Abstract
This chapter addresses the question of whether nuclear power can be a part of a sustainable energy transition by examining the present state and future prospects of nuclear energy. Currently nuclear power constitutes only a small and declining share of global electricity. This is a result of the dual challenges of high economic costs of nuclear power and negative public attitudes toward it. The chapter then describes some of the strategies adopted by the nuclear industry and its supporters to maintain and expand nuclear power in the face of this reality, including actively courting developing countries, offering new reactor designs, and extensive use of propaganda. It concludes that despite this contestation, nuclear power does not fit well into a world based on sustainable energy.
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Notes
- 1.
The figure of 9.4 years is significantly higher than the number that is assumed in many studies of the economics of nuclear power. For example, the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency routinely assumes seven years as the construction period for nuclear reactors (NEA 2010, p. 44, 2015, p. 43), whereas many members of national nuclear establishments planning to construct nuclear power plants assume five years or less; for example, Araj (2014). Countries seeking to build their first nuclear plants would like the construction period to be less than five years (IAEA 2009, p. 51).
- 2.
There is a debate over whether the use of a positive non-zero discount rate is justified when dealing with multi-generational problems (Howarth and Norgaard 1993), but this debate has not affected energy policies so far.
- 3.
The term nuclear renaissance was probably first used by Alvin Weinberg, the former head of the Oakridge National Laboratory in a 1985 article (Weinberg et al. 1985), but it was only after 2000 that the term began to be used frequently when talking about nuclear power.
- 4.
Note that this is the overnight construction cost that ignores the interest and other costs that have to be spent over the period during which the reactor is being built.
- 5.
Westinghouse also touted the same approach for its pebble bed modular reactor in South Africa (Wallace et al. 2006).
- 6.
This report was authored by Francois Roussely, European vice president of Credit Suisse and honorary president of Électricité de France, and was commissioned in the aftermath of France losing a contract to supply nuclear reactors to the UAE.
- 7.
- 8.
The acronym SMR is also used to mean ‘small and medium-sized reactor’ by the IAEA. For the IAEA, a ‘small’ reactor is one having electrical output less than 300 MWe and a ‘medium’ reactor is one having a power output between 300 and 700 MWe.
- 9.
Westinghouse is not alone in looking at decommissioning old reactors as a promising activity. As a conference brochure put it, ‘decommissioning continues to dominate the US nuclear landscape’ and various companies are gearing up for very large decommissioning projects, including dealing with the spent fuel that has accumulated in old reactors. See http://www.nuclearenergyinsider.com/nuclear-decommissioning-used-fuel/.
- 10.
Because of the proprietary nature, nuclear contracts are typically not available for public scrutiny and thus the monetary value of this claim cannot be verified. Nevertheless, the physical act of signing various agreements is usually accompanied with widespread publicity and this provides some indication of the potential number of countries that might become reactor customers. Among the countries that Russia has signed agreements (not necessarily formal purchase/sale contracts) are Jordan, Bangladesh, Turkey, India, Belarus, China, Finland, Hungary, Vietnam, and South Africa.
- 11.
Though precise interest figures are not available in the public domain, an indication of why Russia’s loans are attractive to potential customers can be seen from a comment offered to Bloomberg News about an agreement with South Africa by Viktor Polikarpov, Rosatom’s regional vice president for sub-Saharan Africa; he said that Russia could offer a loan with a possible duration of 20 years and South Africa would only start repayment when the first plant starts operating, adding ‘The interest rate the government is offering is not very high, it’s really lucrative … [you] won’t get this interest rate anywhere, at any bank’ (Bloomberg 2015b).
- 12.
Nuclear market analysts have raised questions about whether Argentina, which is facing severe economic problems, will be able to pay for this reactor (Yurman 2015).
- 13.
A helpful definition is offered by the philosopher Randall Marlin: propaganda is ‘the organized attempt through communication to affect belief or action or inculcate attitudes in a large audience in ways that circumvent or suppress an individual’s adequately informed, rational, reflective judgment’ (Marlin 2002, p. 22). Propaganda is, of course, only one element in the array of bureaucratic techniques that are employed by the nuclear industry and their supporters. Other commonly used methods are the formation of alliances with other powerful groups and lobbying with elected officials to win government subsidies.
- 14.
For example, Horizon Power, the company set up in the UK to sell the Advanced Boiling Water Reactors developed by Hitachi and General Electric, announces on its website, ‘Nuclear power can play a vital role in meeting the challenge of maintaining affordable and secure energy supplies for the UK, while also tackling the global threat of climate change’ (Horizon 2015).
- 15.
These utilities often also own coal plants and natural gas plants and are not very keen on implementing any reductions in emissions to mitigate climate change in the first place.
- 16.
See, for example, Japanese philosopher Takashi Hirose’s description of TEPCO’s strategy in the first year following the Fukushima disaster (Hirose 2011).
- 17.
When construction started at Turkey’s Akkuyu site, the Energy Minister Taner Yıldız proclaimed, ‘Development cannot take place in a country without nuclear energy’ (DS 2015).
- 18.
When Bangladesh signed a deal with Russia to import two 1-GW reactors, its Science and Technology Minister Yeafesh Osman reportedly said, ‘We have signed the deal … to ease the power crisis that hampers our economic activities’ (BBC 2011). In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ‘saw an essential role for nuclear energy in India’s energy strategy, given the scale of demand in India’ (PIB 2014).
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Ramana, M.V. (2016). Second Life or Half-Life? The Contested Future of Nuclear Power and Its Potential Role in a Sustainable Energy Transition. In: Van de Graaf, T., Sovacool, B., Ghosh, A., Kern, F., Klare, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the International Political Economy of Energy. Palgrave Handbooks in IPE. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55631-8_15
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