The Coming Nuclear Century

Remarks by John Ritch
Director General, World Nuclear Association

Wilton Park Conference on
"Climate Change: What Needs to be done in North and South?"

Wilton Park, West Sussex, UK
18 November 2003

Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this conference. As I shall be offering a provocative thesis, I should begin with a word of personal introduction.

My interest ? and eventually my belief ? in nuclear power arose serendipitously 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.

It was in that capacity, for some 7 years, that I learned more about the positive and peaceful uses of the atom, and that I began to draw a clear-cut distinction between nuclear arms and nuclear-generated energy ? for electricity today and eventually for the production of hydrogen and desalinated water tomorrow.

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 engaged in the work I do as someone who supports nuclear power precisely because of a deep concern about the environment.

I am certain it is well understood by those attending this conference that our world today is struggling to cope with two monumental imperatives:

The first, resulting from an explosive growth in global population, is to meet an unprecedented level of human need and aspiration.
The second is the necessity of drastic action to preserve our biosphere.

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 in the world. We will need thousands. And indeed thousands will be built. By mid-century, China and India intend to build at least 250 each. As I will seek to describe, I see the principal question as being whether we will build enough.

A Global Challenge Without Precedent

Conservation and efficiency are sound principles. But our world has just begun to consume energy. Allow me to rehearse some statistics that many of you know by heart.

Of today?s 6 billion people, over half live primitively and many hundreds of millions live in misery.
In the next 50 years, as global population grows to 9 billion, human need will multiply.
As nations strive to meet this need, world energy consumption will double.
In just this narrow 50-year period alone, humankind will use more energy than in all previous history combined.
Today, the global rate of CO₂ emissions is 25 billion tonnes a year, or 800 tonnes a second.
Despite much rhetoric and diplomacy, this rate continues to rise.
By mid-century the greenhouse gas concentration will approach, or exceed, twice the pre-industrial level.
To stabilise greenhouse gases ? even at a dangerously higher level ? we must cut global emissions by at least 50% during this century.
Since developing nations such as China and India will inevitably emit far more greenhouse gases, countries that are already industrialised must cut emissions by 75%.

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.

The Primacy of Clean-Energy

No aspect of sustainable development is more elemental than the need to achieve a massive worldwide shift to clean energy.

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.

In a few minutes, Aubrey Meyer will outline the "contraction and convergence" approach as a collective global means to meet the clean-energy challenge. I not only support the C&C concept. I find it inconceivable that we will avert climate catastrophe without a regime built on some variation of this approach.

But if such a regime is to be transformed from theory to reality, it must be built on feasible technology. And in the realm of reality, 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.

I submit that those who persist in opposing nuclear power in the name of environmental preservation will surely earn the scorn of history and of future generations.

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 I submit that 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.

Indeed, nuclear power is a quintessential sustainable development technology, because:

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 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 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 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 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 EU.

The Coming Age of "Hydricity"

Soon, another atomic marvel ? the uniting of hydrogen and oxygen to make electricity ? will 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.

Today nuclear power makes base-load electricity. Hydrogen provides the bridge by which nuclear power can contribute 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.

The man known as father of the hydrogen-fuel cell, Geoffrey Ballard, describes this as an economy operating on "hydricity". Both a pioneer and a realist, Ballard is a strong advocate of nuclear power.

Hydricity is exciting technologically, and can also inspire action diplomatically.

Our need is for the kind of comprehensive treaty regime that Aubrey Meyer advocates, a 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.

Nuclear Power: Not Whether, But How Fast

A future in which nuclear power plays a central role in supporting hydricity will require no radical change but 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 31 nations representing 2/3 of humanity have nuclear power.
Important nations representing an additional half-billion people are planning to begin to use it for the first time.
Nations representing half of world population are now building nuclear power plants.
And the U.S. nuclear industry ? which is not building today ? plans 50% growth over the next 20 years.

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, guard and promote its growth?

The goal of the World Nuclear Association is to promote that strong rate of growth and to help build that infrastructure of people and institutions.

To that end, we worked this year with the IAEA and WANO to build a World Nuclear University, which was founded two months ago in an inaugural ceremony in London.

The WNU will be a coordinating mechanism to unite and support prestigious institutions of nuclear education and research in some 30 countries around the world.

With a headquarters in London, the WNU will carry a mandate to promulgate knowledge of peaceful nuclear technology and to imbue the highest ethical and professional standards for this indispensable and expanding global industry.

For those who are interested, I will be pleased to talk more about the WNU either here or at dinner. For now, let me just suffice it to say that the World Nuclear University is a powerful idea whose time has come, as we strengthen the foundations for this nuclear century.

Included on its Council of Advisors are not only Geoff Ballard, the hydrogen pioneer, but also James Lovelock, the author of the Gaia Theory of the biosphere and one of this nation?s ? and the world?s ? most esteemed and visionary environmentalists.

I trust that I have offered some food for thought, and perhaps some provocation. Thank you.