George Haynal

January 3, 2021

The world is pursuing an incoherent and potentially dangerous response to the climate crisis. On one hand, governments, including our own, are encouraging electrification of the economy, while, on the other, restricting the capacity to generate the clean electricity that those ambitions require.

As our demand for energy grows, intermittent renewables like wind and solar simply cannot yet be counted on to produce the essential base load of electricity the world will need to displace carbon—and, for lack of alternatives in many places, the more we electrify, the more we are led back to greater reliance on coal, oil and gas. The most proven, economic and safe of those alternatives is nuclear power. And yet, there is a freeze on public discourse about its potential to contribute. While nuclear poses its own set of risks, both the true nature of those risks and nuclear’s capacity to provide safe, stable electricity that we need demands dispassionate discussion.

The negative consequences of the absence of such a discussion in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident following Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami are already accruing.

Take, most dramatically, the case of Germany, which has decommissioned its nuclear reactors in the expectation that renewables, especially wind power in the North Sea, will| assuage the post-Chernobyl, post-Fukushima shift in public opinion.

Unfortunately, the promise of renewables has not yet delivered for Germany , their capacity to contribute curtailed by a real-world mix of technical problems of  transmission and storage, as well as political NIMBYism. And so, despite being a world leader in renewables, Germany has had to increase its dependence on Russian gas, has expanded the production and burning of lignite (the dirtiest coal) and is buying electricity from nuclear reactors in France.

Elsewhere, a similar pattern has emerged as energy demand rebounds from the shock of COVID. Rather than a quantum jump in renewables, fossil fuel demand has exploded. This is not just a short-term problem. Governments are caught between the manifest historic need to decarbonize and the “here and now” demand to maintain economic activity. We see the choice that they are making, and it is not in favour of history.

The irony of the situation should not escape policy makers. They must face the fact that while wind and solar have made impressive strides, hope for their capacity to replace fossil fuels entirely remains just that – hope. (A recent indication that some governments are prepared to face reality is the Dutch decision earlier this month to retain its existing nuclear power capacity and build two new reactors. But they are still outliers).

In order to reach a sustainable, environmentally responsible energy mix, we must look to both new technologies and clean technologies that already serve us. Nuclear power now provides the second largest portion of the world’s carbon-free electricity, after hydro power. It has also proven far safer than any of the fossil fuels from which we are trying to wean ourselves. Measured, for instance, in deaths per terawatt of energy generated, the mortality rate associated with nuclear power is 350 times lower than from coal, and nearly identical to that for renewables.

Nuclear is proven technology. The first commercial nuclear reactor went into service in 1956. There are now about 450 operating reactors worldwide, producing 10 percent of global electricity. In the industrialized world, that figure reaches 18 percent. In Canada it accounts for 15 percent; in Ontario, it’s about 50 percent, and has proven safe and reliable.

Yet nuclear power seems to be a taboo in much of the discourse about a fossil fuel-free future, and has been for two decades, over which time its share in power generation has been declining in the West (while growing exponentially in China). In large part, that is the result of the undifferentiated negative public perceptions, as in Germany, of the risks posed by nuclear in the wake of the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Those perceptions need to be tested against reality.

There are now about 450 operating reactors worldwide, producing 10 percent of global electricity. In the industrialized world, that figure reaches 18 percent. In Canada it accounts for 15 percent; in Ontario, it’s about 50 percent, and has proven safe and reliable.

For instance, equating the risks from current nuclear technology with that of Chernobyl is like comparing the risks posed by a modern car operated by professionals with a 1976 Lada in the hands of teenagers. The Chernobyl design, like much of Soviet technology, was fundamentally different from reactors outside of the former USSR, as was the manner in which it was operated. Lacking a containment structure, improper operation of the facility resulted in an explosion and the tragic release of radiation that killed 50 people, mostly heroic emergency workers. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there were another 3,940 deaths from radiation-induced cancer later in life, and many others have suffered from associated conditions. Chernobyl was a preventable tragedy.

