Reference Docs

Nuclear Power in an Era of Crucial Decision

Remarks by John Ritch
Director General, World Nuclear Association

Conference on "Energy Choices"
Sponsored by the British Nuclear Industry Forum
a nd the British Nuclear Energy Society
Church House, London
6 December 2001

Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen:

Let me first pay tribute to the sponsors of this conference. Britain's nuclear companies and professionals share a great responsibility as custodians of a technology that is indispensable if we are to achieve, in Britain and around the world, the essential goal of modern society, which is human and economic development through policies that are not only successful but sustainable.

The aim of the World Nuclear Association is to support the work of all such national organisations worldwide. But because we are headquartered in Britain, which occupies such a central place in the evolution of civil nuclear power, we feel a particularly close bond to the BNIF and the BNES.

As the WNA is new on the scene, permit me to explain our role. Our functions are two-fold , first, to promote commercial and policy interaction among the diverse companies that comprise the global nuclear industry; and second, to speak on their common behalf.

Our role is distinct. The IAEA devises the industry's rules of the road. WANO fosters best practices in nuclear safety. Our aim is to promote this industry by helping it coalesce across national borders and by helping the public to appreciate this immensely valuable technology. We do not "lobby" in the sense of trying to influence legislation. But we are an advocate and proudly so.

Today, we are now broadening our membership to include nuclear power industries in key developing countries like China and India , nations that have embraced civil nuclear power as a key technology of sustainable development. We plan to work with them to spread this message to the world.

Two new roles illustrate our work. On the promotional side, the industry's CEO's have just asked the WNA to coordinate an effort to bring the industry's message to bear on next year's World Summit on Sustainable Development as well as on future stages of the Kyoto process. On the substantive side, we have just established a Working Group to act as the industry counterpart to the IAEA's program to examine ways to make the civil nuclear fuel cycle even more secure against attack, sabotage or theft.

As a basic service, the WNA aims to provide the most comprehensive and accessible source of information on our global industry. We invite you to inspect our website, and your constructive criticism.

One website feature is a quick tutorial on "Why Tomorrow's World Needs Nuclear Energy". Called the AutoEssay, it takes only 12 minutes. Some of you may find it useful as a source of facts or as an educational tool in persuading an audience or a friend. For sceptics of nuclear energy, we hope that it challenges long-held assumptions. Currently, we are translating the AutoEssay into several languages to expand its utility to our members worldwide.

Things Have Changed: The Need for a New Worldview

Some months ago, the American musician Bob Dylan won an Academy Award for a song called "Things Have Changed". Dylan's lyric refers to a psychic revolution in the mind of one person, causing an entirely different worldview.

Today, a wholly new worldview is precisely what is needed on the part of thousands of people around the world , in political office, in diplomacy and multilateral institutions, in the media and among our citizenry , who together shape public policy in the international arena. A new worldview is needed because things have indeed changed , not just in the geopolitics of nations but in the essential relationship between humankind and our earthly environment.

In the 350 years since the Peace of Westphalia launched the modern system of nation-states and international law, the highest aim of governments has been to maintain peace while promoting economic growth.

The start of our new millennium coincides with the emergence of a new factor in human affairs that can no longer be denied: that the intensity of humanity's numbers and economic activity has begun to undermine the biospheric stability that allowed civilisation to evolve. As nations continue to seek peaceful prosperity, an adaptation to this dangerous reality must now become integral to the shaping of all public policy.

The challenge is simply stated: to reconcile the maintenance and spread of prosperity with the preservation of our planetary environment. The fundamental issue of our time is whether we possess the collective wit and will to do so.

To meet the challenge of sustainable development, it is not enough simply to "care" about the environment. The changed worldview we need in public life must include clarity, both about the problem and about sound, real-world means to cope with it.

The beginning of wisdom is to see that the environmental problem is not, in its essence, a manifestation of human evil but an aspect of human success. It is the technological revolutions in agriculture, industry and medicine that have produced the explosion in human numbers and human machinery that is now pouring carbon dioxide into the global environment at the rate of 25 billion tonnes a year , which means 800 tonnes each second. And it is only through the widespread use of equally sophisticated technology , not through a romantic return to Eden , that we can hope to mitigate this overwhelming assault on our environment.

In this respect, the idea that windmills will solve our problem is just as quixotic as tilting at them.

