Is Nuclear Energy Green?

Summary

This video explores the complexities of nuclear power as a green energy source, discussing its environmental benefits, economic challenges, and safety concerns. It compares nuclear's carbon footprint with renewable energy and fossil fuels, addresses uranium scarcity, and reviews emerging technologies like thorium reactors and small modular reactors. The script acknowledges public fear and the impact of nuclear accidents, concluding that while nuclear power has potential, it faces significant hurdles in cost, renewability, and public perception.

Takeaways

• 🔬 Nuclear power opinions are polarized, with each source often having an agenda.
• 🌱 The speaker initially favored nuclear power in high school as a fossil fuel replacement due to its low direct carbon emissions.
• 📉 The speaker over-optimistically predicted nuclear power's resurgence in 2008, but the Fukushima accident in 2011 influenced Germany's decision to phase out nuclear power.
• ⚡ Nuclear power currently contributes about 10% to global electric power production, similar to renewables.
• 🌿 Nuclear power is considered 'green' as it does not directly produce carbon dioxide, although its lifecycle includes some carbon footprint.
• 📊 According to the 2014 IPCC report, nuclear power has a carbon footprint comparable to wind, much lower than fossil fuels, but with a wider range of estimates.
• 💰 The economic viability of nuclear power is questionable due to high costs and insurance premiums, making it more expensive than coal, solar, or wind.
• ♻️ Nuclear power is not renewable; uranium-235 resources are limited and could become economically unfeasible if usage is significantly increased.
• 🔄 Innovations like thorium reactors and small modular reactors offer potential but are currently expensive and unproven on a large scale.
• 🏭 The safety of nuclear power is often overstated due to public fear; statistically, it's safer than fossil fuels but major accidents can have severe long-term effects.
• 📉 The speaker concludes that nuclear power has become less economically appealing over time and may not significantly impact climate change in the next 20 years.

Q & A

What is the main topic of the video script?

The main topic of the video script is the discussion of nuclear power, including its advantages and disadvantages, and whether it can be considered a green energy source.

What was the speaker's initial perception of nuclear power before working on the video?

The speaker initially favored nuclear power as a replacement for fossil fuels since high school, but had not revisited the numbers for over 20 years.

How does the speaker describe the public opinion on nuclear power?

The speaker describes public opinion on nuclear power as extremely polarized, with every source seemingly having an agenda to push.

What is the speaker's stance on nuclear power's impact on the environment?

The speaker believes that nuclear power is 'green' in the sense that it does not directly produce carbon dioxide, but acknowledges that its construction does have a carbon footprint.

What is the speaker's view on the safety of nuclear power compared to fossil fuels?

The speaker argues that nuclear power has historically been much safer than fossil fuels, despite high-profile accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima.

What are the main disadvantages of nuclear power according to the script?

The main disadvantages of nuclear power mentioned in the script are that it is not renewable, it is expensive, and there is public fear associated with it due to potential accidents.

What is the role of thorium reactors in the future of nuclear power according to the script?

Thorium reactors are presented as a potential innovation in nuclear power, being able to use more abundant thorium and produce more energy from the same amount of fuel, potentially lasting for thousands of years.

What are small modular reactors and how do they differ from traditional nuclear power plants?

Small modular reactors are a new technology in the nuclear industry, designed to be small enough to be transported and mass-produced in a factory, potentially reducing costs. They differ from traditional nuclear power plants in size, output, and modularity.

What is the speaker's conclusion on whether nuclear power is green?

The speaker concludes that the question of whether nuclear power is green is complicated, with both climate-friendly aspects and significant drawbacks such as cost and renewability.

Why does the speaker believe that the economic viability of nuclear power has become less appealing over time?

The speaker believes that the economic viability of nuclear power has become less appealing due to its high costs compared to other energy sources like solar and wind, and the uncertainty of new technologies making a significant impact in the near future.

What is the speaker's view on the role of nuclear power in a country with abundant solar and wind resources?

The speaker suggests that in a country with abundant solar and wind resources, it might not make sense to invest in nuclear power, considering the local conditions and the potential impact of climate change on wind and precipitation patterns.

Outlines

00:00

🔬 Nuclear Power: Misconceptions and Realities

The script begins with the author's personal journey regarding nuclear power, from childhood fears sparked by Chernobyl to a high school advocacy for nuclear energy as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels. It acknowledges the polarized opinions and agendas surrounding nuclear power, and sets the stage for an objective exploration of its environmental impact, safety, and economics. The author promises to revisit their stance after examining the latest data, starting with a look at global energy production and the 'green' credentials of nuclear power in terms of carbon footprint.

