This story was originally published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Nuclear energy made a big splash at the COP28 climate meeting in Dubai with a declaration by 22 countries calling for a tripling of nuclear energy by 2050. It seems like an impressive and urgent call to arms. On closer inspection, however, the numbers don’t work out. Even at best, a shift to invest more heavily in nuclear energy over the next two decades could actually worsen the climate crisis, as cheaper, quicker alternatives are ignored for more expensive, slow-to-deploy nuclear options.
Here’s what the numbers say:
22: That 22 countries signed the declaration may seem like a lot of support, but 31 countries (plus Taiwan) currently produce nuclear energy. Notably missing from the declaration are Russia and the People’s Republic of China. Russia is the world’s leading exporter of nuclear power plants and has the fourth largest nuclear energy capacity globally; China has built the most nuclear power plants of any country in the last two decades and ranks third globally in capacity. Thirteen other countries that have key nuclear programs are also missing from the declaration: five in Europe (Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain), two in South Asia (India and Pakistan) three in the Americas (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico), South Africa (the only nuclear energy producer in Africa), and Iran.
5: Five of the countries signing the declaration do not have nuclear power — Mongolia, Morocco, Ghana, Moldova, and Poland. Only Poland’s electricity grid can support three or four large nuclear reactors — the rest would have to invest billions of dollars first to expand their grids or rely on smaller reactors that would not overwhelm grid capacity. Poland wants to replace its smaller coal plants with almost 80 small modular reactors (SMRs), but these “paper reactors” are largely just plans and not yet proven technology. One American vendor, NuScale, recently scrapped a six-unit project when cost estimates rose exponentially. In any event, none of these five countries is likely to make a significant contribution toward tripling nuclear energy in the next 20 years.
17: The 17 remaining signatories to the nuclear energy declaration represent a little more than half of all countries with nuclear energy, raising the issue of how much support there really is for tripling nuclear energy by 2050.
3x: The idea of tripling nuclear energy to meet climate change requirements is not new. In fact, it was one of eight climate stabilization “wedges” laid out in Science magazine in 2004 in a now-famous article by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala of Princeton University. A stabilization wedge would avoid one billion tons of carbon emissions per year by 2055. In the case of nuclear energy, this would require building 700 large nuclear reactors over the course of 50 years. (In 2022, there were 416 reactors operating around the world, with 374 gigawatts-electric of capacity). In 2005, to reach the one-billion-ton goal of emissions reduction would have meant building 14 reactors per year, assuming all existing reactors continued operating. (In fact, the build rate needed to be 23 per year to replace aging reactors that would need to be retired.) Given the stagnation of the nuclear power industry since then, the build rate now to reach wedge level would need to be 40 per year.
10: Average annual number of connections of nuclear power plants to the electricity grid, per year, over the entire history of nuclear energy. Between 2011 and 2021, however, the average annual number of nuclear power reactors connected to the grid was five.
42 GWe: New nuclear energy capacity added from 2000 to 2020.
605 GWe: New wind capacity added from 2000 to 2020.
578 GWe: New solar capacity added from 2000 to 2020. Growth in renewables has vastly outpaced that of nuclear energy in recent years.
73 billion: In US dollars, the amount lent or granted by the World Bank in fiscal year 2023 through the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association for projects. The December nuclear energy declaration called upon shareholders of the World Bank, international financial institutions, and regional development banks to encourage the inclusion of nuclear energy in their lending policies. This sounds like it would improve the chances for nuclear energy investment, but like many things associated with nuclear energy, any such move would be far too little and too late. The recently cancelled NuScale project estimated that it would cost $9.3 billion for six small modular reactors (77 megawatts-electric each); that is, the six reactors would have half the electricity capacity of a single large reactor. If the World Bank decided to spend all its funds on nuclear energy, it could afford to pay for the construction of seven NuScale projects, which would increase nuclear energy capacity by three gigawatts-electric — or one per cent of total global capacity. The opportunity costs of using scarce development funds on nuclear energy is another issue.
