countries, and some, such as Austria and Ireland, have no active nuclear power stations. In comparison, France has a large number of these plants with 16 multi-unit stations in current use.” according to Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power)

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“The atom is a basic unit of matter consisting of a dense, central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons. The electrons of an atom are bound to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. Likewise, a group of atoms can remain bound to each other, forming a molecule. An atom containing an equal number of protons and electrons is electrically neutral; otherwise it has a positive or negative charge and is an ion. An atom is classified according to the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus: the number of protons determines the chemical element, and the numbers of neutrons determine the isotope of the element.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom)

Nuclear power can be produced in the following ways:

1. Nuclear Fusion

2. Nuclear Fission

Nuclear Fusion

In nuclear fusion, energy is released by fusion of two light elements. This creates a larger atom. This is also the power that fuels the sun and all the other stars. (http://www.atomicarchive.com/Fusion/Fusion1.shtml)

Nuclear Fission

1. “Nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts, often producing free neutrons and lighter nuclei, which may eventually produce photons” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission)

Nuclear power plant

Nuclear power plants are genarally clean and efficient to operate but have major environmental risks bacuase it produces radioactive gases. These gases are normally kept inside the power plant but occasionally leak out. This means that major health risks can occur.

Nuclear power plants use uranium to as the fuel to produce power. The handling and mining of uranium is very dangerous and radiation leaks can occour.

“Uranium is a silvery-gray metallic chemical element and it has 146 electrons and 92 protons.” It is found underground. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium)

My case study is about wheather nuclear power should be banned. Here are the reasons for and agianst in more detail.

Lets stop a second, do we want to keep using fossil fuels until there is none left and then remember we banned nuclear power and have no real fuel left to make energy? Of course not, we want to have an alternative fuel source when fossil fuels run out. This is why we have nuclear power.

Although we have other sources of energy such as solar, geothermal, wind, tidal and biomass, nuclear is used the most worldwide. “Nuclear energy has always had its proponents, their ranks swollen now by people who dislike the technology but believe it may be essential. They point out that a reactor emits virtually no carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas released from human activities (though of course building the power station produces a lot of CO2).”(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4216302.stm)

I agree with this because we (human beings) have destroyed earth with fossil fuels. Although people say to use renewable sources it couldn’t provide us with enough energy and nuclear can. It may be non renewable but it has a much lower risk of affecting the environment with radio active gases than greenhouse gases.

“Since there are rising fuel costs, concerns about global warming and the growing demand from the developing world for energy, the burning question is whether the world needs nuclear power. Peter Hodgson, a nuclear physicist, says yes. Dennis Anderson, an economist, says that we should first explore the possibilities of renewable and other forms of energy. Finding ways of satisfying our energy needs is such an urgent problem that we must consider all possible sources, and evaluate them as objectively as possible, writes Peter Hodgson. In doing so, it is useful to apply the following criteria: capacity, cost, safety, reliability and environmental effects. No source can satisfy all our energy needs, and although there are several small-scale energy sources, such as solar panels for satellites, we must focus on the major sources such as nuclear power.”(http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/128)

Wood used to be a main energy source in ancient times but however impractical as a major energy source because we need to cut down trees to get the wood and we need the trees to take in the vast amount of carbon dioxide in the air mainly caused by fossil fuels. It is also wasteful to burn just like natural gas.

Another possibility is hydropower because it is an important source of energy, particularly as it is renewable and does not pollute the atmosphere. However it takes up too much land and supplies are limited since there are not many suitable rivers to do so. By geographical consideration tidal power is even more limited.

Further wind power isn’t suitable because it varies on the weather. In some parts of the world it will work very well but in others it won’t since the amount of wind will not be strong enough to turn the turbine. The amount of energy produced just won’t be enough to supply the world’s population. Also the lon term effect will make it too expensive especially now since the prices of many items have gone up.

Furthermore solar power isn’t suitable because it too also varies on the weather. In the countries in or near the equator it would be very good since it you have a lot of sunlight but every where in the world you have darkness at night some point in the year. This is when solar power is useless to get enough energy for the whole population with out fossil fuels you would need it in every country on every house and ensure it stays sunny for 24 hours 7 days a week every year. We all know that this will not happen and therefore it will not work. Also the cost of the solar panels will cost so much in the long run and will not provide the whole population with energy to start their cookers, heaters etc.

