The Coming Nuclear Century
Remarks by John Ritch
Director General, World Nuclear Association
Montreux Energy Roundtable: "New Vectors in Energy Security"
Montreux, Switzerland, 28 September 2004
Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen:
As I shall be offering what some will find a provocative thesis, please allow me a word of personal introduction.
My belief in nuclear power arose, ironically, from my concern about nuclear weapons. For more than two decades during the Cold War, I served in the U.S. Senate as an adviser on East-West relations, and was much involved in issues of nuclear arms control. Because of that background, I became President Clinton's ambassador to the UN organisations in Vienna, including the IAEA, which oversees the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In that capacity for some 7 years, working closely with Hans Blix and Mohamed Elbaradei, I learned much about the positive uses of the atom, and began to draw a clear-cut distinction between nuclear weaponry and the many peaceful applications of nuclear technology, which are now pervasive in our lives.
Far more than most people realise, nuclear technology has become part of the everyday experience of any person in modern society , and increasingly so in developing nations.
Much of the food we eat comes from seeds that have been adapted for local conditions using nuclear techniques and then irrigated, as they grow, with water systems that have been optimised with techniques of nuclear hydrology. This agricultural produce and also the livestock we eat are often protected from pests and disease using nuclear technology.
Such foods are packaged in paper and plastic products efficiently produced using nuclear technology, and then protected from spoilage on the way to market by nuclear irradiation techniques that eliminate destructive bacteria and microorganisms while leaving the food entirely unaffected.
Finally, those of us waiting to consume this nourishment are living longer and healthier lives through health care that relies heavily on nuclear medicine to diagnose and then to cure many of our ailments.
None of this, I hasten to add, represents a Faustian bargain by which we are leaving a residue of waste or danger to future generations. These nuclear techniques , and many, many more being developed and applied in science, agricultural and industry , are safe and harmless, while contributing immensely to technological progress, to environmental analysis, and to the high efficiencies that support modern economic prosperity.
While this widespread assimilation of nuclear technology has gone largely unnoticed and unchallenged in modern life, the question of nuclear energy for power production continues to be a cause of public agitation and political confusion , even as our Earth's rapidly emerging environmental crisis makes it ever more urgent that we employ nuclear power expansively and with serious clarity of purpose.
On this question, democratic politics and public opinion remain strangely aligned. Many people on the political right are comfortable with nuclear power but remain sceptical about environmental danger and global warming. Many on the political left are concerned about the environment but remain sceptical about nuclear power. I am among those , in a constituency that is slowly but steadily growing , who support nuclear power precisely because of a deep concern about the environment.
A Global Crisis Without Precedent
I am certain it is well understood by those attending this conference that our world today is struggling to cope with two monumental imperatives:
In all history, humankind has never faced a greater challenge than to reconcile these two imperatives.
It is my thesis that nuclear power will be indispensable if this challenge is to be met.
Today we have some 440 nuclear power reactors, generating one-sixth of the world's electricity. We will need thousands, something on the order of six to ten thousand in this century.
And indeed thousands will be built. By mid-century, we can anticipate that China and India will build as many as 300 reactors each , on trajectories that could see each nation exceed 1,000 reactors in the lifetime of a child born today.
But, as I will seek to describe, the principal question is whether we will build enough.
Dimensions of the Global Environmental Crisis
For many environmentalists, any such projection will still seem shocking if not sacrilegious. But if organised environmentalists have not yet embraced nuclear power, they have helped to build awareness of the crisis we truly face:
They have warned compassionately that, of today's 6 billion people, more than half live in dire conditions , and that we must urgently find new ways to meet these needs without jeopardising the global environment.
They have warned alarmingly that expanding populations are quickly depleting the world's precious supplies of fresh water, lowering water tables so drastically that, within 25 years, half the world's people could be without reliable access to potable water , unless we can somehow achieve large-scale desalination of water from our oceans and seas.
They have warned that we face new energy needs in the rising global demand for food and housing and basic services, and they have warned of the dire consequences , through pollution and global warming , if those needs are met by continued use of fossil fuel.
They have warned that stark evidence of global warming is already all around us: that the hottest years in recorded history have occurred in the past decade, that weather catastrophes are on the rise, and that icecaps and glaciers are melting from Africa to Alaska.