15 trillion: In US dollars, the cost to build enough NuScale reactors (9,738) to triple nuclear energy capacity, assuming existing reactors continue to operate. There are less expensive SMRs, perhaps, but none further along in the U.S. licensing process.
13: An unlucky number in some cultures, but this was the time from design to projected operation of the NuScale VOYGR plant. Nuclear power plants have to be “done right,” and cutting corners to speed deployment is in no one’s interests. The design-and-build phase for a country’s first nuclear reactor, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, is 15 years. If the great expansion of nuclear energy is supposed to occur in more than the 22 countries that signed the declaration, this lead-time cannot be ignored.
The climate crisis is real, but nuclear energy will continue to be the most expensive and slowest option to reach net-zero emissions, no matter how you cook the numbers.
Comments
But in addition, there is a major waste issue that has never been resolved. No one wants the waste dumped in their back yards and leeching into ground water we rely on. Fusion hopefully will turn out to be a better solution than the current nuclear option.
There is no answer to our near future energy needs in nuclear fusion. There are several reasons for this:
1) It is highly unlikely to ever be sustainable in any earth-based apparatus. The present fusion research facilities are nowhere near to producing a NET power output, greater than the huge amount of process power required to produce adequate conditions for fusion to take place.
2) There isn't enough tritium in the world to feed even one fusion reactor for more than a short time. and the tritium is hideously expensive.
3) The overall costs are prohibitive -- even if the process could be made to work.
4) If all the technical and cost problems were settled (no prospect of that), the lead time to power getting out into the grid would be in decades rather than years.
https://news.newenergytimes.net/2021/07/11/review-of-the-fairy-tale-of-…
5) Fusion supporters neglect to say that a fusion reactor, just like fission reactors, would also produce long lasting nuclear waste from the reactor vessel.
No you are wrong. There is no nuclear waste from fusion reaction. If you know how fusion works, you will clearly see your idea as a conspiracy theory
Would you take the word of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists?
Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be
https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-theyre-cracked…
"........it is inescapable that such reactors share many of the drawbacks of fission reactors—including the production of large masses of radioactive waste and serious radiation damage to reactor components."
I appreciate this article very much, with one nit to pick.
First, though, I'm happy to see the reference to the 2004 paper on Stabilization Wedges; it's been my 'go to' since about 2006 for a clear understanding of the scale of the energy transition; I recommend it as reading to anyone who had the interest to read this article. It can be downloaded here:
https://cmi.princeton.edu/resources/stabilization-wedges/articles-and-v…
The paper has since turned into a cottage industry, and the concept features prominently in Princeton's Carbon Mitigation Initiative.
https://cmi.princeton.edu/resources/stabilization-wedges/
The nit is the comparison of nameplate capacity of nuclear to wind and solar without being forthcoming with the caveat of the capacity factors (i.e. how much of the nameplate capacity is typically available; nuclear, like coal and gas fueled electricity generation, has a much higher capacity factor).
I'm no fan of nuclear (beyond my awe of the energy density of uranium), but I believe all decisions related to energy must be informed by a 360 degree review of the data.
I’m not sure where I stand on the issue. Have the environmental impacts of renewable s been fully assessed? Mining for the vast quantities of minerals needed to replace fossil fuels with solar panels will surely have some huge negative impacts on the environment and on First Nations’ treaty rights. So will the eventual disposal of worn out wind turbines and solar panels. Additionally, will the huge spatial impact of wind and solar farms compared to much denser nuclear power generation not lead to greater encroachment on wild habitat, further crowding wild species out of existence?
I meant to say “solar panels and batteries”. It is hard to imagine that the heavy industrial processes (mining, manufacturing, disposal) to replace fossil fuels without nuclear power taking on part of the burden will not result in some environmental problems that are being insufficiently discussed.
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Good questions, Doug. And there are many books, papers, etc. addressing them. Spoiler: there is no single concensus opinion, and few take a 360 degree view. One is left to come to one's own opinion.
If you are interested, I can suggest:
1. Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It. there is Brutalist Architecture. Derrick Jensen is a Brutalist Environmentalist (my opinion); he's smart but his books can be very hard to read (stay away from high bridges). This book is pretty easy to wade through, though, and he shines a light on the problems of focusing only on solutions to climate change, as many environmentalists do, because some solutions will exacerbate other ecological crises, such as biodiversity loss.
