Why we should not fear nuclear power
Climate change and data have transformed my once anti-nuclear stance into enthusiasm for the technology
I was eight years old when reactor 4 at the Chernobyl power plant melted down. Not quite old enough to understand what had happened, yet I could sense the angst amongst the adults in the room. I still have a faint memory of the image on TV: a cloud of poisonous gas slowly engulfing an entire continent far away. How long until it gets here and kills us all?, I thought, not realizing that at a distance of 12,000 km I was safe from the radiation over a small town in northern Ukraine.
My home country, Brazil, had been facing its own nuclear demons and the Chernobyl accident intensified anxieties. The nation’s first reactor at Angra dos Reis, a controversial project, had recently started operating. People were fearful of an imminent catastrophe within our shores.
With two generations before me living through atomic bomb detonations and a cold war with the threat of nuclear annihilation, it is understandable that I saw nuclear energy as evil. For decades, the environmentalist in me was fiercely anti-nuclear while the scientist in me had a certain fascination with the technology. Recently, concerns about climate change have united these two selves. The more I learned about nuclear power’s role in the clean energy transition, the more my objections subsided. Today I am firmly in the pro-nuclear camp, although I strive to remain clear-eyed about its risks and limitations.
This article kicks off a four-part series examining the public debate surrounding nuclear power, with the aim to provide an objective and nuanced perspective. In this first installment, I give an overview of the current state of nuclear power and address the main concerns about its use. Subsequent articles will delve deeper into today’s reactors, the new generation of small modular reactors, and the contentious issue of nuclear waste.
The state of nuclear power today
Nuclear power generates 10% of the world’s electricity. It is the second largest source of low-carbon power after hydro, accounting for 26% of the global clean energy mix — roughly equivalent to the combined output of solar and wind.
The entire nuclear fleet is concentrated in just 33 countries, primarily developed economies that rely on nuclear power to varying degrees. For example, the United States sources 20% of its electricity and half of its clean power from nuclear, while France generates a whopping 70% of its electricity by splitting atoms.
Nuclear remains a divisive topic, but a poorly understood one, as evidenced by the most common objections:
Nuclear plants are dangerous
Nuclear power leads to nuclear weapons
Nuclear plants are slow to build and expensive to run
Let’s examine each one.
Are nuclear plants dangerous?
There is something visceral about the fear of invisible, complex phenomena like atomic fission and ionizing radiation. I suspect this fear will always remain a challenge to broader acceptance of nuclear power.
Much is understood today about the causes and response to major nuclear accidents. For an informative, data-driven analysis of casualties from Chernobyl and Fukushima, I recommend this article from Our World in Data.
Chernobyl
The worst nuclear disaster in human history happened in 1986. The event was absolutely terrifying. The tragic human consequences were amplified by outdated reactor technology without a containment dome (a design no longer in use) and by the former Soviet Union’s secretive response.
The article I recommend above summarizes Chernobyl casualties:
2 workers died in the blast.
28 workers and firemen died in the weeks that followed from acute radiation syndrome (ARS).
19 ARS survivors had died later, by 2006; most from causes not related to radiation, but it’s not possible to rule all of them out (especially five that were cancer-related).
15 people died from thyroid cancer due to milk contamination. These deaths were among children who were exposed to 131I from milk and food in the days after the disaster. This could increase to between 96 and 384 deaths, however, this figure is highly uncertain.
There is currently no evidence of adverse health impacts in the general population across affected countries, or wider Europe.
Combined, the confirmed death toll from Chernobyl is less than 100. We still do not know the true death toll of the disaster. My best approximation is that the true death toll is in the range of 300 to 500 based on the available evidence.
Fukushima
The Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in 2011 was triggered by an unprecedented earthquake and tsunami, along with a series of regulatory failures and mismanagement in the run-up to the disaster. Multiple warnings from scientists and regulators were ignored, and the meltdown could have been prevented.
Here is Our World In Data’s summary of casualties:
No one died directly from the disaster. However, 40 to 50 people were injured as a result of physical injury from the blast, or radiation burns.
In 2018, the Japanese government reported that one worker has since died from lung cancer as a result of radiation exposure from the event.
In 2016, the World Health Organization noted that there was a very low risk of increased cancer deaths in Japan.
A more difficult question is how many people died indirectly through the response and evacuation of locals from the area around Fukushima.
The year after the 2011 disaster, the Japanese government estimated that 573 people had died indirectly as a result of the physical and mental stress of evacuation. Since then, more rigorous assessments of increased mortality have been done, and this figure was revised to 2,313 deaths.
Other accidents
In the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, a major disaster was averted but people were exposed to high radiation. Exactly how much is still unclear. Estimates range from the equivalent of a single X-ray to much higher levels. What is certain is that, if there was an increase of cancer or death rates in the years that followed, studies have failed to pick up a clear signal.
There have been other nuclear accidents in history, but thanks to a strict regulatory framework, nuclear power is one of the safest by unit of energy produced. Despite the tragic and horrifying disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima, the fact that we can count on one hand all the serious accidents in the history of nuclear power is rather a testament to its safety. The relatively few accumulated casualties should stand in contrast to the 8 million deaths every year attributed to fossil fuels.