They have warned that global warming could, within this century, raise sea levels by as much as 20 feet, submerging thousands of islands worldwide, flooding major coastal cities like New York and London, and inundating countries like Bangladesh.
They have warned that the ongoing melting of the Arctic iceberg and Greenland's huge icesheet could entirely disrupt the Atlantic Gulf Stream, bringing an end to its benign delivery of warm air and water to Western Europe , potentially leaving the British Isles, and even much of continental Europe, with climates as cold and severe as Iceland's is today.
They have warned that global warming is greatly accelerating the worldwide loss of biodiversity, so much so that, within the next 50 years alone, a full one-fourth of all species on our planet , I repeat, a full one-fourth of all species within the next 50 years , will be lost to extinction, never to appear on Earth again.
This is a powerful message of global crisis.
Sceptics, cynics, curmudgeons , and, ironically, many conservatives , may wish to ignore it. For my own part, I find the environmentalist case compelling, profoundly alarming and a clear summons to public action.
The Urgent Necessity of a Decisive Strategic Response
Let us state the case , both the problem and the logic of its solution , in the clearest possible terms:
In the next 50 years, as global population grows from 6 to 9 billion, human need will multiply , and, in the absence of dramatic measures, so too will human misery.
As nations try to meet this need, the rate of world energy consumption will double or even triple, and , in just this narrow 50-year period alone , humankind will use more energy than in all previous history combined.
Today, despite much rhetoric and diplomacy, the global rate of CO2 emissions , now 25 billion tonnes a year, or 800 tonnes a second , continues to rise inexorably and so too does the atmospheric build-up of these heat-trapping gases.
The implications of this unprecedented accumulation can be found in the Earth's history over the last 400,000 years, which shows CO2 levels fluctuating between 200 and 300 parts-per-million and atmospheric temperature fluctuating , by about 15 degrees Centigrade , in almost perfect correlation.
Now, however, human activity in the industrial age has suddenly , in geological time , raised CO2 oncentrations to well above any pre-industrial level.
Today's level of 350 parts-per-million might in itself sound less than alarming. What is undeniably alarming, however, is the projected level. Unless we achieve prompt and drastic global action to curb greenhouse emissions, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will reach double the pre-industrial level by the middle of the 21 st century and will continue to rise thereafter.
To stabilise greenhouse gases , even at a dangerously higher level , scientists calculate that daily global emissions must be cut, within the next 50 years, by at least 50%.
Since developing countries such as China and India will inevitably emit far more greenhouse gases, the already industrialised countries must, if we are to preserve the biosphere, cut emissions by 75% and also lead in disseminating clean-energy technology worldwide.
Nuclear Energy in a Future of Radical Change
We face a future of radical change. Either we will achieve radical transformation in the global economy , or we will experience a radical upsurge in human suffering and a radical alteration in the global environment.
How are we to accomplish a massive worldwide shift to clean energy technologies?
Authoritative projections by the International Energy Agency (in the public sector) and the World Energy Council (in the private sector) point unambiguously to the same conclusion , that our need for clean energy on a colossal scale cannot conceivably be met without a sharply increased use of nuclear power.
In fact, nuclear power is the quintessential sustainable development technology: Its fuel will be available for multiple centuries, its safety record is superior among major energy sources, its consumption causes virtually no pollution, its use preserves precious fossil resources for future generations, its costs are competitive and declining, and its waste can be securely managed over the long-term.
Nuclear Power: Challenges Met
In the century ahead, the world should come to recognize its profound debt to the scientists and diplomats of the last half century whose efforts have paved the way for an era in which the power of the atom will be indispensable to human welfare:
First, we are meeting the challenge of proliferation .
The global regime founded on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty constitutes one of the great diplomatic achievements in history.
We cannot erase the danger of illicit nuclear activity. But it is fundamental to recognise that the challenges posed by North Korea, Iraq and Iran do not arise from the civil use of nuclear energy to produce electricity , either in those countries or elsewhere.
These challenges arise from geo-political conflict, from the ubiquitous availability of nuclear knowledge, and from the ability of any large, well-funded regime to pursue such aims if it chooses and if it is not persuaded or thwarted from doing so. We must meet those challenges to global security where they arise.
