Suddenly, all the old fears about the safety of nuclear power havereturned - many of them sharpened by memories of the world's worst nuclearaccident at Chernobyl, which marked its 25th anniversary in April.
Governments in much of Europe have announced that planned new reactors areto be put on hold. The German Government immediately took seven of its 17reactors offline for three months for safety checks, and is rethinking itsdecision to extend the life of older plants originally due to be phased out.
The result, say climate change campaigners, is a disaster. Nuclear powergeneration emits no carbon pollution. Without it, most industrializedcountries will struggle to achieve their carbon reduction targets. Renewableenergy will never be able to make up the difference even in the medium term, United Nations climate change officials were in gloomy mood at a recentmeeting in Bangkok that followed up last December's climate summit inMexico. Before the tsunami, it was estimated that new nuclear plants wouldadd 360 gigawatts of generating capacity to the global inventory by 2035. That now seems highly unlikely - unless governments have second thoughtsabout their early rash promises to cut back nuclear programs after theJapanese disaster.
They may well do so. For the nuclear lobby is fighting back hard. It pointsout that, apart from Japan, very few of the world's 507 nuclear plants arein earthquake zones. And the plant at Fukushima failed largely because itwas very old, and of an antiquated design that is no longer being proposed Despite the forecasts of some Western politicians that nuclear energywill be a "toxic" issue for all governments now, many are quietly hopingthat the panic will die down quickly. There are several reasons. First, theyknow that it will takes years and a vast amount of investment before thewind, waves and rivers can provide as much power as one or two new nuclearstations. Cash-strapped Western economies are not able to rely on renewableto cope with forecast energy shortages.
Secondly, without nuclear power, the West is dangerously dependent onRussiaand the Middle East for its energy needs. The rows between Moscow andKievover gas prices and Russia's cut-off in supplies were a wake-up callfor Western Europe. If politics becomes a dominating factor in energy
But what if a revolution were to cut supplies from Saudi Arabia, the world'sbiggest producer? What would happen to the Western economies then? There are, of course, still big question marks over nuclear power. It isexpensive - and costs for new power stations are rising sharply. It is alsocostly and difficult to decommission old stations: the issue of wastestorage has not been resolved yet. There is always the danger of resourcesbeing diverted to make nuclear weapons. And when an accident happens, it canbe devastating, as Chernobyl showed. But even Greenpeace knows that climate |
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