Fukushima was an altogether different case. Only one death might be linked to radiation from the meltdown that followed the tsunami, while 18,000 people drowned in it, and over 300 people, most elderly, died due to stress caused by a panicked evacuation from the area around the power station.

More broadly on the subject of the health risks posed by different sources of energy, it is worth noting that five million people die every year from the extraction, transport and use of fossil fuels around the world, many of those deaths attributable to the use of coal.

Conventional nuclear reactors are massive and expensive to build, maintain and eventually, decommission. It is unlikely that we in Canada, for instance are ever likely to build a CANDU power station again, but significant advances make nuclear an attractive part of our future energy mix. One of these is the development of small, scalable modular reactors, now approved by US regulators and in development with modest government support in Canada. Much smaller than traditional plants, SMRs can, given economies of scale, be manufactured more cheaply and deployed far more easily than the massive facilities of the past.

Moreover, they employ passively safe technology not vulnerable to meltdown. Micro-reactors, for their part, can provide power to remote centres that are difficult to serve with power now and would otherwise rely on shipments of diesel fuel. It is this capacity that should be of particular interest to Canadian policy makers. Both the growth of Northern centres and of resource development due to climate change will demand electricity. If that cannot be supplied by hydro, which seems unlikely, the only clean alternative will be nuclear power.

There’s no doubt that nuclear power has its own important set of challenges. But they are manageable with modern, well-resourced regulation. Nuclear waste can be largely recycled as France has done for decades, and next-generation plants will be able to consume spent fuel from today’s reactors with little reprocessing. Long term storage of nuclear waste is already being done in Scandinavia.

The threat of nuclear proliferation is a particular concern to Canadians. Canada was one of the pioneers in the development of nuclear technology but was the only one of its peers to foreswear its use for military purposes. Despite that, tragically, and naively, Canada supplied nuclear technology, engineering and fuel to India and Pakistan in the 1950s and 1960s, as a contribution to those countries’ economic development, only to have them diverted to weapons capacity. We have at least learned our lesson, and have been among the most active countries supporting international safeguards on nuclear technology and fuel (Canada is the world’s second largest exporter of uranium).

It remains to be seen, more generally, whether mankind will avoid climate catastrophe by making the most of this mature, reliable technology as part of our energy mix. Without it, we must hope for solutions that haven’t been invented or a radical reduction in global demand for electricity.

While our history demands that we must do our utmost to discourage proliferation, it is worth remembering that nuclear power generation is not a prerequisite to nuclear weapons. (North Korea, for instance, has no civil nuclear program.) Nuclear power generation can actually help reduce the world’s stockpile of weapons’ grade material by converting it into useful energy.

That is what happened at the end of the Cold War through the highly successful “Megatonne-to-Megawatt” program between Russia and the West. Curtailing the peaceful production of nuclear power (in the unimaginable case that there was international agreement to do so) will not eliminate a single nuclear weapon. It will simply cripple our efforts to mitigate climate change and sustain our economies.

Despite our out-of-scale nuclear competence and capacity, Canada is one of the few countries of the world in a position to limit its future use of nuclear power to supplying energy for resource extraction and communities far from access to our abundant hydro-generated electricity. But in those settings, it will be vital.

It remains to be seen, more generally, whether mankind will avoid climate catastrophe by making the most of this mature, reliable technology as part of our energy mix. Without it, we must hope for solutions that haven’t been invented or a radical reduction in global demand for electricity. All indications point to the world using more energy, not less. Hope for new non-carbon energy is a powerful motivator for action. But it is not a strategy by itself. Proven solutions are needed. Nuclear power is one such solution. While there is much to be done to make sure that it is deployed safely and economically, we cannot afford to ignore the possibilities it offers

An informed discussion of how nuclear power can contribute to the green energy mix is essential if tackling climate change is genuinely our goal. That discussion must take place at the political level to be meaningful. Our leaders should have the courage to lead it.

George Haynal is a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. A former career foreign service officer, he served as Canada’s Representative to the International Energy Agency, Head of the Policy Planning Staff, Assistant Deputy Minister for the United States and the Americas and as Consul General to New York.