Humanity cannot go backwards. Our numbers now exceed 6 billion and will reach 8 billion by mid-century; and our global energy needs are expanding even faster. In the next 50 years, the world will consume more energy than in all previous history combined. The continuing economic development of an ever-rising population will require vast amounts of cleanly generated electricity to energize homes, factories and transportation, and to support infrastructures for nutrition, education and health care.

The fundamental truth, well understand by many in this room, is that nuclear power is the only proven technology with the capacity to produce vast supplies of clean energy on a global scale. Both the International Energy Agency (an intergovernmental body) and the World Energy Council (its private sector counterpart) see no realistic scenario by which humanity can meet its expanding energy needs , cleanly , without a sharp expansion of nuclear energy.

A Nuclear Renaissance and a Continuing Expansion

The theme of nuclear renaissance arose in the late 1990's against a backdrop of previous doubt as to whether there was any future at all for a technology once heralded as the energy of tomorrow. This pessimism was centred in Western Europe and North America, where nuclear power originated but where nuclear construction has been curtailed for two decades.

On analysis, the actual cause of this hiatus has been mainly economic: market saturation and the availability of cheap fossil alternatives in an extended era of environmental laissez-faire. But, in common perception, the problem has been social acceptance , and, to be sure, public attitudes have been a problem.

If in America nuclear energy has faced scepticism, in Western Europe the anti-nuclear movement, though small, has become entrenched and quasi-religious. In both regions, instead of contemplating the vast potential of the atom to alleviate threats to the biosphere, environmentalists have nurtured an ideological passion for 'new renewables' that has only intensified their animosity to nuclear power.

As a result, public debate has moved into gridlock, wherein those most concerned about the environment have been the most rabid opponents of the one technology available for a large-scale global strategy to preserve it.

In this context, the theme of a nuclear energy rebirth has gained cogency from two developments: an increasing public recognition that the biosphere does indeed face dire dangers requiring real solutions and an emergence of practical factors favouring the use of nuclear power.

All of these factors are today vividly evident in the United States, where the term 'nuclear renaissance' was coined. As Angie Howard will soon explain, the American nuclear renaissance is not just an industry slogan but a very real prospect.

The advent of new-build in America would indeed have trend-setting implications for nuclear energy worldwide. But nuclear power has already been advancing, far more than is generally realized, on a broad-based global plane.

This distance between perception and reality bears emphasis. Western journalists and policymakers tend to assume that nuclear power has been in widespread decline. But ethno-centricity creates illusion. While people in Europe and America often debate nuclear power as if their decisions will determine the global future, nuclear energy has been expanding worldwide through the actions of decision-makers in cities like Beijing, Seoul and Mumbai who could hardly care less about the theologies agitating the mind of a green energy minister in Brussels or Berlin.

As evidence for this world trend, several facts and factors may be cited.