Perhaps the “deaths per units of energy“ metric doesn’t fully capture all the dangers of nuclear. A meltdown is a catastrophe with long-lasting consequences for those affected, potentially rendering the surrounding area uninhabitable for generations. This concern may be at the forefront for people living near nuclear power plants, even though it is difficult to quantify through data. All power plants, including renewables, can have both negative and positive consequences for nearby communities, and it is crucial for those impacted to have a voice in carefully considering siting and energy options.
Does nuclear power lead to nukes?
Although both involve splitting atoms, the technologies and material required for each are distinct. Power generation uses uranium-235 enriched to about 5%, while weapons-grade uranium demands enrichment of at least 90%.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has established a rigorous three-phase process for developing nuclear power capabilities, with stringent controls on the production, storage, and transfer of nuclear materials. Currently, around 30 countries are undergoing this process, all under close observation by international bodies to ensure that weapons capabilities cannot be attained.
While the risk of nuclear proliferation cannot be overlooked, all countries pursuing a commercial nuclear industry are engaged with non-proliferation treaties and global trade agreements for fuel sourcing and engineering expertise, all of which creates incentives to stay away from weapons capabilities. Countries that do pursue nuclear weapons development often do it by violating international agreements more or less in the open (e.g., North Korea.)
Are nuclear plants slow to build and expensive to run?
The short answer is a definite maybe.
Historically, nuclear projects have been plagued by delays and cost overruns. Strict regulations, which are necessary to sustain the impressive safety record, contribute to substantial construction and operating expenses.
But nuclear plants can operate for a very long time, typically exceeding 40 years, with newer plants expected to remain functional for up to a century. This 2020 report from the International Energy Agency asserts that electricity produced by nuclear long-term operation (LTO), by extending plant lifetime, is “the least cost option […] for all power generation across the board.”
Despite the low LTO costs, high capital costs associated with large-scale projects continue to pose a challenge for the industry. Unpredictable cost overruns and lengthy construction timelines hinder our ability to expand nuclear power quickly to meet the needs of a rapid energy transition.
Other advantages of nuclear power
Low-carbon
Nuclear is one of the cleanest forms of energy production. The only CO2 emissions are from plant construction and fuel sourcing. The carbon footprint is comparable to wind and less than one third that of solar.
Environmental footprint
Nuclear energy generation emits no pollution, and get this: coal plants emit far more radiation than their nuclear cousins.
Nuclear has the lowest environmental footprint of any energy source at any point in the lifecycle. The land use diagram below tells a powerful story.
How about environmental impacts from waste? The concerns are overblown, and I will explain why later in this series.
24/7 power
Nuclear power can be generated continuously and on-demand regardless of weather conditions or storage capacity, and reactors can work at maximum output for most of the time. In the US, that efficiency is higher than 92%, compared to 56% for natural gas and 25% for solar.
Energy density
Splitting atoms is the most energy-dense source of power we have (that is, until we figure out how to combine atoms reliably.) Compared to fossil fuels:
Don’t we have better alternatives?
With all the options we have for generating electricity, why bother with nuclear at all, given the possibility of major disasters, even at minimal risk?
We need to decarbonize energy: to get climate change under control, we must phase out all but the most limited usages of coal, oil, and natural gas, and we need to do it in just a few decades.
We will rely on electricity a lot more: electrification will shift huge amounts of energy from fossil fuels to the power grid. Think about all current demand for gasoline and diesel turning into future demand for electricity. By some estimates, our power grid in 2050 will need to be 5x larger than it is today.
We need to maximize renewables: that means as much solar and wind as quickly deployed as humanly possible. But we also need a continuous electricity supply, and most renewables provide variable power.
Therefore, we need more baseload power: growth of renewables will be constrained by the amount of reliable, dispatchable, on-demand power generation on offer. The options for that are:
Utility-scale batteries will play a big role in the future, but grids today have next to zero storage capability. The technology is not yet ready, and still too expensive, to be deployed at scale.
Geothermal is promising and it works well enough in Iceland. But there are questions about carbon emissions, and whether it can ever play a major role everywhere.
Hydrogen is exciting, but inefficient and expensive, and ultimately not feasible for electricity production.
Hydro has worked well for decades but it is not exactly scalable, and it has a big environmental footprint.
Coal is what our current grid was built on. But we need it gone, yesterday.
Natural gas is cleaner than coal but still a fossil fuel. We already have good infrastructure for it, and new plants are easy to build. So it will win over all the options above, unless…
Nuclear with its low-carbon, high-density, low-footprint energy that we already have available. We know how to operate it safely, we understand the economics, and we know to scale it.
So, what is holding us back?
In the rest of this series I will explore the challenges and solutions to a nuclear power buildout, starting with why construction of new reactors has all but stalled in the developed world. Stay tuned!
What else I found interesting
Researchers at MIT and Argonne National Laboratory describe how flexible nuclear operation can help add more wind and solar to the grid
Oliver Stone has a new film coming out:
Netflix’s Meltdown: Three Mile Island is a great docuseries about the causes of the accident, inept public messaging, and corporativism of the nuclear industry who deployed secrecy and denial to protect its own interests over those of the affected population.
What a 30-year veteran who operated nuclear reactors in submarines and aircraft carriers has to say:
In the mood for industrial accidents?
Natural gas is a particularly persistent killer. Let me Google it for you.