Is Nuclear Power Wrong?

Many countries around the world have nuclear power. As of January this year, there were 31 countries with a total of 442 stations worldwide, with another 65 under construction.. For some nations, like France, nuclear provides a substantial portion of their electricity.

And, in recent years, many of the world's governments have been been considering extending or renewing their nuclear programmes to cover future energy gaps and/or reduce carbon emissions.

That is, until Fukushima.

Now many governments have put construction on hold and are asking for existing stations to be reviewed in the light of what has happened in Japan. There has also been a resurgence of protests against nuclear power in nations as far apart as Germany and India.

So, what has changed, and is nuclear power now the wrong way to go?

Well, what's changed is that the world has looked on in horror as Fukushima almost wrote itself into history as the planet's first, full-on, nuclear melt-down. That kind of thing can make anyone think twice.

However, it took one of the most powerful earthquakes ever, followed closely by a 3 storey high tsunami to bring this tragic event about.

From what I understand, it wasn't the earthquake that was the problem. The nuclear plants were designed to shutdown in the event of a quake, which is exactly what they did. No, it was the tsunami flooding the back-up diesel generators which were supposed cool down the reactors, that was the issue.

The lessons here seem to be: Don't build nuclear power stations in a major earthquake zone and, whatever you do, make sure you never lose power to your cooling system.

Hopefully both lessons will be learnt and the world's nuclear plants will become all the safer.

But let's put this in perspective. Nuclear stations are already designed to withstand almost literally anything (including 8.9 magnitude earthquakes it seems) and the modern ones are even better. So, unless you live in a coastal area prone to magnitude 8+ quakes, nothing's really changed.

Many Greens, of course, would like you to believe otherwise. For them, nuclear, in whatever form, is wrong, so they've seizied on Fukushima as a chance to put the brakes on the rush towards nuclear power. Maybe even kill it off altogether.

To be honest, I have some sympathy for their position: High level nuclear waste remains dangerous for centuries. In effect, we end up handing that problem onto future generations for the rest of the millenium. But, even if we were to put an end to nuclear power today, the problem of nuclear waste would still be there. Zero gain.

In fact, we could be shooting ourselves in the foot, because nuclear power may be an essential part of our battle against global warming. Without it, we may not be able to reduce carbon emissions fast enough to make a difference. The reason I say that is we need to replace hundreds of coal fired power stations and the only realistic way of doing that at the moment is with nuclear. Therefore it's got to be part of the picture until renewables can truly step up to the plate.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't need nuclear. Sadly, it's far from perfect.

So we have to make a tough choice: Turn our back on nuclear and keep our fingers crossed that we can reduce carbon emissions fast enough to make a difference; or use nuclear as part of a stop-gap solution despite it's obvious drawbacks.

At the end of the day, that choice will be based on risk perception. The threat of nuclear power stations versus the threat of climate change. For me, climate change is by far the greater threat, and it's a near certainty if we don't start doing something about it soon.

People talk about nuclear disasters killing hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, and making huge areas uninhabitable. Well, that's exactly what global warming will do too. People won't die from radiation poisoning, but from starvation, disease, floods, and war. They'll die in their millions, year after year. The land won't become radiactive, but there'll be vast areas of land made uninhabitable by lack of rain, and flooding from rising sea-levels. And these areas will expand inexorably for many decades to come, even as our increasing population needs more land in which to live.

Yes, nuclear power has it's risks, but we have to accept them, for the time being, if we are not to jeopardise the lives of future generations through climate change.

(UPDATE: A safer form of nuclear power here).