05:02

🌿 Comparing Carbon Footprints of Energy Sources

This paragraph delves into the carbon footprint of various energy sources, emphasizing nuclear power's relatively low impact compared to fossil fuels. It discusses the lifecycle carbon emissions per kilowatt-hour for coal, gas, solar, wind, and nuclear, highlighting nuclear's median value to be similar to wind and significantly lower than coal and gas. However, it also points out the variability in these estimates due to factors like uranium quality and mining methods. The author critically examines the reliability of different sources, including the World Information Service on Energy (WISE), noting potential biases.

10:04

💰 The Economics and Space Efficiency of Nuclear Power

The author discusses the economic challenges of nuclear power, noting the high costs of construction and operation, and comparing these with other energy sources using data from the World Nuclear Energy Status report. Nuclear power is revealed to be the most expensive option, even more so than coal. The paragraph also touches on the non-renewability of uranium resources and the space efficiency of nuclear power, contrasting it with the land requirements of wind and solar farms.

15:09

⚠️ Safety Concerns and the Reality of Nuclear Accidents

Here, the script addresses the safety concerns associated with nuclear power, particularly the fear of radioactive contamination from accidents. It contrasts public perception with actual safety records, citing studies that show nuclear power to be statistically safer than fossil fuels in terms of deaths per terawatt-hour. The author provides specific examples of accidents in the nuclear industry and compares them with the less visible but more significant death toll from fossil fuel pollution.

20:15

🚀 Innovations in Nuclear Technology: Molten Salt and Small Modular Reactors

The author explores emerging technologies in the nuclear industry that could potentially mitigate its disadvantages, such as molten salt reactors and small modular reactors (SMRs). Molten salt reactors are highlighted for their safety features and potential use of thorium, a more abundant fuel. SMRs are presented as a cost-effective solution due to their modular nature, although the author expresses skepticism about their economic viability and impact on climate change in the near future.

🌐 The Localized and Complex Nature of Nuclear Power Decisions

In the concluding paragraph, the author reflects on the complexity of deciding whether nuclear power is 'green', emphasizing that the answer varies based on local conditions such as available renewable resources, geological risks, and space constraints. The author also dismisses two common concerns about nuclear power—nuclear waste and proliferation risks—as less significant in their view. The script ends with a personal stance that while nuclear power may not be economically appealing, it could still play a small part in reducing carbon emissions.

📚 Sponsored Content: Learning with Brilliant

The final part of the script is a sponsored message for Brilliant, an educational platform offering interactive courses in science and mathematics. The author encourages viewers to use Brilliant to refresh their understanding of physics concepts related to the video's topic or to learn new subjects at their own pace, with the offer of a discount for the first 200 subscribers using a provided link.

Keywords

💡Nuclear Power

Nuclear power is the energy derived from nuclear reactions, specifically nuclear fission. In the video, it is discussed as a potential solution for reducing carbon emissions and combating climate change, yet it is also highlighted as a source of controversy due to its associated risks and costs.

💡Polarized Opinions

Polarized opinions refer to the divided and often extreme viewpoints on a subject, with little middle ground. The script mentions that opinions on nuclear power are extremely polarized, indicating the difficulty in forming a consensus on its use and implications for the environment and society.

💡Thorium Reactors

Thorium reactors are a type of nuclear reactor that uses thorium as a fuel instead of the more common uranium. The video discusses these as an alternative to traditional nuclear reactors, suggesting they might offer a more sustainable and potentially safer option for nuclear energy production.

💡Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)

Small Modular Reactors are compact, prefabricated nuclear reactors that can be mass-produced and transported to a site. The script explores the concept of SMRs as a potentially more cost-effective and scalable solution to traditional large-scale nuclear power plants.

💡Carbon Footprint

The carbon footprint is a measure of the total greenhouse gas emissions caused directly or indirectly by an activity or organization. The video uses this term to compare the environmental impact of different energy sources, emphasizing nuclear power's relatively low carbon footprint compared to fossil fuels.

💡Climate Change

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in global weather patterns, largely attributed to human activities. The script positions nuclear power as a potential tool in the fight against climate change due to its low greenhouse gas emissions during operation.

💡Fossil Fuels

Fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, are hydrocarbons derived from ancient organic matter. The video discusses the dominance of fossil fuels in global energy production and the environmental and health issues associated with their use, making the case for nuclear power as an alternative.