What is important is that we have built ever-stronger IAEA safeguards to fulfil the pertinent goal, which is to ensure that valuable use of nuclear technology does not abet the illicit production of nuclear weapons.
Indeed, I would go so far as to argue the opposite: that the existence of a world safeguards system to monitor peaceful nuclear activity , a global system that consists of obligations backed by sensors and sometimes intrusive inspections , actually strengthens our ability to detect illicit activity where it may be occurring.
Second, we have met the challenge of safety with a combination of technological advance and an ever-improving nuclear safety culture that draws on over 11,000 reactor-years of practical experience.
This global safety culture relies on high standards established by the IAEA and reinforced by the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO).
Created in response to the unique accident at Chernobyl, WANO represents an extraordinary achievement in private-sector diplomacy. Its network of technical exchange and peer review now encompasses every power reactor worldwide.
In future, advanced reactors using "passive" design features will provide still another layer of operational safety.
To assure safe transport , today's industry uses highly engineered containers able to withstand enormous impact. To date, more than 20,000 containers of spent fuel and high-level waste have been shipped safely over a total distance of 20 million miles.
During the transport of these and other radioactive substances , for nuclear power, research and medicine , there has never been a seriously harmful radioactive release.
As potential targets of terrorism , nuclear reactors , and used fuel facilities , are robust structures of heavily reinforced concrete and steel that are far, far less vulnerable than chemical factories or most key elements of modern infrastructure. In military parlance, nuclear is a far less lucrative target.
Since 9/11, state-of-the-art computer modelling shows that a similar assault against U.S. nuclear facilities , even under extreme worst-case assumptions , would result in no release of radionuclides. Such facilities represent a standard of impregnability attainable by new reactors everywhere.
As to cost , steady reductions are carrying us toward a future in which nuclear power will emerge as a clear winner on the field of affordability.
Today nuclear is the cheapest clean-energy source, and in many locales , such as the USA , nuclear has lower production costs than carbon fuels. Nuclear's higher capital costs will fall steadily , through simplified, standardised reactor designs and faster construction.
Meanwhile, fossil costs , particularly for gas and oil , will rise, as shortages engender price spikes and energy insecurity.
The introduction of soundly conceived emissions penalties (whether through trading or taxes) will tilt this balance even faster, enabling nuclear power to dominate any market that imposes a real price for environmental damage.
Clean coal, if and when technically feasible, will be needed, but will almost certainly be far costlier than nuclear power.
Finally, as to waste , nuclear power has made enormous progress, both technically and politically.
The irony that some environmentalists oppose nuclear energy is compounded when they oppose it on the grounds that waste is the insoluble problem of nuclear power.
For, in truth, waste is the greatest comparative asset of nuclear power precisely because the volume is tiny and can , unlike the waste from fossil fuel , be safely managed without harm to people or the environment.
Future progress in partition & transmutation may reduce volume and decay-life. But, even with current technology, geological repositories are extremely safe and feasible.
Only political hurdles remain; and these are now being overcome , beginning with the U.S., Finland, Sweden, Russia and, we must hope, by new initiatives in the European Union.
Accepting Nuclear Power as a Clean-Energy Asset
I see it as a fundamental irony of our age , and it is fast becoming a tragic irony , that so many citizens and organisations most concerned about the clean energy problem are fixated on myths, dogmas and sheer fantasies regarding the solution.
The world's environmentalists have performed many valuable services. But they can provide their fellow citizens no greater service now than to discard the fiction that conservation, solar panels and windmills alone can meet human needs.
Sustainability requires nuclear energy; and the path of sound environmentalism today is to embrace, fight for , and finance , a future in which nuclear power and "new renewables" function as clean-energy partners in a transformed global economy.
The Coming Age of "Hydricity"
Achieving consensus on the value of a nuclear-renewables partnership is all the more vital because another atomic marvel , the ability to unite hydrogen and oxygen to make electricity , is about to transform our daily world and lift our prospects for a clean-energy future.
Hydrogen offers a means, for the first time in history, to store enormous quantities of electricity , for use, on demand, in cleanly powered transportation and in the full range of traditional electrical uses for home and industry.