Geothermal energy is also renewable and isn’t suitable for a main energy source because geothermal energy is generated from heat underneath the earths crust. This heat comes mainly from the earth’s core. This means getting heat from volcanoes since the magma from the volcanoes comes from the core. If you do this you will need a lot of volcanoes to do so but there are not enough to give the entire population energy to heat their heaters or to start their cookers without fossil fuels. Also the machines that turn the heat into energy will cost a lot as well just like all the others.

Other advantages are that the technology is readily available and doesn’t have to be developed further.

Also because it is impossible to produce high amounts of electrical energy in one single plant (http://timeforchange.org/pros-and-cons-of-nuclear-power-and-sustainability)

Moreover nuclear power should be banned because it costs so much to build the power plants. Since there is also a major health risk that can occur if the radioactive gases leak out.

If nuclear power falls into the wrong hands such as terrorism, it can be lethal and can cause many people to die. Also if there is a mistake at the power plant many parts of the country around it would suffer terribly as well.

According to Greenpeace “Even if Britain built ten new reactors, nuclear power can only deliver a 4 per cent cut in carbon emissions some time after 2025. Even the Government admits this (Sustainable Development Commission figure). It’s too little too late at too high a price.”

Greenpeace also say “Most of the gas we use is for heating and hot water and for industrial purposes. Nuclear power cannot replace that energy. And it’s a similar case for oil as it’s virtually all used for transport – nuclear power can’t take its place. Indeed, 86 per cent of our oil and gas consumption is for purposes other than producing electricity. So nuclear power, which can only generate electricity, is almost irrelevant.” (http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/nuclear/the-case-against-nuclear-power-20080108)

I agree with Greenpeace because there is no point in having an alternative fuel just to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when it hardly helps the environment at all. There are more disadvantages than advantages in nuclear power. I also agree with them because there is not a point in getting rid of oil and gas for nuclear power when we use oil and gas for other things apart from electricity while nuclear can only provide us with electricity.

“Nuclear power produces radioactive waste that remains dangerous for tens of thousands of years. The Government still does not know what to do with the waste that has accumulated from more than 50 years of nuclear power. Costs of disposal are estimated at about £56bn.” According to the independen (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/yes-please-no-thanks-for-and-against-nuclear-power-517402.html)

I feel very strongly about this because people in the world don’t have enough money to survive and the British government is wasting £56bn (£5600000000) on the dumping of radioactive gases.

When nuclear gases leak, major things can happen like in Russia, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. “It is so far the worst nuclear power plant accident in history and the only level 7 instance on the International Nuclear Event Scale, resulting in a severe release of radioactivity into the environment following a massive power excursion which destroyed the reactor. Two people died in the initial steam explosion, but most deaths from the accident were attributed to fallout.”

This is a brief of what happened in the day of the explosion “On 26 April 1986 at 01:23:45 a.m. (UTC+3) reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant, near Pripyat in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, exploded. Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima”

“Although not much waste is produced, it is very, very dangerous. It must be sealed up and buried for many thousands of years to allow the radioactivity to die away. For all that time it must be kept safe from earthquakes, flooding, terrorists and everything else. This is difficult. Nuclear power is reliable, but a lot of money has to be spent on safety – if it does go wrong, a nuclear accident can be a major disaster. People are increasingly concerned about this – in the 1990’s nuclear power was the fastest-growing source of power in much of the world. In 2005 it was the second slowest-growing.” These are the reasons why darvill think nuclear power is dangerous. (http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/nuclear.htm#dis)

I agree with this because it is very hard to keep major destruction weapons from terrorist.

The alternative view point is to use renewable sources of energy or keep using fossil fuels.