💡Renewables

Renewables refer to energy sources that are naturally replenished, such as wind, solar, and hydropower. The script mentions renewables as part of the energy mix and compares their carbon footprint and land use with nuclear power, noting the challenges of energy storage and intermittency.

💡Nuclear Accidents

Nuclear accidents, such as Chernobyl and Fukushima, are catastrophic events that have significantly impacted public perception of nuclear power. The video acknowledges the fear and risks associated with nuclear power, while also comparing the safety record of nuclear energy to that of fossil fuels.

💡Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE)

The Levelized Cost of Energy is the average cost per unit of energy produced by a specific energy source over its lifetime. The script uses LCOE to highlight the economic challenges of nuclear power, showing it as more expensive than both fossil fuels and renewable energy sources.

💡Molten Salt Reactors

Molten Salt Reactors are a type of advanced nuclear reactor that uses a mixture of molten salts to transfer heat from the nuclear reaction. The video discusses these reactors as a safer and potentially more efficient form of nuclear technology, although challenges such as material corrosion are noted.

Highlights

Opinions about nuclear power are extremely polarized, and every source seems to have an agenda.

Nuclear power is 'green' in the sense that it doesn’t directly produce carbon dioxide.

Nuclear power plants have a carbon footprint due to materials, transport, and construction.

IPCC report provides a comparison of carbon dioxide emissions for various energy sources.

Nuclear power's carbon footprint is dramatically lower than fossil fuels and comparable to some renewables.

Nuclear power doesn’t require much space and doesn’t interfere with forests or agriculture.

Nuclear power generates power on demand, unlike wind or solar which are dependent on weather conditions.

Uranium resources are limited, posing a challenge to the scalability of nuclear power.

Nuclear power plants are expensive, with medium-sized plants costing billions of dollars.

Nuclear power is considered more expensive than coal, and significantly more than solar or wind.

Public fear of nuclear power due to accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima is a significant barrier.

Nuclear power has historically been safer than fossil fuels in terms of death toll.

Renewables also have a death rate, though lower, and economic damage from nuclear accidents is higher.

Fast breeder reactors and thorium reactors offer potential for more sustainable nuclear energy.

Molten salt reactors are safer due to lower pressure and a 'negative temperature coefficient'.

Small modular reactors are a current hope for the nuclear industry, offering potential cost reductions.

Economic viability of small modular reactors is uncertain, with some projects facing cost overruns.

Nuclear power's advantages include being climate-friendly, having a small land use, and on-demand power generation.

Nuclear power's disadvantages are its high cost and non-renewability, with new technologies offering potential but uncertain solutions.

The impact of nuclear power on climate change in the next 20 years is likely to be minimal.

The decision to invest in nuclear power depends on local conditions and is not universally 'right'.

Nuclear waste is considered a red herring by some, with safe disposal sites being a viable solution.

Transcripts

A lot of people have asked me to do a video about nuclear power.

But that turned out to be really difficult.

You won’t be surprised to hear that opinions about nuclear power are extremely polarized

and every source seems to have an agenda to push.

Will nuclear power help us save the environment and ourselves, or is it too dangerous and

too expensive?

Do thorium reactors or the small modular ones change the outlook?

Is nuclear power green?

That’s what we’ll talk about today.

I want to do this video a little differently so you know where I’m coming from.

I’ll first tell you what I thought about nuclear power before I began working on this

video.

Then we’ll look at the numbers, and in the end, I’ll tell you if I’ve changed my

mind.

When the accident in Chernobyl happened I was 9 years old.

I didn’t know anything about nuclear power or radioactivity.

But I was really scared because I saw that the adults were scared.

We were just told, you can’t see it but it’ll kill you.

Later, when I understood that this had been an unnecessary scare, I was somewhat pissed

off at adults in general and my teachers in particular.

Yes, radioactive pollution is dangerous, but in contrast to pretty much any other type

of pollution it’s easy to measure.

That doesn’t make it go away but at least we know if it’s there.

Today, I worry much more about pollution from the chemical industry which you won’t find

unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and also have a complete chemistry lab

in the basement.

And I worry about climate change.

So, I’ve been in favor of nuclear power as a replacement for fossil fuels since I

was in high school.

In 2008, I over-optimistically predicted the return of nuclear power.

Then of course in 2011, the Fukushima accident happened, after which the German government

decided to phase out nuclear power, but continued digging up coal, buying gas from Russia, and

importing nuclear power from France.

However, in all fairness I haven’t looked at the numbers for more than 20 years.

