This is the paradox of the fight against global warming, fossil fuels and greenhouse gases (GHG): renewable energies proving unable, in the short or medium term, to fulfill the order, the atom appears as a remedy.
The announcement – reiterated by Japan and France, supported by some Eastern European countries – that they will rely on nuclear energy to meet a significant portion of their electricity needs, as part of the fight against GHGs, brings a new element to the discussion, on the eve of the Glasgow conference on the fight against climate change (COP 26).
Last week, when he announced the discharge into the ocean of wastewater used to cool the carcass of the burnt reactors of Fukushima, the Japanese Prime Minister delivered a plea for the maintenance, in the medium term, of the nuclear energy in his country.
Fumio Kishida said nuclear must be part of his country’s “energy mix” if it is to become “carbon neutral” in 2050. He reiterated this goal, but argued that nuclear is crucial and essential to achieve the bridge to that desired moment.
Nuclear energy is not “renewable”, in that its sources (uranium, plutonium) exist in limited quantities, while being complex to manipulate. But if we make the issue of GHGs the main discriminator, nuclear power certainly falls in the right column.
The big problem with nuclear power is of course – in addition to plant safety – the issue of waste. What to do with this radioactive waste which does not dissolve in nature, even in the long term?
But once this handicap is overcome, the great advantage of nuclear power is that its use produces “zero emissions” of CO2 (or almost).
The other fundamental element of the equation in 2021 is that green energies – solar, wind, biomass, hydraulic – are still incapable, on their own, of producing enough for modern economies …
Solar and wind power may have made remarkable progress over the past two decades, in most cases we manage to break everything down to 20, 30, sometimes 40% of green energy in the total “mix” of a modern country. .
A few places favored by geography (sunshine, continuous winds, waterways) can raise these figures. But overall, we are still far from 100%, or even 50% of total needs.
Germany, for example, has invested colossal sums in wind power for three decades. Which, with the contribution of nuclear power plants, has reduced the consumption of fossil sources. In some years, nuclear power generation had approached 30% of the total.
Wind power in Germany has a ceiling of between 20% and 25% of the electricity produced. There are also enormous transport problems, with production mainly in the north of the country and demand in the south. Not to mention many local protests against the visual and noise pollution associated with this energy.
Angela Merkel’s Germany was appalled, traumatized by Fukushima… The tragedy and the commotion of March 2011 were perhaps experienced there more intensely than in Japan itself. Result: the immediate announcement, in May 2011, of the abandonment of the nuclear industry from 2022. We are there.
Cruel paradox: with the elimination of nuclear power, combined with the capping of wind power, Germany has had to increase its production and imports… of coal, to meet the energy demand of a large modern economy which intends to remain so!
Japan seems to have chosen another path: overcoming the trauma, improving the safety of power plants, rehabilitating the sector in the medium term. Count on 20-25% nuclear power for 30 years to reach 2050. After a freeze of a few years – which has seen, we will be surprised, its coal imports explode – Japan has already relaunched half of its 35 nuclear center. Necessity obliges.
France has just announced a plan of one billion euros to build small nuclear power stations of the latest generation. In Glasgow, it will abound in the direction of Japan. Britain, Russia, India and China are also planning to build or reactivate nuclear power plants.
This is the great energy paradox of 2021, where the best is the enemy of the good: the anti-nuclear dogmatism of Germany has raised its GHG emissions!
To say “we only need renewable energies, and now” is a utopia. This would be equivalent not to a decrease of 5 or 10%, but to halving or tripling the size of our economies.
François Brousseau is an international news columnist for Ici Radio-Canada. [email protected]