Solar energy is light from the sun that influences Earth’s climate and weather and sustains life. We use solar panels to convert the light into energy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy)

Wind energy is when the wind blows. It is converted into energy with a turbine. When the wind pushes the blades on the turbine, it makes wind power. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_energy)

Tidal energy is a form of hydro power that converts tides into electricity and other useful forms of power. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_energy)

Geothermal energy is heat stored inside the earth or the collection of absorbed heat derived from underground, in the atmosphere and oceans. It is converted into energy using a power plant just like nuclear power. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power)

Fossil fuels are coal, natural gas and oil. It is the most common usage of fuel world wide today and is producing green house gases. It is affecting the climate and causing global warming.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuels)

In my concluding statement I conclude that nuclear power shouldn’t be banned because it can produce vast amounts of electricity and more than a fossil fuel plant. Since fossil fuels are now very limited it is now time for other sources of energy to step in, other sources of energy like nuclear power. Since it produces virtually no carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases into the atmosphere it shouldn’t be a problem.

Like other energy sources people don’t always agree with them. This is because nuclear power causes radioactive gases. Radioactive gases are lethal. It can kill so many people just from the side effect. This is why they bury it under desserts so that it is more or less harmless.

This isn’t the best idea in my opinion because radioactive waste stays active over 100 and 100 of years, if not 1000 of years just. Terrorist use this to their advantage because they know its there for a long time and eventually find it and use it in very bad ways by creating it into bombes and terrorizing cities. A nuclear bomb could destroy the whole of London even from a mile of the ground.

Further there was a Russian nuclear power plant that blew up because radioactive gases had leaked. “Two people died in the initial steam explosion, but most deaths from the accident were attributed to fallout.”

I still think that nuclear power is the only way forward after fossil fuels although it has its glitches. I say this because all renewable fuels will not be able to provide enough energy to provide the worlds population. This is because they all have major problems.

Solar power needs sunlight. It will be good near the equator because there is a lot of sunlight. But in the darkness at night it is useless.

Wind power needs to wind. This depends on the weather and the amount of wind. If there was not enough wind to push the blades on the turbine it would be useless.

Hydropower is a good source of energy but the cost is very expensive. This source is very limited and couldn’t provide the world with enough energy. Therefore this is also useless.

Nuclear power may be expensive to generate and dump the radioactive gases but can provide enough energy for the world.

These are the results of the survey I carried out in my neighborhood:

Frequency (people)

No 21 Don’t Know 6

I believe that nuclear power shouldn’t be banned because it provides almost 20% of the western worlds energy needs and is a clean fuel. When the oil runs out alternative sources of energy production would be required.

Moreover it does have its bad points such as radioactive gases and decommissioning costs are very high. The every day maintenance costs are also very high.

I do think that Wikipedia is an untrustworthy site because you can easily change the listing whereas BBC news or The Guardian is trustworthy because you cannot edit their site and is updated daily but however it can generally be biased.

1. http://www.macalester.edu/environmentalstudies/students/projects/nuclearpowerwebsite/images/action-at-the-nuclear-power-pl.jpg 2. http://helloworldbea.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/flowernuke.jpg 3. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Nuclear_power_stations.png 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom 6. http://www.atomicarchive.com/Fusion/Fusion1.shtml 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission 8. http://www.lightandmatter.com/html_books/4em/ch02/figs/nuclear-power-plant.jpg 9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium 10. http://z.about.com/d/chemistry/1/0/0/R/uranium.jpg 11. http://prototypes.pbwiki.com/f/atom2.gif 12. http://www.green-planet-solar-energy.com/images/nuclear_fission_good_2a.jpg 13. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4216302.stm this is reliable because the article cannot tell lies or things that are not true. 14. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/128 15. http://www.green-planet-solar-energy.com/images/nuclear_fission_good_2a.jpg this is true but can be biased since they don’t like non renewable sources of energy. 16. http://www.niwa.cri.nz/__data/assets/image/0015/50532/hydropower2_large.jpg 17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydropower

18. http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/files/images/blogentry/wind-power.jpg

19. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_energy 20. http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/45/99545-004-404C20FE.jpg 21. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy 22. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power 23. http://www.treehugger.com/geothermal-power-plant-i01.jpg 24. http://timeforchange.org/pros-and-cons-of-nuclear-power-and-sustainability 25. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/nuclear/the-case-against-nuclear-power-20080108 26. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/yes-please-no-thanks-for-and-against-nuclear-power-517402.html 27. http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/nuclear.htm#dis

28. http://mesikammen.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/nuclear-bomb-badger350.jpg 29. http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/coldwar/images/chernobyl.jpg

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Japan should have abolished nuclear plants after 2011 crisis: author

An award-winning Japanese author based in Berlin has expressed concern that Japan is restarting its nuclear power plants despite going through the Fukushima nuclear crisis, saying that scrapping nuclear power was the way to go.