So that’s what we’ll do next, and then we’ll talk again later.

Fossil fuels presently make up almost two thirds of global electric power production.

Hydropower makes up about 16 percent, and all other renewables together about 10 percent.

Power from nuclear fission makes up the rest, also about 10 percent.

Nuclear power is “green” in the sense that it doesn’t directly produce carbon

dioxide.

I say “directly” because even though the clouds coming out of nuclear power plants

are only water vapor, power plants don’t grow on trees.

They have to be built from something by someone, and the materials, their transport, and the

construction itself have a carbon footprint.

But then, so does pretty much everything else.

I mean, even breathing has a carbon footprint.

So one really has to look at those numbers in comparison.

A good comparison comes from the 2014 IPCC report.

This table summarizes several dozens of studies with a minimum, maximum, and median value.

All the following numbers are in grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour and they

are average values for the entire lifecycle of those technologies, so including the production.

For coal, the median that the IPCC quotes is 820, gas is a bit lower with 490, solar

is a factor 10 lower than gas, with about 40.

Wind is even better than solar with a median of about 11.

And the median for nuclear is 12 grams per kiloWatthour, so comparable to that of wind,

but there is a huge gap to the maximum value which according to some sources is as high

as 110, so about twice as high as solar.

An estimate that’s a little bit higher than even the highest value the IPCC quotes comes

from the World Information Service on Energy, WISE, which is based in the Netherlands.

They calculated that nuclear plants produce 117 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour.

It’s not entirely irrelevant to mention that the mission of WISE is to “fight nuclear”

according to their own website.

That doesn’t make their number wrong, but they clearly have an agenda and may not be

the most reliable source.

But these estimates differ not so much because someone is stupid or lying, at least not always,

but because there is some uncertainty in these numbers that affect the outcome.

That’s things like the quality of uranium resources, how far they need to be transported,

different methods of mining or fuel production, and their technological progress, and so on.

In the scientific literature, the value that is typically used is somewhat higher than

the IPCC median, about 60-70 grams of carbon dioxide per kilo Watthour.

And the numbers for renewables should also be taken with a grain of salt because they

need to come with energy storage which will also have a carbon footprint.

I think the message we can take away here is that either way you look at it, the carbon

footprint of nuclear power is dramatically lower than that of fossil fuels, and roughly

comparable to some renewables, exact numbers are hard to come by.

So that’s one thing nuclear has going in its favor: it has a small carbon footprint.

Another advantage is that compared to wind and solar, it doesn’t require much space.

Nuclear power is therefore also “green” in the sense that it doesn’t get in the

way of forests or agriculture.

And yet another advantage is that it generates power on demand, and not just when the wind

blows or the sun shines.

Let us then talk about what is maybe the biggest disadvantage of nuclear power.

It’s not renewable.

The vast majority of nuclear power plants which are currently in operation work with

Uranium 235.

At the moment, we use about 60 thousand tons per year.

The world resources are estimated to be about 8 million tons.

This means if we were to increase nuclear power production by a factor of ten, then

within 15 to 20 years uranium mining would become too expensive to make economic sense.

This was pretty much the conclusion of a paper that was published a few months ago by a group

of researchers from Austria.

They estimate that optimistically nuclear power from uranium-235 would save about 2

percent of global carbon dioxide emissions by 2040.

That’s not nothing, but it isn’t going to fix climate change – there just isn’t

enough uranium on this planet.

The second big problem with nuclear power is that it’s expensive.

A medium sized nuclear power plant currently costs about 5-10 billion US dollars, though

large ones can cost up to 20 billion.

Have a look at this figure is from the World Nuclear Energy Status report 2021 (page 293).

It shows what’s called the levelized cost of energy in US dollar per megawatt hour,

that’s basically how much it costs to produce power over the entire lifetime of some technology,

so not just the running cost but including the production.

As you can see, nuclear is the most expensive.

It’s even more expensive than coal, and at the moment roughly 5 times more expensive

than solar or wind.

If the current trend continues, the gap is going to get even wider.

On top of this comes that insurance for nuclear power plants is mandatory, the premium is

high, and those expenses from the plant owners go on top of the electricity price.

So at the moment nuclear power just doesn’t make a lot of economic sense.

Of course this might change with new technologies, but before we get to those we have to talk

about the biggest problem that nuclear power has.

People are afraid of it.

Accidents in nuclear power plants are a nightmare because radioactive contamination can make

regions uninhabitable for decades, and tragic accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima have

arguably been bad publicity.