2. The Nature article referenced in this article. It's a terrific summary of what we face. Look at the 'Articles and Videos' link at: https://cmi.princeton.edu/resources/stabilization-wedges/
3. Escape from Overshoot: Economics for a Planet in Peril. Peter A. Victor (emeritus YorkU) looks at the how the economic underpinnings of our society must change, if we are to extinguish the 6th mass extinction now underway.
cont...
I've got more suggestions but the annoying bugs in CNOs comment feature are preventing me from posting them.
4. 100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything. Jacobson (Stanford U) is often mentioned as someone who has done the math, though I'm concerned he is focused most on climate change and not all the ecological crises we face.
5. Books by Vaclav Smil (emeritus uManitoba). He's written lots of books and is respected for his analysis. Search Amazon for a list of his books, then pick one that strikes your fancy.
6. The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism. Adrienne Buller (Canadian living in England) writes about the notion of trying to put a value on an individual, a species, or the entirety of nature, which some traditional economists strive to do. Conceptually pretty easy to follow, initially, but does get into economic theory which is slowing me down.
7. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. I listened to the audiobook. Written by a number of women contributors, it is an eclectic mix of science and social philosophy. Even poetry. I was taken by every selection but there were more hits than misses for me. Definitely worthwhile. Women approach science in an often different way from men and it's enlightening to hear their voices.
There are innumerable other books on the topic.
My take-away from this tough question is that, regardless of how we source our energy, we should be reshaping how we live, play, and build stuff to reduce/limit the amount of energy we need and consume.
Hope that's helpful.
Typo. The above comment re All We Can Save show say "I was NOT taken by every selection..."
One thing to keep in mind is that this is not a "start with no impacts, add impacts from green technologies" situation. Right now, aside from their CO2 and methane emissions, fossil fuel extraction is also a mining technology--some of it is pretty weird mining, but still, you're pulling stuff up from the ground, and there is pollution associated with that, whether it's just crude oil leaks or toxic fracking or the horrific tar sands or the massive disaster that is coal mining. Plus of course you have to mine stuff to make the fossil fuel infrastructure of pipelines and refineries and supertankers and whatnot.
And there's a key difference between these two things: If I mine some rare earths to go in a battery or a solar panel or something, that battery or solar panel will produce energy for years or maybe decades, and can then probably be recycled. If I mine some fossil fuels, I then burn them in a day and mine some more to burn the next day. The total amount of stuff required for renewables is like 0.1% as much or less; even if the ore is low in whatever you're extracting, it's still not nearly as bad.
Another key difference is that technologies for renewables continue to advance, potentially substituting materials that are less damaging to acquire. So for instance, lithium batteries are seeing competition from sodium batteries. Well, nobody needs to do anything much to get sodium--there's plenty of salt around. But fossil fuels are defined by the stuff you need to mine and burn--they are not going to substitute better kinds of crude oil. If anything, their emissions and dangers are trending worse, because we've used up a lot of the easiest kind to get, so we're doing fracking and tar sands and huge deep offshore drilling rigs and mountaintop removal.
Renewables are far from perfect. But they are far better than what they replace, and that includes when it comes to environmental damage from mining.
the greenwashing by the nuclear industry is the "big lie"! For example, if during a licensing hearing such as the Cameco refinery at Blind River, I asked, "what is your carbon imprint"? "Too low to report" replied the Cameco official. I again asked, "if it is too low to report then you must know what it is"? never did get an answer. Of course, this same line is repeated all along the nuclear chain from exploration, mining, milling, transportation, refining, packaging and repackaging, changeout or refurbishing of radioactive plants, containment and burial of radioactive wastes, etc. I suspect, the true carbon emissions are higher than if natural gas was burned in the first place. Of course, we should be phasing out nuclear and replacing it with renewables but with people like Mark Carney in the way we will continue with the dangerous and expensive distraction of nuclear based on the "big lie"!