Debate [5/16] This house believes that the world would be better off without nuclear power

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The moderator's opening remarks

In pictures taken from unmanned aircraft, the building that houses the number three reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant looks like a matchstick model that has been first trodden on, then set alight. Two of the three other reactor buildings look little better; the one that looks most robust may be leaking worst of all. A Geiger counter offshore would be going mad from inadvertent leaks and deliberate releases of contaminated water; more than 100,000 people have been evacuated from the surrounding region. The worst case seems to have been avoided. But in terms of the image of nuclear power, the not-worst scenario playing out in Japan is still deeply, perhaps indelibly, bad.

The crisis at Fukushima Dai-ichi, a vast six-reactor power plant north of Tokyo that was knocked off the grid by March 11th's earthquake and disastrously deprived of cooling by the subsequent tsunami, has refocused the world's attention on the future of nuclear power. For some it will doubtless have been the final straw, convincing them that an industry given to such cataclysms simply cannot be supported any more. For at least one British environmentalist it has been an eye opener the other way: if this is the worst that happens when old and poorly regulated reactors are hit by a calamity of biblical proportions, then maybe the technology is not that bad after all.

But though Fukushima is the occasion for much soul-searching along these lines, the issues it raises about disaster preparedness and radiological safety in the case of failure are not the only, or in many minds the most important, issues that surround the future of nuclear power. Up-front expense, systemic risk, long-term waste disposal and proliferation are also big issues that seem at the moment not to be solved. Generous federal loan guarantees have as yet failed to spur a nuclear renaissance in America. The sight of companies that operate reactors in Germany sitting on potentially lucrative assets closed down by a political response to developments 9,000 kilometres away makes the systemic risks clear. Deep geological storage is still unavailable for many nuclear programmes; and the link between power programmes and weapons programmes seems stubbornly hard to break.

But if these issues remain, so do others. Nuclear power retains the ability—much valued by Japan, among other nations—to provide copious amounts of reliable electricity without incurring dependence on imported fossil fuels. By the same token it lets those nations avoid the climate damage that those fossil fuels inflict when burned. Those who wish to see global warming halted have to recognise that if nuclear power were abolished today, to be replaced by other generating technologies in proportion to their current usage, the world would emit an extra 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.

Our debaters, Ian Hore-Lacy of the World Nuclear Association, a trade body, and Tom Burke of E3G, an environmental organisation, are both well-versed in these arguments, and we can expect them to make their cases forcefully. As moderator I will try to make sure that the neutrons of argument they emit provoke appropriate reactions in subsequent rounds of debate. There is always a risk that proponents and opponents will speak past, rather than to, each other. I will try to make sure that is not the case this time. And I will be looking to you, the voters and online participants, to help me in raising difficult questions, as well as listening to your arguments for your own positions. Please vote, express yourselves, listen, tell your friends and, if you see fit, change your vote according to what you have heard. Nuclear power is an important subject on which the Fukushima disaster has bestowed fresh urgency. Let's give it the debate it deserves.

The proposer's opening remarks

Avoiding the radiological risks associated with civil nuclear power, whether in normal operation or from a catastrophe, is not the main reason the world would be better off without it. Atoms cannot be made to work for peace without making them available for war.

This is a lesson we have learned the hard way. The original five nuclear-weapons states are now nine and will soon be joined by a tenth. All the newcomers have acquired their weapons under the guise of developing civil nuclear-power programs. 

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has only slowed, not prevented, the spread of nuclear weapons. The skills and materials used in a nuclear-power program are indistinguishable from those needed to build nuclear weapons. A third of the nations with civil nuclear programs have attempted to develop nuclear weapons.

There can be no argument that the world would be better off without more nuclear-armed nations. This can only be guaranteed by removing the political cover provided by civilian nuclear-power programs. The enormity of the proliferation risk therefore demands that the case for continuing these programs and thus maintaining this perilous ambiguity, be overwhelming. It is not.

