The energy that could save the planet

There is a technology that has existed for decades that could potentially reduce man made carbon emissions. This technology has been producing energy completely carbon free since 1958, it is additionally the safest energy there is, one of the cheapest and the most efficient but surprisingly is one of the most controversial. It is Nuclear Energy I am referring to. (Before we start, relying only on Nuclear energy is not an option, this article’s purpose is to shine the light on the positive impact of this controversial energy since there is a considerable probability it will play an important role in the mitigation of climate change).

Nuclear energy doesn’t release any Co2 in the atmosphere, making it a more sustainable energy than fossil fuels and biofuels. Additionally, nuclear power plants have a 40 (theoretically, 60 in practice) years life expectancy which is 10 years more than solar panels and wind turbines which is really important when measuring the sustainability of an energy as the production of solar panels for example is not very good for the environment.

A counterargument would be that this longer life expectancy isn’t enough as it requires way more materials to make a nuclear power plant than a solar panel, however I believe this isn’t relevant since to produce the same amount of electricity than a nuclear power plant you would need about 3 million solar panels depending on the size of the reactor.

Moreover, Nuclear energy is also the most efficient in terms of capacity factor (the amount of time a power plant runs for a specific amount of time, for example wind turbines only run when there is wind), closely followed by geothermal energies, which despite being one of the most sustainable energy cannot be relied upon because similarly to hydropower, they are limited to very specific locations which are often far away from urban areas, they also affect the landscape, either by flooding large areas of land or by altering land structure which can provoke earthquakes.

Geothermal energy and hydropower shouldn’t be disqualified from the equation as we need a diverse income of energy, but they cannot be relied upon for the majority of our energy production, neither could natural gas nor coal for obvious environmental reasons. Then come wind turbines and solar panels with a very low energy efficiency as stated earlier. One of the factors that make nuclear energy so efficient and reliable is that it runs constantly, compared to wind turbines and solar panels which only produce electricity when specific conditions are met: the right amount of wind or the right amount of sun.

Nuclear energy, contrary to popular beliefs, is also one of the safest with only 90 deaths per thousand terawatt hour (measure unit for energy). This is a bit less than wind turbines and solar panel (the amount of death for solar panels is contested because it’s not so much the solar panels that are dangerous but rather the job of roofer that is known for being one of the most dangerous jobs because of the falls) and a lot less than oil and coal.

Of course different organisations come up with different statistics as they calculate the amount of death differently (some consider the entire production of the power plants, some consider the nuclear incidents that happened in the past, some consider more debated health issues such as headaches and night terrors potentially caused by the ultrasounds made by wind turbines), but one thing that stays the same in all those statistics is that nuclear energy is always far less dangerous than coal, oil and gas, and in certain cases only slightly more dangerous than all its renewable alternatives.

Nuclear energy isn’t perfect either. Firstly, power plants are vulnerable to climate change; nuclear power plants are placed next to rivers and the sea since they need large amounts of cold water to cool down their reactors, however, with the rising of temperature, the risks of heat waves and water levels rising could affect those power plants. Heat waves sometimes cause power plants to be stopped, not because they pose a threat to the power plant, but because adding water that is warmed up by the reactor into an already warmer water because of the heat wave could damage the rivers ecosystems.

However, even in the worst possible scenario, one in which the temperature rises by 4 degrees by 2100, the power plants shutdowns will not exceed 2% of the plant’s production. For the rising waters, the water should not rise more than 1 metre max by 2100 which will not affect the power plants.

Another risk of nuclear energy is the risk of a nuclear accident, although it’s hard to quantify the risk, it goes without saying that they are less important than they used to be, this is the results of the industry learning from previous mistakes, for example since the Fukushima accident, each country, even those with low tsunami risks changed the infrastructures of their power plants to minimize the risks of such an accident to happen again.

Additionally, the damages of nuclear accidents have been greatly exaggerated. The truth is that the Chernobyl accident killed 30 firefighters the day of the accident and about 4000 people died in 30 years due to the radiation according to the United nations. Fukushima didn’t cause any deaths on the spot, and it supposedly caused 1 death, which was never actually proven. It’s difficult to find the actual number of deaths due to radiation, as there is no way to tell if the cancer is due to the radiation or other factors.

Finally, all the physical abnormalities blamed on nuclear radiations are completely unrelated to those accidents, since radiations have been proven to only cause cancers. Of course, those numbers are terrifying and no amount of energy produced could ever excuse the death of a human being, but it’s nothing compared to the deaths caused by other energy sources. Then, another argument against nuclear energy is that we only have about 90 - 200 years of uranium left, depending on the source. Although this number is scary, it would still be 90 years of carbon free energy production and the life expectancy of a power plant is about 30 years, so it’s not like we are wasting any ressources. waste will still be dangerous),

France is a perfect example of the nuclear waste problem, considering it is the third country with the highest nuclear energy production and also a country with a very good plan to stock its nuclear waste. In France, 97% of the nuclear waste is either not radioactive enough to be dangerous or have a half life of less than 31 years, which means that they will stay radioactive for about 300 years max.

Only 3% of the nuclear waste is dangerous and long enough to be considered a real threat, the longer waste is radioactive the more resistant the place it will be stored in shall be since it will be more vulnerable to erosion, natural hazards etc.

For now, this waste is stocked at the surface, this in terms of safety is perfectly fine since it’s done in a correct and safe way. The real issue is that since the duration of these wastes are so long, there is no way to predict how they will be treated in 10 000 years for example (amount of time in which some of this waste will still be dangerous), no one knows if there will be a war, or if our society will collapse, leading to the loss of the necessary knowledge to take care of this waste. France to respond to this concern has launched the CIGEO project, which aims to burying this waste 500 metres underground in galleries and filling them up with concrete as soon as they reach their maximum storage capacity. What now?

Of course, even though Nuclear energy is one of the most sustainable there is, we shouldn’t only rely on it, the truth is that even the nuclear industries don’t think nuclear energy can produce more than 60% of the total energy production. We need to compensate with wind, solar and hydraulic energies. Additionally, technologies are developing fast and investing more into nuclear energy could lead to a brighter future.

For example, scientists are working on a new way of producing energy called nuclear fusion, atoms nucleus are fusioned together creating a bigger nucleus. This technology could create technically unlimited amounts of energy, safely and without creating any nuclear waste with long half lives. In conclusion, Nuclear energy will undoubtedly play an important role in achieving a more sustainable future, and therefore we should encourage the use of nuclear power plants rather than trying to close them like some countries want to, for example Germany who closed all nuclear power plants and now have to rely heavily on coal. Nuclear energy is the perfect example of how complex the climate fight can be. Not so long ago I believed strongly that Nuclear energy was dangerous and bad for the environment, and so do huge organisations such as Greenpeace still refuse to even consider it a possible solution. Of course, my words are as untrustworthy as any other, and they shouldn’t be blindly trusted, but I wish to open the conversation on this matter to force people to think and reflect to find solutions.