  1. Positive Trends in Consumption. First is the worldwide pattern in energy consumption. In each of the last four decades, nuclear energy has been the fastest growing energy source in the world. In the 1990's, nuclear power output grew by 30% worldwide.
  2. Widespread Construction. Second, new nuclear construction is under way not only in much of Asia and Eastern Europe but also in Latin America and South Africa. As we speak, 36 new reactors are under construction, and numbers far larger are on the planning track in several world capitals. If and when 'new build' is approved in America, advanced nuclear power reactors will be under construction in every region of the world, making it ever clearer that the real question about nuclear energy's future is not "whether" but "how many".
  3. Action on Waste Disposal. Third, on the chronic issue of waste, historic progress on long-term storage and disposal is occurring on a broad front that includes America, Sweden, Finland and Russia. These advances will break a barrier of perception, ending the common allegation that nuclear waste is an 'unsolvable' problem.
  4. A Useful Political Debate. Fourth, nuclear energy's battle with green ideology has not in fact gone badly. In Sweden and Germany, the presence of greens in government has produced something like an inoculation effect by generating a public debate through which citizens have come to recognise the real long-term consequences when green dogma is converted into public policy. In several European countries, the phenomenon of coalition governments will continue to amplify green influence. But political posturing must be distinguished from political outcomes. Ultimately, it is difficult to imagine that any West European country, faced with energy needs and environmental constraints, would actually abandon a successful program of civil nuclear power. Last week, Germany's economics minister stirred the political pot nicely by articulating this reality.
  5. A Better-Organized Market. Fifth, the limits of energy deregulation are being widely recognized. It has become clear from painful experience that policies which satisfy consumer populism in the short term can jeopardise consumer interests over the longer term, bringing shortages and price spikes. Increasingly, governments everywhere understand that long-range supply-and-purchase arrangements represent prudent planning and yield needed investments.
  6. An Improved Context for Affirmative Decision. The sixth factor is a change in underlying economics and the outlook of those who make energy decisions. In Europe, for example, fundamentals are changing. In the decade ahead, Europe's energy market will eliminate over-capacity, and the age structure of Europe's power plants will require decisions on new build. Meanwhile, consolidation is producing ever-larger power companies that are willing and able to make large, long-term investments. Facing a future in which natural gas supplies and prices are uncertain and in which carbon emissions are likely to be penalized, these energy investors will surely see merit in new nuclear designs that are long-lived, even safer than today's, and also cheaper and quicker to build. Their decisions will be economic , but with a long-term view shaped by nuclear energy's improved competitiveness and by considerations of environmental and energy security.
  7. Constructive Integration of Environmental and Energy Policy. A final overarching factor is that nuclear power is benefiting from increased recognition of the great stakes in the question of how humanity produces energy in the 21 st century. Awareness is spreading that the only way to save our environment is to infuse economies with incentive systems that motivate environmentally benign behaviour and deter activities that are damaging to the local environment and the biosphere.

    The principal market-based tools will be 'green taxes' on emissions and tradable permits to pollute. But whatever the policy technique, the goal will be to harness the power of the market for the sake of the planet's health. As this transformation occurs , as environmental policy is assimilated into the very bloodstream of the international economy , it will constitute nothing short of a revolution.

    Inevitably, this revolution will benefit nuclear energy , not by subsidising it, but by attaching to fossil fuel a cost increment that reflects the true burden of that energy source on man and environment. The EU's 'ExternE' study has shown just how great that burden is , and that when true costs are assessed, nuclear is cheap.

Building an Expansive Nuclear Future

Favourable factors do not, of course, preclude future difficulty for nuclear power. In Britain, the coming debate over new-build is likely to produce a dramatic political spectacle, and many other such dramas may unfold.

Central among the battles ahead is the shaping of a rational climate change regime to which the entire global community can subscribe and adhere. In the Kyoto process to date, green efforts to stigmatise nuclear energy have carried onto the global stage two European idiosyncrasies: the inordinate influence of political minorities and adamant opposition to the one technology best equipped to achieve the desired result.

In the early stages of the Kyoto process, greens have secured some superficial success. But the outcome thus far is simply too perverse to stand. Consider that the overwhelming preponderance of humanity and world economic activity is represented by governments , China, India, Russia, Japan, Korea, the United States, Brazil, Britain, France , that hold a favourable view of nuclear power and that perceive its environmental benefits. A climate regime geared to deny this is at odds with both scientific and geopolitical reality.

President Bush's withdrawal from the Kyoto process has been widely lamented. But the Bush administration or its successor may yet have a positive role to play. Earlier, it was the Clinton Administration that insisted on the use of market mechanisms as the one realistic and efficient means to achieve global greenhouse gas reductions. When the U.S. eventually re-enters the climate negotiation, it will be well positioned to introduce another dose of realism by insisting on equitable treatment of nuclear power. The eventual inclusion of India and China in the process should have similar effect.

A corollary objective should be to harness the great multilateral development institutions in support of nations that include nuclear power in their sustainable development strategies. Today, policy in the development institutions , as in the climate talks , is skewed against nuclear power by political correctness, bureaucratic timidity, and lowest common denominator decision-making that exaggerates minority influence. This status quo should be challenged.

It is the very purpose of the major development institutions to finance the pursuit of well-conceived global objectives, and no objective is more urgent or profound than meeting the global challenge of energy and environment. To meet that challenge, the world will need advanced nuclear reactors not just by the hundreds but by the thousands.

Albert Einstein famously said that the advent of atomic power had "changed everything except our way of thinking." His admonition against the abuse of nuclear energy stands equally well as an admonition to use it wisely. The nuclear industry has met that challenge, and our goal now must be to hasten that day when the world's policymakers meet it as well.