By Rebecca Harms MEP is a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy - 19th October 2005
Nuclear power is an investment in the past, not the future, argues Rebecca Harms MEP.
This article first appeared in the October 17 edition of Parliament magazine.
Yes, nuclear power plants don’t produce CO2. No, this is not a way to slow down climate change. Let me explain why. Globally about a third of all greenhouse gases are caused by the production of electricity, and around 15-20 per cent of that electricity is produced by 440 nuclear power plants. If there were no nuclear power plants at all, greenhouse gas emissions would probably be approximately four or five per cent higher than today. But that remains a theory which doesn’t take into account any developments there may have been if nuclear power had never been used for electricity production.
To change today’s impact of nuclear power on greenhouse gas emissions experts calculate that you would have to construct at least 1000 new nuclear reactors which would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by only eight to ten per cent globally. These power plants would not be built in Europe but in developing countries, primarily in Asia, because it is the developing world that will need more electricity in the future, not industrialised countries. Forecasts made for the EU show that demand for electricity may even decline after 2030.
So let us imagine 1000 nuclear power plants are built in Asia. Think of the billions of euro these countries would have to spend on constructing these plants. Think of the setback that this would cause to their development because these billions are invested in nuclear power and are missing for other urgent tasks. Think of the stability of society nuclear techniques demand. A stability that even western industrialised countries have not yet shown they are capable of providing. And think of the safety of this planet with all this nuclear knowledge spread over the world.
Therefore for financial and political reasons, nuclear power is no solution to fighting climate change on a global scale. And we haven’t even discussed the threat of terrorists, or the limited resources of uranium, or the possibility of dangerous accidents, or the costs and risks of decommissioning nuclear power plants, or the unresolved problem of nuclear waste which can last hundreds, thousands, even millions of years.
To invest in nuclear power is an investment into the past and not into the future. No country in the world has the resources to invest in nuclear power as well as in energy efficiency and renewables equally. After 2012, when the commitments of the Kyoto-Protocol end, the urgency to reduce CO2 emissions will accelerate even further. Reductions of 50 per cent of 1990 levels up to 2050 are being discussed as absolutely necessary by experts.
If not on a global scale, would nuclear power be a solution for less CO2 emissions within the EU? Again, the answer is no. Taking into account that it needs at least ten years to build a nuclear power plant, it is clear that to construct new reactors wouldn’t help to reduce the production of CO2 by eight per cent for the EU-15 by 2012 as foreseen by the Kyoto Protocol.
The only way to do this lies in energy efficiency, renewables, decentralising of electricity production, cogeneration, and - very importantly – energy-saving cars. The development of new techniques like hydrogen-fuelled cars must be fostered with much more determination. Gas can and should be the bridge that helps us to reach the realms of an era where fossil fuels no longer play the predominant role they do today. To be capable of the huge and necessary reductions of CO2 emissions after 2012 we have to develop the technologies now. This is the task national governments and the European Institutions, regardless of political persuasion.
With the coming of age of nuclear technology, the problem of what to do with old nuclear plants that have to be decommissioned will become increasingly urgent. This topic was studied recently by the European Parliament. The estimated costs lie between €200 million and €1 billion. There are two ways for decommissioning plants when the nuclear core has already been evacuated: firstly: ‘immediate’ dismantling over ten to 12 years, secondly, deferred decommissioning, also known as ‘safe enclosure’ where the plant is dismantled after it has been “cocooned” for 30 to 100 years and radioactivity has had time to decrease.
In evolution nature had its first peak with big, somewhat clumsy, animals and trees before becoming smaller and more sophisticated again. Technology follows nature’s path. No one - apart from Steven Spielberg - would invest in dinosaurs. If we want to deal with climate change on a global scale, we have to learn to produce energy in ways that we and our planet can cope with. This is definitely not nuclear power.
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