"Nuclear power plants in Japan should have been abolished," Yoko Tawada, 60, said in a recent interview with Kyodo News ahead of the 10th anniversary of the March 11 earthquake-tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan and triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

Several of Tawada's works were themed around Fukushima and the 2011 accident served to reinforce her opposition to nuclear power, according to the Tokyo-born author who has been touted as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Tawada is known for works such as her novel "The Emissary." Set in the near future, it depicts Japan after a major earthquake and won the U.S National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2018.

In Germany, Tawada's country of residence, the Fukushima crisis has had a significant impact on its nuclear energy policy. In 2011, months after the Fukushima crisis, Germany announced it would close all of its nuclear plants by 2022. At the time, 17 nuclear reactors were operating in Germany.

A tsunami triggered by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake engulfed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and three of its reactors suffered meltdowns.Tawada, who moved to Germany in 1982 and writes both in Japanese and German, said she cannot understand how reactors can be restarted after a nuclear accident of such magnitude as occurred in Fukushima Prefecture, one of the three hardest-hit prefectures in the northeast.

All reactors in Japan were halted after the disaster, but Japan's policy to use nuclear power -- albeit under stricter safety standards -- remained unchanged and nine reactors have since been restarted.

"The issue of contamination has not been entirely resolved yet," Tawada said, adding that it is "cowardly" for people who support nuclear power to live away from nuclear facilities.

Tawada, who visited disaster victims living in temporary housing in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture in 2013, said that so long as issues such as radioactive waste from the Fukushima plant are still being tackled, she feels the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games "should not be held."

The games have been billed as the "Reconstruction Games," in hopes of showcasing the country's recovery from the 2011 disaster. With that in mind, the Japan leg of the torch relay will start from a soccer training center in Fukushima that served as a frontline base in the battle against the nuclear disaster.

However, Tawada said she does not favor holding the games "just to cheer people up."

"We cannot say it is safe in Japan," she said, citing the coronavirus pandemic and the unresolved aftermath of the nuclear disaster as reasons for opposing the sporting event.

With the memory of the nuclear crisis fading away for some people, Tawada hopes those who came through it will pass on their stories on how they lived after the accident.

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Kyodo News Digest: Aug. 10, 2024

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Majority of Americans support more nuclear power in the country

A majority of U.S. adults remain supportive of expanding nuclear power in the country, according to  a Pew Research Center survey from May . Overall, 56% say they favor more nuclear power plants to generate electricity. This share is statistically unchanged from last year.

But the future of large-scale nuclear power in America is uncertain. While Congress recently passed a bipartisan act intended to ease the nuclear energy industry’s financial and regulatory challenges, reactor shutdowns continue to gradually outpace new construction.

Americans remain more likely to favor expanding solar power (78%) and wind power (72%) than nuclear power. Yet while support for solar and wind power has declined by double digits since 2020 – largely driven by drops in Republican support – the share who favor nuclear power has grown by 13 percentage points over that span.

When asked about the federal government’s role in encouraging the production of nuclear energy, Americans are somewhat split. On balance, more say the government should encourage (41%) than discourage (22%) this. But 36% say the government should not exert influence either way, according to a March 2023 Center survey .

To measure public attitudes toward the use of nuclear power in the United States, we analyzed data from Pew Research Center surveys. Most of the data comes from our survey of 8,638 U.S. adults conducted May 13-19, 2024.

Everyone who took part in the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way, nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology .

Here are the survey  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

Links to related Center surveys, including their questions and methodologies, can be found throughout the post.

In addition, we tracked the number of U.S. nuclear power reactors over time by analyzing data from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA)  Power Reactor Information System . The IAEA classifies a reactor as “operational” from the date of its first electrical grid connection to the date of its permanent shutdown. Reactors that face temporary outages are still categorized as operational. Annual totals exclude reactors that closed that year.

Views by gender

Attitudes on nuclear power production have long differed by gender.

