Nuclear isn’t the way to go
Praful Bidwai
The News International, 27 August 2005
The Pakistan government has announced its intention to invite the Western
countries to invest and set up 13 new nuclear power plants in the country.
Over a period of 25 years, these nuclear stations would together create
8,400 MW of electricity-generation capacity. Pakistan Atomic Energy
Commission (PAEC) officials have reportedly suggested to President Pervez
Musharraf that such plants be built in certain "designated zones and
parks" on the basis either of "full ownership" by investors, or of "joint
ventures". They should be operated under "full safeguards" of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
There are three matter-of-fact ways of looking at this idea. First, it is
primarily, if not wholly, meant to assuage Western concerns about nuclear
proliferation centred on Pakistan. These concerns have recently
intensified because the IAEA has just determined that Iran has been using
some smuggled equipment in its hitherto-clandestine nuclear programme; and
the signature of the enriched uranium traces detected in this "appears to
emanate from Pakistan", and "not from Iranian enrichment work".
This hypothesis can credibly argue that Pakistan hasn’t been particularly
serious, unlike, say, India, about developing nuclear power—witness the
poor performance of the Karachi nuclear plant (commissioned, 1971) and
lack of investment in any other projects so far, barring Chashma
(commissioned, 2000).
Besides, Islamabad’s policy-makers know that, given the A.Q. Khan legacy,
it won’t be easy to sell their new idea without risking the exposure of
Pakistan’s entire nuclear programme to international inspections. Under
the Vajpayee government, India too offered to place all its future nuclear
reactors under IAEA safeguards in return for resumption of pre-1974
nuclear trade with the United States and the European Union. But this
wasn’t acceptable to Washington. Pakistan may fare no better.
A second hypothesis is that Islamabad is merely testing the waters to see
how far the US is prepared to extend to it the special treatment accorded
to India through the extraordinary nuclear deal of July 18 (discussed in
this Column on July 23). Parity with India is a popular notion in
Islamabad. Pakistan would be loath to see the US move further and further
away from it. On this view, the new nuclear power initiative is
essentially "political", and may not translate into megawatts of atomic
electricity.
On a third view, Pakistan is indeed serious about building a number of
nuclear power stations with foreign assistance and collaboration because
it sees nuclear electricity as a major energy source of the future. An
addition of 8,400 MW could only be the first step in developing this
source.
One can only hope that the third hypothesis is all wrong and that Pakistan
does not embrace nuclear power as a commercial source of electricity
generation. India made that blunder, and seems bent on magnifying it.
Pakistan would be ill-advised to replicate it. To understand why, it’s
necessary to put nuclear power in historical perspective.
Nuclear electricity emerged as a by-product of the atomic bomb and was
promoted through Washington’s "Atoms for Peace" programme of 1953 as the
energy source of the future, which promised to be potentially
inexhaustible (because only grams of uranium can produce as much power as
tonnes of coal), almost indefinitely renewable through the re-use of
fissile materials, environmentally safe, and remarkably inexpensive,
indeed "too cheap to meter".
Nuclear power has turned out to be the investor’s headache and
environmentalist’s nightmare, especially after the Three Mile Island
(1979) and Chernobyl (1986) disasters. In most countries, it’s too
expensive to hook to a meter!
Amory Lovins, of the environment and energy think-tank Rocky Mountain
Institute (US) says: nuclear power has "suffered the greatest collapse of
any enterprise in the [world’s] industrial history. Overwhelmed by huge
construction and repair costs, it achieved less than 1/10th the capacity
and 1/100th the new orders officially forecast a quarter-century ago...
Today, if a nuclear power plant cost nothing to build, it would be cheaper
to write it off... than to operate".
Nuclear power bristles with grave safety problems, including a potential
for catastrophic toxic releases, routine emissions, and exposure to
radioactivity which causes cancers and genetic disorders irrespective of
the dose. Nuclear power stations leave behind a trail of ultra-hazardous
high-level wastes, which remain active for thousands of years. Nobody has
found a solution to the problem of waste storage, leave alone disposal.
So nuclear power is deeply unpopular. Two-thirds of the world’s 440 power
reactors in operation are in North America and Western Europe, where there
is strong grass-roots opposition to it. Many of these countries are
phasing it out, including Germany, Sweden, Italy and Belgium. Even France,
which gets 78 percent of its electricity from nuclear reactors, has
recently closed down 11 reactors. The US pioneered nuclear power. But it
has ordered no new nuclear reactor since 1973!
As of now, only a handful of countries have plans for substantially
expanding nuclear generation—including China, Taiwan, South Korea and
India. But it seems doubtful if they will fill the void left by the
withdrawal of the First World countries.
Nuclear’s original promise of virtually indefinite expansion was based on
the viability of fast-breeder reactors, which burn plutonium extracted
from spent fuel of "normal" reactors and, theoretically, leave ("breed")
more fissile material than they consume. These have proved a failure
everywhere. The breeding ratio is well under 100 percent. Most breeders
undergo serious accidents because they use highly hazardous explosive
materials like liquid sodium.
France, which had the world’s largest fast-breeder programme, has
abandoned it and closed down the much tom-tommed 1,200 MW Superphenix, the
world’s largest fast-breeder.
Unlike in the 1960s or 1970s, today there exist a number of commercially
ripe renewable sources like wind and solar which can deliver energy
benignly, safely and competitively.
Contrary to widely held misperceptions, nuclear power has not been
growing. Its contribution to global electricity generation has marginally
shrunk from 17 to 16 percent. During the 1990s, global nuclear capacity
annually grew by 1 percent, while renewables like solar and wind rose by
17 and 24 percent respectively.
As if this were not enough, nuclear power is expensive, and hence
particularly unattractive. For many, this is the clinching argument.
According to several estimates, the financial costs of nuclear plants are
about twice as high as those of coal and gas-burning stations, making
atomic electricity unaffordable. (See a brand-new MIT study. For more details, the reader can
also visit www.rmi.org, www.nirs.org, www.greenpeace.org).
The costs of nuclear electricity remains high despite the fact the nuclear
industry is heavily subsidised. For instance, US taxpayers alone have
subsidised it by an estimated one trillion dollars. Yet, nuclear power has
failed the market test.
Nuclear power has once again attracted attention recently because of
growing public awareness of global warming caused by greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions. But nuclear power is not a viable climate-change abatement
strategy. France has derived over 70 percent-plus of its electricity from
nuclear plants for four decades. But its GHG emissions have been rising.
After all, electricity generation accounts for only 9 percent of global
GHG emissions. The scope nuclear power offers for GHG reductions worldwide
is minuscule, under 1.5 percent.
Nuclear power represents an ugly energy bargain. Pakistan should not fall
for it.
Copyright 2005 The News International
|