If there is no compelling reason to accept the proliferation risk, then the world will be better off in many other ways. Among them will be reduction of the economic risks of nuclear accidents. They are significant. The catastrophe at Fukushima is not yet over but it is already clear that the eventual cost will exceed $100 billion.

Two primary arguments are advanced for accepting the Faustian bargain offered by nuclear power. The first is that nuclear power is essential for energy security. The second is that it is necessary to avoid dangerous climate change. Climate change is without doubt the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. Ensuring energy security is one of the most urgent tasks facing any government.

If there really is no alternative, then the Faustian bargain of nuclear power will have to be managed as well as is possible. But such a force-majeure argument must be subject to the most rigorous examination before its dread conclusion is accepted.

Nuclear power currently contributes surprisingly little to energy security—about 13% of the electricity delivered globally in 2009, perhaps as little as 2% of final energy. This was rather less than the 18% delivered by co-generation and renewables. Furthermore, this share is declining. In recent years more reactors have closed than have opened.

Last year alone, not counting large dams, renewables added 50 gigawatts of new capacity—equivalent to about 40 nuclear reactors. The International Energy Agency, not known for its nuclear skepticism projects that the number of new reactors built in coming decades will barely keep pace with the number closing.

Even that will take a heroic effort. Some 260 new reactors would have to come on line by 2025 just to stand still. This would be a significant engineering achievement and would stretch the nuclear supply chain tightly, with big implications for costs. But it is hard to see what this does for energy security and it clearly does not displace much coal or gas.

The reality is that, even in a more electricity-dependent world, the contribution of nuclear power to world energy supplies is so small that it is already being replaced by improved energy efficiency, renewables and fossil fuels. These options are cheaper, less risky and quicker than nuclear.

But they are also, at least in the case of fossil fuels, much more damaging to the climate. Nuclear is clearly a low-carbon option. Understanding what is happening in China is central to dealing with this horn of the energy-climate dilemma.

China has the most ambitious nuclear programme anywhere with more than 70 gigawatts of new capacity planned by 2020. Should it succeed, this will meet perhaps 4% of Chinese electricity demand. A quarter will come from renewables and the remaining 70% from coal and gas—mainly coal. In carbon-reduction terms, even the world's most aggressive nuclear programme is marginal. Not even the most valiant of nuclear advocates would suggest that a significant proportion of China's projected coal burn could be displaced by nuclear.

But if this coal burn goes ahead unabated there is no prospect of avoiding dangerous climate change. Of course, this is not just a problem for China—many other countries have large coal programmes—but rather that the message is at its clearest there.

Nuclear power cannot save the world from the necessity of deploying carbon capture and storage or facing the impossible choice of letting the lights go out or destroying climate stability. It is a high-risk distraction from what must become the central focus of the effort to deliver energy and climate security simultaneously.

The opposition's opening remarks

Would the world be better off without nuclear power? Far from it!

Despite the media circus regarding Fukushima, which has eclipsed the coverage of 20,000 or more lives lost in a huge and tragic natural disaster, nuclear power remains necessary and virtuous in relation to sustainability criteria.

When all this is sorted, world energy demand will be just the same as it was, the demand for reliable electricity supply will still be on a path to doubling in two decades, and the options for meeting that demand will be just the same. On the basis of calm, rational consideration, nuclear power will be looking just as attractive as it did before.

This does not mean we will not learn lessons from Fukushima. Clearly, we need to look again and ensure that every reactor in every country has reliable post-shutdown cooling available, and any other vulnerabilities addressed, even after the most extreme environmental events. Fortunately, that challenge has already been met by new reactor designs that use natural physical principles—notably convection—to cool reactors after shutdown. This means they will require no electricity supply or even any human intervention for some days to get this done.

