Nuclear renaissance or nuclear illusion?: Bernd Debusmann

(Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

By Bernd Debusmann

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After decades of contentious debate over nuclear power, a world-wide consensus is emerging: nuclear energy is making a comeback.

The weighty phrase most often used is "nuclear renaissance." Depending on who you listen to, the renaissance is already underway; it is close; or it is a few years off.

Such predictions have a familiar ring. Twenty years ago, a U.S. newspaper headline proclaimed that "America is ripe for a nuclear revival", over the article of an industry expert who said that "the momentum is now turning in favor of nuclear power." Over the years, similar assessments have been issued with some regularity. They turned out to be wishful thinking.

There is a string of developments that point to the conclusion that this time, in an era of concern over the environmental damage caused by coal-fired power plants, the renaissance might be for real.

Polls show that fears over the safety of nuclear plants have receded. In the United States, the presidential candidates are open to nuclear power, though both Democratic aspirants oppose a crucial waste repository the Bush administration wants to build in the Nevada desert. Across much of Europe, governments are reconsidering anti-nuclear policies. India and China have announced plans for vast expansions of their nuclear capacity. Around the world, 14 countries are building nuclear reactors.

In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has begun reviewing nine applications for licenses to build new reactors, the first since 1979 when a plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania came close to a catastrophic nuclear meltdown. The accident caused no casualties but it turned nuclear power into a radioactive political issue.

It became even more toxic seven years later when an explosion at a nuclear plant in the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl threw up a radioactive cloud that drifted over large parts of Europe. Thirty-three people were killed in the blast and the United Nations estimates that the death toll from diseases, including cancer, caused by radiation will eventually reach 4,000.

Apart from Chernobyl, nuclear power had an "exceptional operational safety record in Europe during the past five decades," according to the London-based World Energy Council (WEC). But perhaps the best advertisement for nuclear safety is provided by the U.S. Navy, which has 10 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and 71 submarines. The Navy says it has operated nuclear-powered warships for more than 50 years without a single reactor mishap.

Even hard-core opponents of nuclear power no longer use safety as their principal argument against building new plants. What to do with radioactive nuclear waste and how to safeguard plants against terrorist attacks have moved to the top of the list. But some leading skeptics see the huge costs of building new plant and the long time it takes to do so as even bigger obstacles on the way to a true renaissance.

DAVID AND GOLIATH

In a paper to be published later this year in Ambio, the environmental journal of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, two scientists from the Denver-based Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy think tank, portray the nuclear industry as a lumbering Goliath who cannot compete with more nimble Davids - small-scale generators of electricity such as wind mills or solar panels.

In their analysis, entitled The Nuclear Illusion, Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh write that "turning (nuclear) ambitions into actual investments, firm orders, and operating plants faces fundamental obstacles that are now first and foremost economic, since the political obstacles related to safety, waste, proliferation etc. can be and in many countries have been bypassed by fiat."

The private capital market, they say, is shying away from nuclear energy because of the huge start-up cost of new plant - at least $5 billion - and a history of massive cost overruns. "During the nuclear revival now allegedly underway, no new nuclear project on earth has been financed by private risk capital...capitalists are flocking instead to competitors that offer lower costs and lower financial risks."

But would "micropower" - from wind, the sun, biofuel - be able to contribute significantly to meeting the world's rapidly growing demand for electricity, projected by the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration to nearly double by 2030?