Taipei Times: Do you believe nuclear power can solve the world energy crisis?
Ian Lowe: If nuclear energy was the only way of preventing climate change, we should grit our teeth because the most optimistic studies — like the ones by the International Energy Agency — looking at how the world can reduce carbon emissions by at least 60 percent by 2050 looked at a range of scenarios. Even in the scenarios that did include nuclear power, it only accounted for 6 percent of the carbon emission reduction by 2050, with about 45 percent coming from other technologies and about 50 percent from improved efficiency.
TT: There is a belief that nuclear energy is the only source that can generate enough output to meet future demand, since wind and solar power are less reliable. Do you agree?
Lowe: About 10 years ago it looked like the nuclear power industry was dying, until [people] had this idea of revamping it as the solution to climate change. On one level it is valid to say that if the 456 nuclear reactors that are contributing to 15 percent of the world’s energy had not been operating, and instead we were burning coal to produce that energy, there would be more carbon dioxide in the air.
On another level you could equally say if that 15 percent of the energy was coming from wind turbines or solar energy, there would also be less carbon in the air. If you saw nuclear power as the answer, you would have to address [the fact] that uranium is also a limited resource.
There is enough high-grade uranium to keep the present nuclear reactors running for about 50 years, and they supply 15 percent of the world’s electricity. Nuclear energy is not renewable because it is depleting non-renewable resources like uranium. Some say it’s clean energy, but I think something that produces waste that lasts a million years isn’t very clean. There are talks about a new generation of nuclear energy that will be cleaner, but they have talked about it for 50 years.
Energy studies looked at what happens if we exhaust the high grade uranium ores and move to the low grade ones, and found that would produce as much carbon as burning gas because it would require digging and crushing rocks to extract the uranium. I don’t think nuclear [power] is an answer to the problem, particularly if you see an increase in energy demands in the future. While solar energy can’t be stored now, there are other renewable energies including wave and geothermal that are available 24 hours a day. But any form of renewable energy [is] variable, so it doesn’t make sense to rely on any one of them.
In the future the energy plant will be one that uses solar energy when there’s sun, wind turbines when there’s wind, and geothermal and wave at other times. Quoting [former US vice president] Al Gore, I say there isn’t a silver bullet, but there is silver buckshot; there isn’t one solution, but there are lot of little things that together solve the problem.
TT: How do you think a balance between environmental protection and economic development can be achieved?
Lowe: We should be doing social-environmental-economic analysis of all proposed new developments. At the moment we do very vigorous economic assessments, quite superficial environmental assessments and no social assessments at all. It’s obvious any significant development has environmental and social impacts; the issue of whether they are acceptable is a social value judgment.
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