At OilPrice.com, Robert Rapier weighs in on nuclear power:
Last week someone asked me “Are you pro- or anti-nuclear?†To be honest, I don’t think of it in those terms. My thinking is more along the lines of “Can we meet global carbon dioxide emission targets without nuclear power?†I believe the answer to that is “No.â€
Today the U.S. and European Union are the areas with the world’s greatest nuclear power consumption, as well as the greatest dependence on nuclear power. Further, these regions have managed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while reducing nuclear power.
According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020, the U.S. is by far the world’s largest consumer of nuclear power. Add France, and these two countries represent 45% of the world’s nuclear power consumption.
However, developed countries aren’t responsible for most of the world’s current annual carbon dioxide emissions. As I pointed out in last week’s article, carbon dioxide emissions in the Asia Pacific region are more than double the combined emissions of the U.S. and the EU.
Thus, the question isn’t whether the U.S. or Germany can reduce carbon dioxide emissions without nuclear power, it’s whether Asia can.
Although global nuclear consumption has declined over the past decade by an annual average of 0.7%, last year global nuclear power consumption increased by 3.2%. This was the largest annual increase since 2004. For the second straight year China recorded the largest increment of any country. Japan also posted substantial growth of 33% as it continued to bounce back from the 2011 Fukushima accident.
I suspect that India is likely to lead the world in the development of nuclear power including both conventional nuclear power plants and small modular nuclear power for a simple reason: they don’t really have another choice if they are to produce the power they need to modernize their economy without emitting a lot more carbon dioxide. Wind and solar don’t solve that problem because they require backups. At this point they have the engineers and scientists as well as a legal system less likely to block nuclear power than ours.
But India does have corruption on a level that could interfere with nuclear production. To the best of my knowledge it has not been its legal system which has held it back for so many years but rather its culture which includes extreme corruption and rigid rules. Large population and lot of educated people so good candidate for growth if it overcomes its internal issues.
Steve
Imagine if “greens” had been rational and having decided 30 years ago that climate change was an existential threat, they had pushed the world to move urgently from coal to nuclear generation.
I was there trying to persuade their ideological grandparents 50 years ago to no avail.
India has operated Nuclear power plants since 1969.
India was held back (the west retarded its efforts to develop nuclear power) because India used know-how on nuclear power plants from Canada to create their own nuclear weapons.
My support of nuclear is well known here. No comment necessary.
Daniel – don’t know who you are. Perhaps you know Dave. In any event, you probably know this is a great blog, and if that straightforward observation is indicative, please comment more.
Both India and China are building coal-fired power plants hand over fist. Most of their electricity comes from coal, and both countries have significant coal reserves.