Nuclear, or No-Clear?
In March 2022, Germany, an EU member nation, announced that the Nord Stream 2 project — a natural gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany — would be suspended. The sanctions were carried out in response to Russia’s initial aggression against Ukraine. Which sounded good, to me at least.
However, Germany is doing that amidst a long-term denuclearisation campaign, one that has been ongoing since the 1990s.
Isn’t nuclear supposed to be clean, renewable energy though? How are they going to power the grid then?
On the other hand, the part of the world that I live in seems to think nuclear energy might have a place in their future.
I wanted to find out what makes nuclear energy such a divisive topic, and why is it so damn difficult to build a nuclear power plant?
How Likely Is Nuclear Energy To Kill You?
Not very likely, in the grand scheme of things. But it’s one of those things that seems scarier than it is, because when it does kill people, the news is dominated by headlines about it.
Big disasters like Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island are isolated incidents, versus the hundreds and thousands of people that die worldwide each year from fossil fuel pollution. We’ll borrow an analogy from Our World In Data to explain this:
To further put things into perspective, I also asked Dr Garvin Mak from the Singapore Nuclear Research Safety Institute why it’s so difficult to communicate the relative safety of nuclear energy. He had this to say:
“…convincing people of this can be challenging due the potential scale of a nuclear plant disaster and preconceived associations of the word ‘nuclear’. The simplest analogy of this is that although you are much more likely to die in a car crash, you are much more likely to be more worried of dying in a plane crash.”
That’s not to say nuclear energy is perfect, though. The byproducts of the nuclear fission process are highly radioactive and toxic, and currently, we’re just burying this toxic stuff in a sealed underground bunker. Which…doesn’t exactly feel like a long term solution?
Anti-nuclear energy activists insist that there is no completely safe way to dispose of these byproducts, and we’d be much better off leaving the original minerals in the ground, where they belong.
So the question now is: is nuclear even worth the risk (and effort?). How much better is it compared to traditional fossil fuels?
Better But Not Best
Here’s the short answer: nuclear can be MILES better than fossil fuels.
If you’re going to read the rest of this section, here’s the longer answer:
The estimates for energy supply emissions show that nuclear ranks below wind, but fares slightly better than solar and hydroelectric when you factor in lifetime emissions.
These statistics include emissions from construction, emissions from powering the plant…look, there are a lot of emissions. So this switch, that we need to make to renewables (and possibly nuclear) — it’s a really, really good thing that we should have done earlier.
But good things don’t always come cheap. In fact, sometimes they’re bloody expensive.
What Do We Need To Build A Nuclear Power Plant?
According to Dr Mak and his colleagues at SNRSI, the challenge facing any small island nation surrounded by water (ahem) in adopting nuclear energy is one of land area. Most modern nuclear power plants adhere to a 30 kilometer radius safe zone—this means if shit gets real, everyone in that zone has to be evacuated. In Singapore’s case, if the reactor were located on Pulau Bukom, the current site of the oil refinery plant, or on Jurong Island…
…yeah, nope. (Also, apologies to our friends in Johor.)
The safe zone doesn’t work for a tiny island at the tip of a peninsula.
It’s not cheap, or quick, to build a nuclear power plant, either. Take Plant Vogtle, for example. It’s a planned reactor complex in Georgia. It was supposed to be functional in 2016… and it’s now 2022. Spoiler alert: the plant is not done.
The total cost of USD14,000,000,000 was upgraded to USD23,000,000,000…at first. Recently, estimates put the total sum closer to USD33,000,000,000, with the whopping bill shared among 2 power companies and at least 5 other cities. Like the cost of home ownership, the cost of nuclear energy just gets significantly more prohibitive.
There are alternatives to these problems —
But there’s one thing that we tend to overlook when it comes to where, or if a nuclear power plant gets built…
…and that’s whether the people that need to live near it approve or not.
