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The Uncertain Future of Nuclear Energy

The Uncertain Future of Nuclear Energy

Full Title: The Uncertain Future of Nuclear Energy
Author(s): Frank von Hippel
Publisher(s): International Panel on Fissile Materials
Publication Date: September 1, 2010
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):

In the 1970s, nuclear energy was expected to quickly become the dominant generator of electrical power. Its fuel costs are remarkably low because a million times more energy is released per unit weight by fission than by combustion. But its capital costs have proven to be high. Safety requires redundant cooling and control systems, massive leak-tight containment structures, very conservative seismic design and extremely stringent quality control.

The routine health risks and greenhouse-gas emissions from fission power are small relative to those associated with coal, but there are catastrophic risks: nuclear-weapon proliferation and the possibility of over-heated fuel releasing massive quantities of fission products to the human environment. The public is sensitive to these risks. The 1979 Three Mile Island and 1986 Chernobyl accidents, along with high capital costs, ended the rapid growth of global nuclear-power capacity (Figures 1 and 2).

Today, there are hopes for a “nuclear renaissance” but nuclear energy in Western Europe and North America, which together account for 63 percent of current global capacity, is being dogged again by high capital costs and it is not yet clear that new construction will offset the retirement of old capacity. Cost escalation is more contained in East Asia, where the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expects 42 to 75 percent of global nuclear capacity expansion by 2030 to occur — mostly in China. China’s top nuclear safety regulator has raised concerns, however, about “construction quality and operational safety” [New York Times, 16 Dec. 2009] and, even for its high-nuclear-growth projection, the IAEA does not expect nuclear power to significantly increase its current share of about 15 percent of global electric-power generation.

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