A nuclear solution to
global warming?
BY MARK SHWARTZ
Nuclear power can play a
significant role in preventing catastrophic global
warming, according to a controversial article published
last week in Science magazine.
William C. Sailor and Bob
van der Zwaan, visiting Science Fellows at Stanford's
Center for International Security and Cooperation
(CISAC), co-authored the report, which appears in the May
19 issue of Science.
They are among seven
researchers affiliated with "Nuclear Power Issues
and Choices for the 21st Century" -- a CISAC project
investigating whether nuclear energy has a legitimate
role in preventing global warming.
Diablo Canyon
is one of 104 commercial nuclear power plants operating
in the United States. The plant is owned by the Pacific
Gas and Electric company and is located in San Luis
Obispo, California -- about halfway between San Francisco
and Los Angeles. (Coutesy:PG&E/
Steve Kindel)
"Mankind is facing a
tremendous challenge with global climate change,"
says physicist van der Zwaan. "In the coming two
decades we have to consider new energy sources, including
nuclear."
But van der Zwaan, on
leave from the Free University (Vrij Universiteit) of the
Netherlands, admits that widespread public concern has
led several countries to halt development of nuclear
energy.
"Eighty-five percent
of all Dutch people are opposed to it," he notes,
and the numbers are similar in other European countries.
Clean-burning fuel
Most of the world's energy
is derived from fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural
gas. Only about 6 percent comes from nuclear power
plants.
But burning fossil fuels
emits large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2)
and other gases that trap infrared radiation from the
sun.
As a result, say many
climatologists, our atmosphere is heating up like the
inside of a greenhouse, and unless we reduce the rate of
CO2 gas emissions, the temperature of the Earth
will increase by as much as 6o F in the next century.
Such global warming,
according to worst-case scenarios, will cause disastrous
floods, droughts and erratic changes in ocean currents,
and even will spread tropical diseases and parasites
throughout the planet.
Advocates say that nuclear
power will help prevent global warming because nuclear
reactors produce virtually no greenhouse gases. They
point to France, where about 60 pollution-free power
plants provide three-fourths of the country's
electricity.
But critics argue that
nuclear power is inherently dangerous and prohibitively
expensive. They point out that accidents like the 1986
Chernobyl power plant disaster in the former Soviet Union
can result in radiation poisoning that lasts many
generations.
Opponents also maintain
that safely storing radioactive waste is difficult, and
that newly designed breeder reactors could make it easier
for plutonium fuel to get into the hands of terrorists
and others eager to build small-scale nuclear weapons.
Nuclear solution?
Van der Zwaan and Sailor
address these arguments in the Science article.
"Nuclear power can
play a significant role in mitigating climate
change," they write.
The authors point to
recent studies showing that, to prevent dangerous climate
change from occurring in the next 50 years, CO2-gas
emissions must remain at their current levels -- despite
a projected 50 percent population increase by the year
2050 that could double or triple world demand for energy.
"Lacking a crystal
ball that tells us the future," write Van der Zwaan
and Sailor, "we simply select one possible scenario
that achieves the emissions target."
Their scenario envisions a
world in which one-third of all energy comes from fossil
fuels; one-third from renewable resources, like solar and
wind power; and one-third from nuclear power.
To achieve that ambitious
goal, all the nations of the world would have to consume
less oil, coal and natural gas than they do today, while
increasing renewable and nuclear energy sources at least
tenfold.
To accomplish that will
require increasing the number of nuclear reactors on
Earth from about 430 to roughly 4,000, which means that
more than one nuclear reactor would have to be built
every week for the next 50 years.
"That would require a
massive industrial effort," van der Zwaan concedes,
costing trillions of dollars, but he believes that
developed nations like the United States can achieve this
objective if there is strong popular support.
According to the
Department of Energy, the United States has 104 nuclear
reactors in operation today. Twenty-eight have been shut
down permanently since 1953, and there are no plans to
build new ones.
"The first thing that
has to happen is a general acceptance by the public that
fossil fuels create a threat to our future," notes
Sailor, who holds a doctorate in nuclear engineering.
"Once that's generally recognized, then all
alternatives to nuclear power must be thoroughly
investigated."
But he argues that
renewable forms of energy such as hydro, wind and solar
power are fraught with technical or environmental
problems that make them unlikely substitutes.
"Once it's realized
that we cannot make ends meet without nuclear energy,
there is a chance that public opinion will turn greatly
so that nuclear power will once again be
acceptable," he notes.
