ESSAY ARGUES FOR NUKE POWER VS CLIMATE CHANGE

An essay in the March 6, 2021 issue of The Economist argues that nuclear power may have a lot of drawbacks, but well-regulated nuclear power plants are safe, never mind Three Mile Island, the Chernobyl catastrophe in Ukraine, and the Fukushima Dai-ichi crisis in Japan 10 years ago, when the design and supposed safeguards of the power-generating plant were proven to be lemons by a tsunami triggered by a huge earthquake.

The essay in the Leaders section of the magazine, argues that the pathological fear of nuclear power plants is wrong, even if they are expensive and require second-by-second monitoring to prevent the meltdown as in Chernobyl and the collapse of the entire system as in Fukushima.

Moreover, the challenges are huge, like the proper measures to dispose of deadly and toxic nuclear waste and preventing the same from being used for nuclear weapons.

“Against all that (sic), though, two things must be remembered. One is that well-regulated nuclear power is safe. With the terrible Soviet-era exception of Chernobyl, nuclear disasters come without large death tolls. It was the tsunami, not radiation, that claimed nearly all those lives in Fukushima. The other is that the climate is in crisis, and nuclear plants can supply some of the vast amounts of emissions-free electricity the world needs if it is to cope. Solar and wind power are now much cheaper, but they are intermittent. Providing a reliable grid is a lot easier if some of its generating capacity can be assumed to be available all the time. Nuclear provides such capacity with no ongoing emissions, and it is doing so safely and at scale around the world,” the essay argued.

“Despite this, safe and productive nuclear plants are being closed across the rich world. Those closures and the retirement of older sites mean that advanced economies could lose two-thirds of their nuclear capacity by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency. If new fossil-fuel infrastructure fills the gap, it will last for decades. If renewables do so, the opportunity cost will be measured in gigatonnes of carbon. Renewables replacing nuclear capacity would almost always be better deployed to replace fossil-fuel capacity,” The Economist essay concluded.

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