In the May survey, men remain far more likely than women to favor more nuclear power plants to generate electricity in the United States (70% vs. 44%). This pattern holds true among adults in both political parties.

Views on nuclear energy differ by gender globally, too, according to a Center survey conducted from fall 2019 to spring 2020 . In 18 of the 20 places surveyed around the world (including the U.S.), men were more likely than women to favor using more nuclear power as a source of domestic energy.

Views by party

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to favor expanding nuclear power to generate electricity in the U.S. Two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they support this, compared with about half of Democrats and Democratic leaners.

Republicans have supported nuclear power in greater shares than Democrats each time this question has been asked since 2016.

The partisan gap in support for nuclear power (18 points) is smaller than those for other types of energy, including fossil fuel sources such as coal mining (48 points) and offshore oil and gas drilling (47 points).

Still, Americans in both parties now see nuclear power more positively than they did earlier this decade. While Democrats remain divided on the topic (49% support, 49% oppose), the share who favor expanding the energy source is up 12 points since 2020. Republican support has grown by 14 points over this period.

While younger Republicans generally tend to be more supportive of increasing domestic renewable energy sources than their older peers, the pattern reverses when it comes to nuclear energy. For example, Republicans under 30 are much more likely than those ages 65 and older to favor more solar panel farms in the U.S. (80% vs. 54%); there’s a similar gap over expanding wind power. But when it comes to expanding nuclear power, Republicans under 30 are 11 points less likely than the oldest Republicans to express support (61% vs. 72%).

A look at U.S. nuclear power reactors

The U.S. currently has 94 nuclear power reactors, including one that just began operating in Georgia this spring. Reactors collectively generated  18.6% of all U.S. electricity in 2023 , according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

About half of the United States’ nuclear power reactors (48) are in the South, while nearly a quarter (22) are in the Midwest. There are 18 reactors in the Northeast and six in the West, according to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The number of U.S. reactors has steadily fallen since peaking at 111 in 1990. Nine Mile Point-1, located in Scriba, New York, is the oldest U.S. nuclear power reactor still in operation. It first connected to the power grid in November 1969. Most of the 94 current reactors began operations in the 1970s (41) or 1980s (44), according to IAEA data. (The IAEA classifies reactors as “operational” from their first electrical grid connection to their date of permanent shutdown.)

Within the last decade, just three new reactors joined the power fleet. Three times as many shut down over the same timespan.

One of the many reasons nuclear power projects have dwindled in recent decades may be the perceived dangers following  nuclear accidents  in the U.S. and abroad. For example, the 2011  Fukushima Daiichi accident  led the Japanese government to greatly decrease its reliance on nuclear power and prompted other countries to  rethink their nuclear energy plans . High construction costs and radioactive waste storage issues are also oft-cited hurdles to nuclear energy advancement.

Still, many advocates say that nuclear power is key to reducing emissions from electricity generation. There’s been a recent flurry of interest in reviving decommissioned nuclear power sites, including the infamous Three Mile Island plant and the Palisades plant , the latter of which shuttered in 2022. Last year, California announced it would delay the retirement of its one remaining nuclear power plant until 2030. And just this summer, construction began on a new plant in Wyoming. It’s set to house an advanced sodium-cooled fast reactor, pending approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission .

Note: Here are the  questions used for the analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology . This is an update of a post first published March 23, 2022.

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Rebecca Leppert is a copy editor at Pew Research Center .

Brian Kennedy is a senior researcher focusing on science and society research at Pew Research Center .

Americans’ Extreme Weather Policy Views and Personal Experiences

U.s. adults under 30 have different foreign policy priorities than older adults, about 3 in 10 americans would seriously consider buying an electric vehicle, how americans view national, local and personal energy choices, electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the u.s., most popular.

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Ukraine-Russia war latest: Ukraine launches 'attack of astonishment' as troops 'enter another Russian region' after Kursk invasion

Ukraine's surprise invasion of Kursk is continuing, with battles raging into a sixth day. Drones and missiles have been launched and Volodymyr Zelenskyy has acknowledged Ukraine's offensive in the Russian region for the first time.