Before that can happen, he
says, the issues of safety, cost, waste and proliferation
must be addressed.
Exaggerated risks?
"The risks of
radioactivity from nuclear reactors are sometimes
overstated, so the feeling of many people is just
biased," according to van der Zwaan.
He and Sailor write that,
with the exception of Chernobyl-type reactors, the
present generation of nuclear power plants has a good
safety record, experiencing only one accidental meltdown
at the Three Mile Island (TMI) plant in Pennsylvania in
1979.
"However, changes in
equipment and operating procedures since TMI suggest
considerably improved safety," they note.
"There are also well-developed designs for a next
generation of reactors, which promise still greater
safety."
The authors maintain that
the risk of contamination from stored nuclear wastes is
also exaggerated, noting that the U.S. government has
outlined a rigorous standard of protection for people
living near the proposed nuclear waste repository at
Yucca Mountain, Nev.
"If the U.S.
repository is found to meet the standard and is
opened," they write, "it will be able to handle
all the U.S. wastes expected through the next few
decades. However, a large expansion of nuclear power may
require using alternative disposal approaches.
"Any nuclear waste
project will have to fight legal challenges, which will
be political in nature. For instance, the State of Nevada
has already spent considerable effort fighting the Yucca
Mountain Project, which the state claims has been forced
upon it.
"Public support for
these claims could decrease if nuclear energy were seen
as a necessary part of a solution for climatic problems
and, overall, as environmentally beneficial. Nevadans
might then be more willing to accept the minuscule risks
resulting from having a repository in their state."
The authors conclude,
"There are no insurmountable technical barriers to
nuclear expansion, but the expansion must be performed
under very high safety standards."
Unresolved issues
A greater challenge for
advocates of nuclear power, say van der Zwaan and Sailor,
are the unresolved concerns over the spread of nuclear
weapons and the high cost of nuclear energy.
"There must be
international confidence that nuclear power can be used
throughout the world without increasing weapons
proliferation," they write.
"To date, commercial
nuclear power has played little, if any, role as a bridge
to national entry into the nuclear arms race, nor are
there any known cases in which individuals or
sub-national groups have stolen materials from nuclear
power facilities for use in weapons.
"However, development
of nuclear weapons has been aided in at least three
countries (India, Iraq and Israel) by use of research
reactors obtained under the cover of peaceful research
programs. Absent effective safeguards, nuclear power
could provide a similar cover to future weapons efforts.
"Additional fears are
raised by the possibility that with a major nuclear
expansion, plutonium-fueled breeder reactors will be
widely used to stretch uranium resources, creating risks
of plutonium diversion for weapons purposes."
The authors conclude that
"all fuel cycles pose some proliferation risk, and
even the elimination of nuclear power would not eliminate
the possibility of a country embarking on a nuclear
weapons program.
"Thus, improved
international safeguards institutions are needed, with
strength and responsibility at an entirely new level of
capability, even in the absence of a major expansion of
nuclear power."
Economics is another major
obstacle to the development of nuclear power. The average
nuclear power plant costs about $1.5 billion and takes
four years to build, according to the authors. But
natural gas power plants are cheaper and faster to build,
so the authors recommend gradually phasing in a
"carbon tax" of about 30 cents per gallon on
petroleum to make nuclear power more competitive.
"In the
meantime," they suggest, "the Department of
Energy and other agencies worldwide should increase
reactor research efforts aimed at simplified designs and
economies of scale in construction."
Open dialogue
Sailor, who is currently
on a one-year sabbatical from the Los Alamos National
Laboratory in New Mexico, says that the mission of
CISAC's "Nuclear Power Issues and Choices"
project is to publish a neutral, unbiased study next year
analyzing the future prospects for nuclear energy.
Study participants include
three other co-authors of the May 19 Science article:
David Bodansky, University of Washington professor
emeritus of physics; Chiam Braun, senior vice president
of Altos Management Partners, Inc., in Los Altos, Calif.;
and Steve Fetter, associate professor at the University
of Maryland's School of Public Affairs.
The project also will
conduct a one-day workshop at CISAC on June 23 that will
include panelists representing a broad spectrum of
opinion on nuclear energy issues.
"No technology,
including nuclear, can be a panacea," notes van der
Zwaan, but he maintains that it is important for the
public to set aside fears and prejudices and reconsider
nuclear energy as part of the solution to global warming.
"I have a feeling we
are at a crossroads as far as public opinion," he
adds. SR
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