Of course, anyone building new plants will use current technology, not 1960s technology. However, that does not mean that old plants are unsafe if properly run, though we hope that safety systems are not tested to near their limit as at Fukushima. Although the three Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors which were operating on March 11th and suddenly shut down in response to the earthquake are certainly write-offs, along with unit 4 which had fuel pond overheating, so far there is no evidence of acute radiation sickness or even significantly elevated exposure in workers at the plant. The final barrier—robust containment—has substantially done its job.

The need for nuclear power is driven by several factors which have not changed: the need for a continuous, reliable supply of affordable electricity, the importance of energy security so that fuel for electricity generation is not subject to geopolitical threats and uncertainties, and the need to minimise CO₂ emissions from power generation.

Nuclear power generation meets these needs very well. Only coal and natural gas can compete on cost per kilowatt hour and on being continuous and reliable, though even in the short term gas supplies in Europe rely rather heavily on Siberia, the Middle East and North Africa, hence there is a major vulnerability there. Coal has huge CO₂ emission implications, and the advent of commercial-scale carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology is some way off. Even then it threatens to double the cost of electricity.

So the focus is on the safety of nuclear power. Despite the present drama, that could hardly be better. In 14,500 reactor years of civil power generation, there have been no major accidents with human casualties except Chernobyl, which is largely irrelevant to anything built outside the Soviet Union, or indeed in that part of the world since then.

Most governments have called for a review of nuclear safety standards following the Fukushima accident, and clearly that makes good sense. However, I personally doubt if very much will show up that has not already been built into current reactor designs and national regulations, which are more conservative now than in the 1960s when Fukushima Dai-ichi was designed and most of it built.

The public impact of the accident has been greater than any previous one due to the use of social media and the visual impression of three reactor buildings with their upper portions wrecked by hydrogen explosions. (The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 was boring visually.) The release of radioactivity was unprecedented for a Western-type nuclear plant, and reporting of this was predictably hyped and confused. But few reports related these levels of either radioactive contamination, or personal exposure, to what we are all subject to every day of our lives. So people freaked out at trivial reported levels while admiring their granite worktops, going on skiing holidays and flying round the world—all of which would increase personal doses more than those for the plant's neighbours.

There is no reason to suppose that once cooling is restored to the three reactors and four fuel ponds using the built-in systems (or a secure substitute) the evacuees will not be able to return and resume their lives as far as the tsunami devastation allows.

What other major industrial accident has had such low human casualties—no deaths or serious injuries from radiation, at least thus far, and only three deaths on the Tepco site from the actual quake and tsunami? If it were a coastal LNG terminal overwhelmed by a tsunami more than twice as big as it was designed for, the mind boggles.

The proposition is absurd and short-sighted. Nuclear power is timely for now and greatly needed.

* Other References

http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/environment/house-would-go-nuclear

http://dbp.idebate.org/en/index.php/Debate:_Nuclear_energy

nuclear_power.doc

[메메]

요기 위에 올려놓은 Reference가 사실 더 좋습니다. 오히려 본 article 보다 reference 를 보고 오시는 것이 더 좋으실 거예요.. 2개 다 강추입니다. TED Debate도 보시고, 링크된 레퍼런스 2개 다 보시고 오심, 원자력 박사 되실듯... ㅋ^^ 꼭 보고 오세요~

[James]

흥미가 많이 가는 주제입니다~ ^^

[메메]

ㅋㅋ 몰 많이 가 많이 가긴~ㅋ

[James]

ㅋ 막 던지것처럼 보였어요? 형 이래뵈도 전력회사다니는데...그리고 원자력 존속여부가 가장 큰 이슈이고..전 기획부서로서 관심을 갖고 볼수밖에 없는...콜록

[메메]

전기세 그만 받으러 다니고 나랑 같이 세상을 바꿔 보는건 어때?ㅋ

[James]

ㅋㅋ 컴퓨터 본체 그만 뜯으시고 이제 좀 세상에 순응하시죠 ㅋ