Sunday 11 August 2024 18:34, UK

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• Fighting in Russia's Kursk region enters sixth day
• Zelenskyy acknowledges fighting in Kursk for first time
• Thirteen injured as drones and missiles launched over Russian region
• Michael Clarke analysis: Ukraine has astonished Russia by sending elite troops to Kursk - but Putin can't let this stand
• Belarus sends troops to reinforce border with Ukraine
• Ivor Bennett analysis: Ukraine could be playing for greater negotiating position
• Live reporting by Jess Sharp and (earlier)  Emily Mee

We've just been hearing from our defence and security analyst Professor Michael Clarke  who says Ukraine has "launched an attack of complete astonishment" against Russia this week. 

As we've been reporting, Ukraine has invaded the Kursk region of Russia - prompting the evacuation of more than 70,000 people and emergency security measures to be activated across three Russian regions. 

Professor Clarke says the evidence points to Ukraine "winning this battle insofar as it goes".

"They haven't just launched a surprise attack - they've launched an attack of complete astonishment. They've astonished the Russians, astonished Western backers," he says. 

As things stand, the shock value of this surprise assault is "working in Kyiv's favour". 

The pocket that has driven into Russian territory is at least 35 miles long and about 15 miles deep, he says. 

"That's pretty powerful... the Ukrainians must be very pleased with where they are now."

Can Ukraine maintain its offensive?

Asked whether Ukraine's forces will be able to hold their position, Professor Clarke says they will need to be reinforced. 

He says the equivalent of about three or four brigades are in Russia, and these are "top level, elite troops". 

The analyst says this shows Ukraine is serious about this offensive. 

No information has been given about Ukraine's aims, and they have tightly controlled information security around the invasion, but Professor Clarke says Kyiv is undoubtedly hoping it will draw in good units of the Russian army and relieve Ukrainian frontlines elsewhere. 

Anecdotal evidence so far suggests Moscow is pulling its better units out of the south of Ukraine, including in the areas of Chasiv Yar and Pokrovsk. 

Russia "will do whatever it takes to eliminate this pocket", he says.

'Putin can't let this stand'

Professor Clarke says there is highly likely to be a response from Russia. 

"The idea of having a piece of their territory seized for the first time since 1941... Putin can't let that stand," he says. 

Moscow will "counter attack as strongly as they need to and this battle will get a great deal more ferocious yet". 

For Ukraine's part, Professor Clarke says Kyiv is "gambling on this offensive working" and "so far it's paying off". 

The longer the Ukrainians hold on in Kursk, the tougher it will be for Russia to push them out, he says.

Russia has carried out aerial weapons strike against Ukrainian forces in Kursk, the country's defence ministry has said. 

In a post on Telegram, it said "clusters of manpower, armoured and motor vehicles" were targeted. 

"The strike was carried out with unguided aerial missiles against reconnaissance targets," it said. 

"After the use of the aerial weapons, the crews performed an anti-missile manoeuvre, released decoy flares and returned to the site of departure." 

It claimed the targets had been destroyed. 

Ukraine's invasion of Russia's Kursk region was a moment that caught Moscow and the world by surprise. 

It was the largest incursion into Russian territory since the start of the war. 

While Ukrainian officials have remained tight-lipped over the details of the operation, we have seen Russia evacuating other areas near the border. 

Here's a timeline of what has happened in the invasion so far: 

Ukrainian units launched the surprise operation in the Kursk border region on  Tuesday 6 August.

By Wednesday 7 August , Ukrainian forces had advanced as much as 10km inside the Russian territory.

The US-based thinktank, the Institute for the Study of War, geolocated footage of Ukrainian forces in several locations and verified images showing Russian prisoners of war being taken at border checkpoints.

Ukrainian forces continued their advance on Thursday 8 August . 

By Friday 9 August , a video emerged appearing to show Ukrainian soldiers in control of a local gas facility in the town of Sudzha.

Now six days into the invasion, this latest map shows that Ukrainian forces are largely holding their position, while the Russian military has evacuated 76,000 people from the area.

Ukrainian media outlets have also started reporting that Ukrainian forces appear to have entered Kursk's neighbouring region of Belgorod, with a video showing them in the Russian village of Poroz.

Sky News has not been able to independently verify this.

