Watching hundreds of protesters brave the sea at Kudankulam and a tough-minded Tamil Nadu administration, it might seem that India is ploughing a lonely furrow, pushing for nuclear energy when the world is seemingly turning away from it.
After Japan's Fukushima disaster in March 2011, a tsunami of public opinion blew away a burgeoning nuclear renaissance. Germany, anyway ambivalent about nuclear power, moved swiftly to cut out nuclear power from its energy mix.
Environment minister Norbert Rottgen announced Germany would shut down all its nuclear plants by 2022. Eight reactors were immediately put out of work. Germany decided to go for off-shore wind farms, coal power plants but with carbon sequestration technology, and solar energy.
An irate Japan, reeling from the radiation disaster, trained its ire on nuclear power. Last week, the Japanese government announced it would phase out nuclear power by 2040. In the months after Fukushima, Japan shut down all its nuclear reactors for safety checks.
France, that strong proponent of nuclear power, too buckled. Last week, President Francois Hollande declared that France would down its 78% dependency on nuclear power to 50%.
The last word apparently belonged to Jeff Immelt, the chief of GE. In an interview to FT, one of the world's largest makers of nuclear equipment said, "It's just hard to justify nuclear, really hard. Gas is so cheap and at some point, really, economics rule."
Energy Wars
India was looking at a nuclear renaissance of its own after a US-India nuclear deal in 2008 opened the door to internal cooperation in building nuclear plants in India. India's nuclear power plants, mostly set up during the sanction years, provide only 3% of the energy mix. But the first two plants at Kudankulam, being established with Russian assistance, ran into popular protests, with the local population raising questions of safety. Should India go down the Japanese route?
Hold your horses. Let's look at the world more carefully. Can Japan really turn off its nuclear power? Japan got around 30% of its electricity from nuclear power before Fukushima, and was planning to raise that to 50%. Now Japan, a resource-poor nation will be importing 96% of its energy from overseas, mainly fossil fuels.
This is expensive, not to speak of ruining all environmental standards. With its economy in chronic shortage, will Japan survive raising the costs of manufacturing and recovery to such an extent? Secondly, almost all of Japan's oil and gas is sourced from West Asia, and all of those super tankers traverse the difficult waters of Straits of Hormuz, South and East China Seas.
Japan-China tensions are running high. Why would Japan want to hand over its energy security keys to China which could block access? Less appreciated too is the fact that Japan's nuclear deterrent would take a heavy beating if it turns away from nuclear power.
Japan is not an overt nuclear weapons state, but it's famously known as being a screwdriver's turn away from being one. It could become a costly security mistake. Small wonder then that Japan's cabinet on Wednesday stopped short of a commitment to phase out nuclear power.
Germany's alternatives are a little better. Moving tofossil fuels will hit at the heart of the green movement which wants Germany to slash its carbon emissions by 2020 to 40% below 1990 levels. Germany already leads the pack in solar panels and wind turbines.
But wind turbines are no favourite of wildlife conservationists, they want turbines offshore, which makes them expensive. Back-of-the-envelope calculations say you need 2,000 giant turbines, covering over 350 square miles to generate equivalent power as an 1,154 MW nuclear reactor.
Nod to Nuclear
When you get past the romance of solar and wind, two obvious things strike you — a nuclear power plant can give you steady, uninterrupted, predictable power. Guess what — the sun isn't shining all the time and neither is the wind blowing at optimum generating speeds. Besides both solar and wind power are great for domestic use, but not industrial use.
On the cost front, the cost of a nuclear power plant incorporates the cost of waste and decommissioning. Not fossil fuels, where the cost in terms of human and environmental damage is incalculable. In India, where coal mining is dirty business, land acquisition is a problem and imported energy is hopelessly expensive and uncertain, we should not turn our back on nuclear power. Yes, there are costs and risks, but so is fracking for shale gas, tar sands, heck, even oil and natural gas.
So are the Kudankulam protesters wrong? No, but we must be clear that the concerns are about safety not nuclear power. It is correct for citizens to grill the atomic energy establishment on safety. India's DAE and AERB need to be up to speed on safety measures and develop more transparent methods of informing the population. Last week, the DAE said it would ask IAEA to review its nuclear regulatory process which has come under severe criticism.
And thankfully, in many parts of the world, there are more sensible countries around. The UAE plans to build four nuclear power plants of a total 5,600 MW at $20 billion, the first of which will roll out in 2017. South Korea won that contract from under the noses of the market leaders, France.
Turkey is building its first nuclear power plant in Akkuyu with Russian help in another $20-billion deal. The UK is getting the French to build its next nuclear power plant, albeit under popular protest. It's time to think beyond a disaster.
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