However, the data say that nuclear power has historically been much safer than fossil fuels,

it’s just that the death toll from fossil fuels is less visible.

In 2013, researchers from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University

calculated the fatalities caused by coal, gas and nuclear, and summarized their findings

in units of Deaths per TeraWatthour.

They found that coal kills more than a hundred times more people than nuclear power, the

vast majority by air pollution.

They also calculate that since the world began using nuclear power instead of coal and gas,

nuclear power has prevented more than 1.8 million deaths.

Another study in 2016 found a death rate for nuclear that was even lower, about a factor

5 less.

The authors of this paper also compared the risk of nuclear to hydro and wind and found

that these renewables actually have a slightly higher death rate, though in terms of economic

damage, nuclear is far worse.

I am guessing now you all want to know just how exactly people die from renewables.

Well, since you ask.

For wind it’s stuff like “a bus collided with a truck transporting a turbine tower”

or an air-craft crashed into a wind turbine, or workers falling off the platform of an

offshore windfarm.

For solar, it’s accidents in manufacturing sites, electric shocks from improper wiring,

or falls from roofs.

The number for hydropower is dominated by a single accident when a dam broke in China

in 1975.

The water flooded several villages and killed more than 170 thousand people.

The Chernobyl accident, in comparison, killed less than 40 people directly.

The World Health Organ-ization estimates long-term deaths from cancer as a consequence of the

Chernobyl accident to be 4000-9000.

There is a group of researchers which claims it’s at least a factor 10 higher but this

claim has remained highly controversial.

The number of direct fatalities from the Fukushima accident is zero.

One worker died 7 years later from lung cancer, almost certainly a consequence of radiation

exposure.

About 500 died from the evacuation, mostly elderly and ill people whose care was interrupted.

And this number is unlikely to change much in the long run.

According to the WHO, the radiation exposure of the Fukushima accident was low except for

the direct vicinity of the power plant which was evacuated.

They do not expect the cancer risk for the general population to significantly rise.

The tsunami which caused the accident to begin with killed considerably more people, at least

15 thousand.

I don’t want to trivialize accidents in the nuclear industry, of course they are tragic.

But there’s no doubt that they pale in comparison to fossil fuels, which cause pollution that,

according to some estimates kills as much as a million people per year.

Also, fun fact, coal contains traces of radioactive minerals that are released when you burn it.

Indeed, radioactivity levels are typically *higher* near coal plants than near nuclear

power plants.

Again, you see, there are some differences in the details but pretty much everyone who

has ever seriously looked at the numbers agrees that nuclear is one of the safest power sources

we know of.

Okay, so we have seen that the biggest two disadvantages of nuclear power are that it’s

not renewable and that it’s expensive.

But this is for the conventional nuclear power plants that use uranium 235 which is only

0 point 7 percent of all uranium we find on Earth.

Another option is to use fast breeder reactors which work with the other 99 point 3 percent

of uranium on earth, that’s the isotope uranium-238.

A fast breeder transmutes uranium-238 to plutonium-239, which can then be used as reactor fuel like

uranium-235.

And this process continues running with the neutrons that are produced in the reaction

itself, so the reactor “breeds” its own fuel, hence the name

Fast breeders are not new; they have been used here and there since the 1940’s.

But they turned out to be expensive, unreliable, and troublesome.

The major problems are that they are cooled with sodium which is very reactive, and they

also can’t be shut down as quickly as the conventional nuclear power plants.

To make a long story short, they didn’t catch on, and I don’t think they ever will.

But technology in the nuclear industry has much advanced in the past decades.

The most important innovations are molten salt reactors, thorium reactors, and small

modular reactors.

Molten salt reactors work by mixing the fuel into some type of molten salt.

The big benefit of doing this is that it’s much safer.

That’s partly because molten salt reactors operate at lower pressure, but mostly because

the reaction has a “negative temperature coefficient”.

That’s a complicated way of saying that the energy-production slows down when the

reactor overheats, so you don’t get a runaway effect.

Molten salt reactors have their own problems though.

The biggest one is that the molten salt fuel is highly corrosive and quickly degrades the

material meant to contain it.

How much of a problem this is in practice is currently unclear.

Molten salt reactors can be run with a number of different fuels, one of them is thorium.

Thorium is about 4 times more abundant than uranium, however, fewer resources are known,

so in practice this isn't going to make a big difference in the short run.

The real advantage is that these reactors can use essentially the entire thorium, not

just a small fraction of it, as is the case with the normal uranium reactors.

