Support for nuclear power is rebounding. And the primary reason is simple: It’s probably impossible for the world to meet its emissions-reduction targets without a substantial global expansion of atomic energy. EricLevitz writes
Photo: Stephane Mahe/REUTERS The world has learned to stop worrying and love nuclear energy. Or some of the world has, anyway.
Meanwhile, the European Commission recently leaked plans to formally declare nuclear energy a “green” investment. More than a half dozen states from across the region are currently pursuing advanced-nuclear power plants. And China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, recently unveiled plans to build 150 new nuclear reactors in the next 15 years — more than the rest of the world has built in the past three decades.
Although more vital at the global level, building new nuclear plants — or failing that, maintaining existing ones — would ease America’s path to decarbonizing its entire economy by mid-century. Princeton University researchers recently modeled a variety of pathways for achieving full decarbonization in the U.S. by 2050 and found that the cheapest pathway, given existing technology, involved tripling nuclear-power generation.Cost reductions in the renewable sector have been truly phenomenal.
Japan’s nuclear phaseout has been similarly ill-fated. The carbon intensity of the nation’s power sector soared following the post-Fukushima closures. And now the Japanese government’s climate advisory group is warning that the country will be incapable of meeting its emissions-reduction targets unless it restarts nearly every nuclear plant it took off-line last decade.
Of course, few propositions will inspire more intense NIMBY resistance than new nuclear-power plants. But since such plants produce so much more energy per square foot of land, they may ultimately present less vexing siting issues than a 100 percent renewable-electricity system would. Unfortunately, the PNAS study found that attempts in the past several decades to develop economical advanced-nuclear technologies have yielded scant progress. Meanwhile, SMRs modeled on existing light-water technology incur both the “economic premium and the considerable regulatory burden associated with any nuclear reactor.
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