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Always controversial, nuclear power has been on a steady slide in prominence, supplying 10% of the world’s electricity today compared with 18% at its peak in the mid-1990s. While a few countries, notably China and India, have been expanding their capacities, concerns about reactor safety led most advanced economies to move in the opposite direction. In recent years, however, the climate crisis has given this carbon-free source of energy fresh appeal. Now insecurities about fuel supplies provoked by Russia’s war in Ukraine are making nuclear power even more attractive to policy makers as a way to keep the lights on.
1. Who’s reinvesting in nuclear energy?
The UK and France are leading the pack. The UK, which used nuclear power to generate 16% of its electricity in 2020, wants to boost that to 25% by 2050, in part by building eight large reactors. France plans to build six and to extend the lifetime of all existing reactors where it’s safe to do so. France already generates 70% of its electricity with nuclear power. Both countries are also among those investing in so-called small modular reactors, although it will be several years before they’re in use.
2. Why extend a reactor’s lifetime?
Many of the reactors in advanced economies are approaching their original design lifetime, which is usually 40 years. The average age of nuclear plants is 38 years in Europe and 36 years in North America; in India it’s 15 years and in China just five years. A reactor’s longevity can be extended, but only with significant investment in refurbishment. Belgium decided in March to make that investment for two of its reactors. In Japan, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. has spent about 1.16 trillion yen ($8.6 billion) reinforcing its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility, a plant whose oldest reactor is almost 40 years old.
3. What are other advanced economies doing?
• As part of its efforts to combat climate change, the US government is making $6 billion available over four years to bail out nuclear power plants at risk of closing prematurely for economic reasons. California Governor Gavin Newsom has encouraged the operator of the Diablo Canyon nuclear facility to apply for the funds, saying, in a reversal, that he wants the plant to keep running given potential electricity shortages in the years ahead.
• Canada’s national government, in collaboration with several provinces, aims to be a global leader in advanced reactor technology. Its plan for the development and deployment of SMRs, domestically and abroad, envisages the first units coming online in the late part of this decade.
• Japan’s government is pushing to accelerate the restart of about two dozen reactors that remain shuttered after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, when three reactors melted down at a plant in northern Japan following an earthquake and tsunami.
• South Korea has announced the construction of four more nuclear reactors by 2030 and the extension of 10 older units.
• Germany, which decided after Fukushima to close all 17 of its nuclear plants, may pull back from that decision, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying that extending the life of the nation’s nuclear power stations might make sense in the wake of the Ukraine war and the threat that reduced flows of Russian gas could result in a winter fuel crisis. There’s still been no formal decision to continue operating the country’s three remaining reactors past 2022.
• Russia, the world’s biggest exporter of reactors and nuclear fuel, is building new plants in Egypt and Turkey, while adding business from Myanmar to Uganda potentially worth billions of dollars.
• Elsewhere in Europe, Belgium has asked Engie SA to extend the life of its Tihange 2 nuclear plant to ensure energy supplies this winter. The Netherlands is contemplating two new reactors. Poland is exploring its first. The Czech Republic and Hungary have plans to build large new units. In July, European Union lawmakers voted to allow nuclear energy to be labeled as green investments, removing the last major barrier to potentially billions of euros of funding from environmental investors.
4. What about China and India?
Of the 10 reactors worldwide whose construction began in 2021, China accounted for six, followed by India with two. (Turkey and Russia had one each.) Altogether, China has 23 reactors under construction, with the government aiming to expand capacity by almost a third within the next three years compared with current levels. Beijing has also sold its Hualong reactors to Pakistan and is finalizing a contract to build a reactor in Argentina. India expects to start building ten more new reactors between 2023 and 2025.
5. What are the arguments against nuclear?
Opponents of nuclear energy say Fukushima was only the most recent accident to demonstrate that reactors are too dangerous. Reactor calamities also released radiation at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979 and Chernobyl in the Soviet Union seven years later. Critics cite large cost overruns that have plagued new reactor projects in the US and Europe as well as the expense and environmental risks of disposing of nuclear waste. But the biggest problem is time: large new nuclear plants require at least a decade to build while western economies need to cut greenhouse gas pollution by half by the end of this decade to meet climate goals. Opponents argue that cleaner and safer forms of energy such as solar and wind power should be deployed more quickly instead.
6. What are the arguments for nuclear energy?
Nuclear energy’s proponents say accidents like Fukushima are rare, that fossil fuels are responsible for more deaths through coal mine accidents and pollution, and that the smaller, advanced reactors of the future will be even safer. The choice they argue isn’t between nuclear energy and renewables but rather between nuclear energy combined with renewables and a climate catastrophe. Low-carbon sources accounted for about 40% of the share of the world’s electricity supply in 2021 — only about 4 percentage points more than 20 years earlier because, while renewables scaled up, nuclear power scaled down. The need to replace fossil fuels quickly enough to head off extreme global warming, advocates of nuclear energy say, makes it no longer an option, but a necessity.
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