Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
gigatonnes (billions of tonnes) of CO
2
a year by 2050, depending on how
nuclear power grows in the coming years.
For
nuclear power
Against
nuclear power
It's an extraordinary energy source:
1 tonne of uranium is equivalent to
16,000 tonnes of oil.
The reaction process can spin out of control
with disastrous results, as accidents such as
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have shown.
Compared to the thousands killed
every year in coal mining, a relatively
tiny number of people have been
killed in nuclear incidents.
Always the potential, however slight, for cat-
astrophic accidents. and the risk of bomb-
making technology spreading.
There is a carbon footprint attached to the
building of reactors, and an overall environ-
mental cost to uranium mining.
Nuclear energy produces no carbon
emissions.
The management of nuclear waste and
decommissioning of reactors is lengthy and
expensive.
The volume of nuclear waste is
small, and therefore manageable.
If other fuels had their external
costs (such as pollution and health)
included in their price, nuclear
would be competitive.
Nuclear power was massively subsidized by
governments in the past, and is
fundamentally uneconomic.
Meltdowns and markets
But the nuclear industry took several hits in the 1980s and 1990s. The
Three Mile Island accident in 1979, in which a nuclear generating station
in Pennsylvania suffered a partial core meltdown, brought US reactor
construction to a halt and was a significant factor in Sweden's vote the
following year to phase out their reactors by 2010. The far more serious
accident in Chernobyl in 1986 turned many more European nations off
nuclear power. In a 1987 referendum, Italians voted to end their nuclear
programme definitively, while Germany, Spain and Belgium subsequently
decided to run their nuclear programmes down.
Energy liberalization and privatization in Europe and the US also had
an impact on nuclear power. This tended to favour quicker investments
with lower capital costs, such as gas-fired power plants, and to penalise
more expensive and inflexible investments such as new nuclear reactors.
Most existing nuclear operators continued to make money out of existing
reactors, whose costs had been all paid off. (In 2003, however, seven years
