Nuclear power: a climate response that falls short

Solar and wind power are, by definition, intermittent and unstable. If the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, you can’t generate electricity. And since solar and wind farms can’t generate electricity round the clock, even under the best of conditions, they require fossil-fuel back-up. This will not change until we develop cost-effective technology on a very large scale to store the electricity they produce.

Take Britain. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a wind power enthusiast and says he wants the UK to become the “Saudi Arabia of wind power”, with wind farms generating enough electricity to meet the needs of every UK household within a decade. Do it. Today, 24% of Britain’s electricity comes from the wind. But the country saw an unexpected “windless summer” this year, one of the reasons for Britain’s electricity crisis.

Among EU countries, Germany has been the most aggressive in pursuing the future of renewable energy. Under its Energiewende (energy transition) plan that began in 2010, it is closing its coal-fired and nuclear power stations. Today 30% of its power comes from wind and sunlight. But last month, faced with a coal and natural gas shortage, it woke up to the reality that, after investing half a trillion dollars on the plan, it didn’t even have the capacity to bottling enough weather-dependent clean electricity. Have some fossil-fuel-free hours.

Meanwhile, the price of electricity in Germany’s domestic sector is one of the highest in the European Union: $0.37 per kilowatt-hour (KwH). In France, it is $0.19. In 2019, Germany emitted 350 grams of carbon dioxide for every KwH generated. France emitted 56 grams, six times less. Electricity is quite cheap and clean in France.

The reason is simple. Nuclear Energy. In 2020, nuclear power made up 78% of the energy generated by France, and renewables accounted for 19%. Fossil fuels account for only 3%.

But the problem is, every time the word “atomic” is uttered, it elicits a negative—and often hysterical—response, rather than an argumentative fact-based one. Images of mushroom clouds over Hiroshima are generated immediately. Whereas, nuclear power may be the cheapest, greenest and safest source of energy currently known to man.

France and other countries such as Sweden and Bulgaria, which have high nuclear components in their electricity generation, prove to be the cheaper part. What about green? Nuclear power is zero-emission. It contains no greenhouse gases or air pollutants. And, according to US government figures, a typical 1,000-MW wind farm requires 360 times more land than a nuclear facility of the same capacity, and 75 times more to solar plants. In addition to the ecological damage wind and solar projects can cause in the relatively pristine areas where they are installed, it is estimated that 500,000 birds are being killed each year in the Americas by collisions with wind turbines. This number can only increase.

Today, we are fully aware of the radiation exposure risks and have reliable and safe methods of nuclear waste disposal. And, because of its extreme density, it requires very little space. All the waste produced by the US nuclear industry in 60 years could theoretically fit into a seven-metre-high pile of containers on a soccer field. And it would be even less if the US recycled waste to generate more electricity, as France does. Coal plants expel that amount of waste every hour.

We must make the right choice between various low-carbon technologies, all of which have some social and environmental impact. California, the most ‘progressive’ state in the US, is a fascinating case study.

California is closing nuclear plants and aims to be nuclear-free by 2025. One of the consequences of rising emissions is the increased reliance on natural gas. After all, when you replace nuclear with solar and wind, you need more fossil fuels to back-up. And while the price of electricity has remained stable in the rest of the US over the past 10 years, it has risen more than 60% in California. The state seems to be moving towards a clean energy net of its own making.

The boldest decision that Manmohan Singh took in his 10 years as prime minister was to sign the Indo-US nuclear deal. But, perhaps due to general opposition and short-lived political thinking, it seems that not much has happened since then – only 3% of the electricity India generates is nuclear. Last month, the government announced that India would triple its nuclear power capacity over the next 10 years. It should not be a goal that should be silently forgotten once it is set.

India imports much of the uranium it uses, which is both expensive and geopolitically difficult. But it has immense reserves of Thorium. Clearly, we must make ambitious investments in projects that convert thorium to fissile uranium and produce electricity. What we haven’t already done sounds weird. But then, much of the politics surrounding nuclear power, both global and local, has been strange and illogical.

Sandipan Deb is the former editor of ‘Financial Express’ and founder-editor of ‘Open’ and ‘Swarajya’ magazines.