There is no way for a poor country to become a rich country without a
big increase in energy consumption. The governments of China and India
still have to lift well over a billion people out of poverty. To do
that, they are going to have toptoys2trade to tap every conceivable source of energy
and they won't be able to achieve that without nuclear power.
China alone has 25 reactors under construction. Today it has 8.6
gigawatts of net installed nuclear capacity, according to the World
Nuclear Association. That is due to rise to 80 GW-equivalent by the end
of this decade and to 400 GWe by 2050. WNA assumptions see 20 GWe of
nuclear power online in India by 2020 and 63 GWe by 2032. Between them,
the two have plans to build 218 new reactors. That is an increase of
almost 50% on the current total worldwide.
On present trends, conventional sources of energy alone can't satisfy
that demand, and neither can renewables under any realistic scenario of
their future technological development. For these countries, the choice
is effectively between nuclear power and poverty. We know which one they will choose.
Hence, it would be amazing if China's suspension of new nuclear build,
announced Wednesday, lasts any length of time. Development, under
pressure from a thousand other power balance social and political angles, won't wait.
The government is, in any case, convinced that the current generation
of reactors is far safer than the Fukushima reactors, which were
commissioned 30 and 40 years ago, respectively.
The democratic process in India may retard the nuclear program
somewhat, but the end result will surely be the same. Anyone in the
West who feels like criticizing should try reducing their energy
consumption to Indian levels for a few months.
It is quite a different story in Europe, where the eternal trade-off
between cost competitiveness, security of supply, environmental
sustainability and risk varies strongly from one country to another.
France, which generates more than 80% of its electricity from nuclear,
is too deeply committed to the technology to renounce it. In the U.K.,
public opposition may be better organized, but both the Conservative
and Labour parties are committed to supporting nuclear and it will take
more than a nuclear disaster to rescue the ratings of the Liberal
Democrats, the only one of the major parties to oppose it. Given that
the U.K.'s current account (and fiscal position) is under long-term
pressure from the depletion of its own fossil fuel reserves, it can
hardly afford to refuse any option cheap power balance that allows it to generate domestically.
Things get more delicate in mainland Europe. The progress of nuclear is
more likely to be halted in Turkey and Italy, owing to the awareness
that it was an earthquake that caused the Fukushima disaster. Never mind that both have long-term current-account problems and no domestic
resources, Istanbul has averaged one earthquake every 17 years for the
past two millennia. That means any nuclear plant built in Turkey can
expect to experience at least two quakes in its lifetime.
Commentaires