Meanwhile, the Russian government has imposed a "counter-terror" operation in the three border regions of Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk.

This allows authorities to relocate residents, confiscate vehicles and control phone communications.

People evacuating from the border areas of Russia's Kursk region have been receiving aid from the Russian Red Cross.

Red Cross workers have been visiting temporary accommodation centres to help those who have fled, and a hotline has been set up to reunite relatives. 

The Kursk office of the aid organisation said it received almost 3,000 calls in less than a day. 

Around 76,000 residents have been evacuated so far, a Russian Emergencies Ministry spokesman said yesterday, 

Ukraine's invasion of the Russian region began earlier this week and been considered an embarrassment to Russian military leaders, who were forced to scramble to contain the breach.

The exact aims of the operation remain unclear, and Ukrainian military officials have adopted a policy of secrecy, with little details of the invasion released. 

Earlier today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged fighting in Kursk for the first time - five days after it started. 

He said he had discussed the operation with top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi.

"Today, I received several reports from commander-in-chief Syrskyi regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war on to the aggressor's territory," he said.

"Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor." 

Russia has been "stealing" Ukraine's natural resources, the UK's defence ministry has said. 

In a post on X, the MoD said Russian troops had heavily mined Ukraine's "resource-rich area" of Dniprorudne in Zaporizhzhia. 

The "loot" had then been transported back to Russia for it to be used in the country or exported. 

It said Moscow was trying to ruin Ukraine's economic potential by taking its "most valuable assets". 

"Stealing resources from Ukraine entrenches the Russian occupation of these areas," it added.

Away from the invasion of the Russian Kursk region, fighting is continuing in parts of Ukraine. 

In Crimea - an area that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 -  the Ukrainian defence intelligence unit has claimed to have destroyed one of Moscow's speed boats. 

It said a special unit used a marine attack drone to target the vessel. 

"As a result of the operation, three more watercraft of the invaders were also damaged," it said. 

Residents have gathered outside a building in Russia's Kursk region that was damaged in an attack overnight. 

A burnt-out car sits outside the building. 

Thirteen people were injured in the Ukrainian drone and missile attack, the regional governor has said. 

One woman was seen being wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher. 

Elsewhere, a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kyiv overnight killed two people - a man and his four-year-old son. 

They were pulled from underneath the rubble of a building. 

Russia's defence ministry has hit out at Ukraine's invasion of the Kursk region, calling it "barbaric" and saying it made no military sense. 

Ukraine has at most occupied several tens of square kilometres of Russian territory without laying claim to it.

However Russia controls more than 100,000 sq km of Ukraine's internationally recognised territory. 

It is thought the offensive could be aimed at drawing top Russian units away from Ukrainian frontlines.

As we've been reporting, we've entered a sixth day of fighting in Russia's Kursk region after Ukrainian forces smashed through the border. 

Here is some of the latest footage from the area, including a damage apartment building apparently hit by drone debris and the delivery of humanitarian aid. 

The Russian defence ministry also shared footage that it said showed a Ukrainian tank being destroyed. 

Earlier this week, we reported on a Russian attack on a supermarket in Ukraine's Donetsk region. 

The missile strike killed 14 people and injured 44 others. 

Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office has now said three children were among the dead. 

They were three girls aged nine, 11 and 16. 

The attack occurred in the town of Kostiantynivka, which also suffered a similar attack on a local market in September last year - when 17 people were killed. 

Russia's defence ministry has shared aerial footage appearing to show a burning Ukrainian tank. 

The tank is seen firing before it is engulfed in a thick cloud of smoke. 

The footage is said to have been taken in Russia's Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have launched an offensive. 

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An Escalating War in the Middle East

Tensions are on a knife edge after israel carried out a strike on the hezbollah leader allegedly behind an attack in the golan heights..

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Over the past few days, the simmering feud between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, has reached a critical moment.

Ben Hubbard, the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times, explains why the latest tit-for-tat attacks are different and why getting them to stop could be so tough.

On today’s episode

Ben Hubbard , the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times.

Background reading

Israel says it killed a Hezbollah commander , Fuad Shukr, in an airstrike near Beirut.

The Israeli military blamed Mr. Shukr for an assault on Saturday that killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

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