Nuclear Power: Between Promise And Peril

Since the incidents in the late 70's and 80's with 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl, nuclear technology has resides in no-man's land, between doom and dream, or between problem and peril. Twenty years after Chernobyl, is a nuclear renaissance in the making? An overview of the current status of nuclear technology:

Nuclear peril

• Waste: technical solutions exist, but lack of a political agreement
• Proliferation: can and needs to be managed
• Nuclear safety: an issue for older nuclear plants, but promising 'passive safety' designs for new reactors

The nuclear promise

• The power of the atom: a fistful of matter holding enough energy to power a city of a million for a year
• Climate change mitigation: each major nuclear power station saves 6 million tonne of greenhouse gasses per year compared to fossil-based electricity generation
• Energy security: abundant energy supply when using advanced reprocessing and fast neutron reactors

From peril to promise

• Public opinion - taken hostage by extremes
• Technology: extremely complex scientific & technical challenges need global cooperation and a 'man on the moon' momentum

Conclusion

Nuclear technology needs to address its problems, and holds tremendous promise if it does. The 'nuclear option' does not represent a single option, but offers many choices on building additional reactors, a moratorium ( no new reactors), phaseout (reduce existing reactors), reactor types, waste processing and R&D expenditure.

When excluding all nuclear options, a plan is needed how to build an energy system without it. The fact that we yet have to see such a (transparent) plan may relate to the fact that the numbers simply do not add up without the use of nuclear energy.

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Hans De Keulenaer manages Leonardo ENERGY initiative, the Web portal for sustainable energy professionals.

http://www.leonardo-energy.org

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