This means, thorium reactors produce more energy from the same amount of fuel and, as

a consequence, thorium could last for thousands of years.

Thorium is also a waste product of the rare-earth mining industry, so trying to put it to use

is a good idea.

However, the problem is still that the technology is expensive.

There is currently only one molten salt thorium reactor in operation, and that’s in China.

It started operating in September 2021.

It’s just a test facility that will generate only 2 Megawatt, but if they are happy with

the test the Chinese have plans for a bigger reactor with 373 Megawatt for the next decade,

though that is still fairly small for a power plant.

It’ll be very interesting to see what comes out of this.

And the biggest hope of the nuclear industry is currently small modular reactors.

The idea is that instead of building big and expensive power plants, you build reactors

that are small enough to be transported.

Mass-producing them in a factory could bring down the cost dramatically.

A conventional plant generates typically a few Gigawatt in electric energy.

The small modular reactors are comparable in size to a small house, and have an energy

output of some tens of Megawatt.

For comparison, that’s about ten times as much as a wind turbine on a good day.

That they are modular means they are designed to work together so one can build up power

plants gradually to the desired capacity.

Several projects for small modular reactors are at an advanced stage in the USA, Russia,

China, Canada, the UK, and South Korea.

Most of the current projects use uranium as fuel, partly in the molten salt design.

But the big question is, will the economics work out in the end?

This isn’t at all clear, because making the reactors smaller may make them cheaper

to manufacture, but they’ll also produce less energy during their lifetime.

Certainly at this early stage, small modular reactors aren’t any cheaper than big ones.

A cautious example comes from the American company NuScale.

They sit in Utah and have been in business since 2007.

They were planning to build twelve small reactors with 60 MegaWatt by 2027.

Except for being small they are basically conventional reactors that work with enriched

Uranium.

Each of those of those reactors is a big cylinder, about 3 meters in diameter and 20 meters tall.

Their original cost estimate was about 4.2 billion dollars.

However, last year they announced that had to revise their estimate to $6.2 billion and

said they’d need three years longer.

In terms of cost per energy that’s even more expensive than conventional nuclear power

plants.

The project is subsidized by the department of energy with 1.4 billion, but several funders

backed out after the announcement that the cost had significantly increased.

Ok, so that concludes my rundown of the numbers.

Let’s see what we’ve learned.

What speaks in favor of nuclear energy is that it’s climate friendly, has a small

land use, and creates power on demand.

What speaks against it is that it’s expensive and ultimately not renewable.

The disadvantages could be alleviated with new technologies, but it’s unclear whether

that will work, and even if it works, it almost certainly won’t have a significant impact

on climate change in the next 20 years.

It also speaks against nuclear power that people are afraid of it.

Even if these fears are not rational that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

If someone isn’t comfortable near a nuclear power plant, that affects their quality of

life, and that can’t just be dismissed.

There are two points I didn’t discuss which you may have expected me to mention.

One is nuclear proliferation and the risk posed by nuclear power plants during war times.

This is certainly an important factor, but it’s more political than scientific, and

that would be an entirely different discussion.

The other point I didn’t mention is nuclear waste.

That’s because I think it’s a red herring which some activist groups are using in the

attempt to scare people.

For what I am concerned, burying the stuff in a safe place solves the problem just fine.

It’s right that there aren’t any final disposal sites at the moment, but Finland

is expected to open one next year and several other countries will follow.

And no, provided adequate safety standards, I wouldn’t have a problem with a nuclear

waste deposit in my vicinity.

So, what did I learn from this.

I learned that nuclear power has become economically even more unappealing than it already was

20 years ago, and it’s not clear this will ever change.

Personally I would say that this development can be left to the market.

I am not in favor of regulation that makes it even more difficult for us to reduce carbon

emission, to me this just seems insane.

In all fairness it looks like nuclear won’t help much, but then again, every little bit

helps.

Having said that, I think part of the reason the topic is so controversial is that what

you think is the best strategy depends on local conditions.

There is no globally “right” decision.

If your country has abundant solar and wind power, it might not make sense to invest in

nuclear.

Though you might want to keep in mind that climate change can affect wind and precipitation

patterns in the long run.

If your country is at a high risk of earthquakes, then maybe nuclear power just poses too high

a risk.

If on the other hand renewables are unreliable in your region of the world, you don’t have

a lot of space, and basically never see earthquakes, nuclear power might make a lot of sense.

In the end I am afraid my answer to the question “Is nuclear power green?” is “It’s

complicated.”

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