But hydrogen's environmental value depends on making it cleanly , using the clean primary energy that only nuclear power can provide on a vast scale.
Hydrogen provides the bridge by which nuclear power can contribute not just to base-load electricity but to the entire spectrum of energy use.
With this bridge, it is now possible for the first time to envisage a thriving, large-scale, emissions-free industrial economy , with nuclear power and renewables providing clean primary energy for direct electricity and for electricity storage via hydrogen.
Hydricity is exciting technologically, and can also inspire action diplomatically.
Our need is for a comprehensive treaty regime in which all the nations of the world , developed and developing , undertake a binding commitment to use emissions trading as the driving economic incentive for a long-term evolution to a global clean energy economy.
Our failure thus far traces ultimately to the lack of a plausible vision as to how a collective commitment to deep emissions cuts might realistically be fulfilled.
The emergence of a technologically feasible, widely understood clean-energy vision could break this logjam, stimulating nations to undertake the commitments that will accelerate our steps toward the vision's fulfilment.
An Expansive Nuclear Future
A future in which nuclear power plays a central role in producing electricity, hydrogen, and clean water will not require a sea change in the use of this technology, but rather only an acceleration in current trends:
For four consecutive decades , including the 1990's , nuclear power has been the fastest growing major energy source in the world.
Today thirty-one nations representing 2/3 of humanity have nuclear power;
Important nations representing an additional half-billion people , including Turkey, Indonesia and Vietnam , are planning to use it for the first time;
Nations representing half of world population are building nuclear power plants, with more than 60 reactors under construction or specifically planned;
The U.S. nuclear industry, owners of the world's largest nuclear fleet, plans 50% growth over the next 20 years; and, as I stated earlier,
Nuclear planners in the world's largest nations, China and India, envisage some 300 reactors in each country by mid-century , targets we must hope they will exceed if the biosphere is to be preserved.
The essential issue about nuclear power is not whethe r it will grow but how fast:
Will it grow fast enough to meet the world's urgent need for clean energy on a massive scale?
Will we further strengthen the global infrastructure of people and institutions to guide and promote its growth?
Transnational Support for the Global Nuclear Industry
The role of the World Nuclear Association is to promote positive answers to these essential questions. In this role, we are part of the transnational support structure for the global nuclear industry, a support structure composed of:
- Private sector organisations: WANO and the WNA.
Among these four organisations, there is a clearly recognised division of labour and also a considerable degree of cooperation.
Last year the four organisations began to collaborate on an exciting project that we believe will make an enormous contribution to global sustainable development.
We inaugurated a new institution, called the World Nuclear University, which is designed to strengthen the educational foundations of the global nuclear industry for an expanding role in the 21 st century.The mission of the WNU is to:
Improve the quality of nuclear course work everywhere;
Move toward a globalisation of standards and credentials in this increasingly global industry;
Build student interest and enrolment worldwide.
The WNU is a network of leading institutions of nuclear education and research in more than two-dozen countries worldwide.
The WNU will not itself have a campus or a large faculty. Instead, we will use a small coordinating centre, co-located with WNA and WANO in London, to act as unifying force.
Much of the WNU's contribution will go unseen. But next year we will also have two projects with some visibility:
First, we will launch the WNU's 6-week Summer Institute. This new annual event will assemble outstanding nuclear students and young professionals from around the world to be trained and inspired to assume international leadership roles in the realm of nuclear science and technology.
Second, we will convene an Oxford conference that will bring together for the first time , for mutual education , the world's leading climatologists and internationally recognised experts in the field of nuclear power. The conference will be co-hosted by the renowned environmental scientist James Lovelock and by the WNU's chancellor, Hans Blix.
An Idea Whose Time Has Come
We see the World Nuclear University as a powerful idea whose time has come, as we prepare for what must be "a nuclear century" if we are to meet worldwide human need while preserving the biosphere.
The great George Orwell described human life as a "race between education and catastrophe". Today, with environmental catastrophe a real and impending danger, all of humankind is in that race, and we will need nuclear power if we are to win it.
I trust that I have offered some food for thought, and perhaps some provocation.
Thank you.