Politically Correct
Nuclear power, local or imported, could still come in handy, especially in countries where true renewable energy sources (solar, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal) aren’t really available. But the Philippines is a good example of how political change can influence a country’s energy policy.
Their largest nuclear power plant project was built during the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s, but was shelved, until recently revived by the outgoing Duterte administration in a bid to reduce their reliance on coal-powered electricity.
2022 presidential candidate Leni Robredo placed a stronger focus on renewables and non-carbon energy, deprioritising the BNPP.
On the other hand, Bongbong Marcos, (yes, that Marcos), looks set to revive his father’s legacy when elected to the highest office.
Compare this to Germany, where there isn’t really an argument anymore. The anti-nuclear sentiment is clear, and has been strengthened over the years by parts of Germany getting contaminated during the Chernobyl accident, and the 2011 Fukushima disaster reinforcing the public’s belief that no good can come from nuclear energy.
Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock
And we’re not forgetting the most important thing that’s working against humanity and any plans to adopt clean energy at the moment — time.
We’re now at the “it’s now or never” stage of clean energy adoption, and the same can be said for any form of nuclear energy — it takes an average of 5 years in order for a plant to be built, and perhaps a few more to ensure that safety regulations are met.
Non-supporters have put forward the fact that by the time the infrastructure to provide sufficient nuclear power is in place, global warming would’ve already killed us. Which is to say…we should’ve listened to the scientists a long time ago.
And what did the scientists tell us?
The Dream Of Nuclear Energy
Nuclear stuff is really…just a form of energy. Nothing more, nothing less.
The concept of the atom being indivisible was supposedly known since the time of ancient Greece, but in the early 1900s, Kiwi physicist Ernest Rutherford had a moment: what if we could divide this…indivisible thing?
This boss move built the foundation for the field of nuclear science that we know today. He also had an element named after him, so that’s pretty cool.
Breakthroughs came in the 1930s, over 35 years since Rutherford first put that idea in scientist’s heads. Enrico Fermi, Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassman, Lise Meitner and Niels Bohr were some of the scientists responsible for taking this huge step forward in nuclear energy research.
In doing this, they also proved Einstein’s theory of E=mc²; because the mass of the remaining material was less than what the experiment started out with, they deduced that the missing mass was converted to energy.
“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
The Bhagavad Gita, quoted by Robert Oppenheimer upon witnessing the first successful detonation of the atomic bomb.
A minor conflict called World War II would impact the way in which this knowledge was put to use. The peaceful use of nuclear fission was put aside in favour of weapons research, and ultimately led to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With military superiority assured, the United States government pivoted back to encourage the development of nuclear energy for non-offensive purposes — the original intention of the research.
Welcome to the Atomic Age. Although it was once again interrupted by Cold War nuclear tensions (one would think that 2 major modern international conflicts would be enough), the increased funding kick-started major developments in nuclear energy that continue till today.
Good gave rise to evil, and evil gave rise to good. But will the good come too late for it to mean anything to humanity? Maybe I’ll stick around for a few decades to find out.
Special Mentions
A special thank you to Dr Garvin Mak from the Singapore Nuclear Research And Safety Institute for answering our questions about nuclear energy.
References
1. Clean Energy Wire, 2021. “Q&A: Why is Germany phasing out nuclear power and why now?” Retrieved on 11 May 2022 (link)
2. Our World In Data factsheet on Nuclear Energy. Retrieved on 4 May 2022 (link)
3. IPCC AR5 Work Group 3, Annex III “Technology-specific Cost and
Performance Parameters” p. 1335, table A.III.2. (link)
4. WABE, 2022. “$30B Georgia Power nuclear plant delayed up to 6 more months”. Retrieved on 11 May 2022 (link)
5. Manila Bulletin, 2022. “Robredo ‘open’ to talks on nuclear energy; ‘least of our priorities’”. (link)
6. Channel NewsAsia, 2022. “Philippines could revive nuclear plant if Marcos wins presidency”. (link)
7. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology. “The History of Nuclear Energy” (link)
