SEAD (Scottish Education and Action for Development)

Just when you thought it was over…

More than 15% of global electricity production comes from nuclear power. In 2007, the European Greens predicted that, “even if Finland and France build a European Pressurized water Reactor (EPR), China started an additional 20 plants and Japan, Korea or Eastern Europe added one or the other plant, the overall global trend for nuclear power capacity will most likely be downwards over the next two or three decades. With extremely long lead times of 10 years and more [for plant construction], it is practically impossible to maintain or even increase the number of operating nuclear power plants over the next 20 years, unless operating lifetimes would be substantially increased beyond 40 years on average.”

In fact, China plans to build more than 100 plants, while in the US the licenses of almost half its reactors have already been extended to 60 years, and plans to build more than 30 new ones are under consideration. In 2008, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) predicted that nuclear power capacity could double by 2030, though that would not be enough to increase nuclear’s share of electricity generation.

The UK government supports the building of a new generation of nuclear power stations, saying that we can’t reduce our carbon footprint without it.

The Department for Trade and Industry in the UK has consistently invested 2-3 times more in nuclear energy than renewable sources, pound per pound, but studies estimate that nuclear is 5-7 times less cost-effective than efficiency/renewables in reducing CO2 emissions (Lovins 2001).

However, there is still enormous political support for new investment in nuclear power and the nuclear debate rages on. Friends of the Earth Scotland and Greenpeace UK both have active anti-nuclear campaigns and provide a lot of useful information about the problems and solutions around nuclear power. There’s also a useful report called ‘Nuclear power – no solution to climate change’ (184kb PDF) produced by the Nuclear Information and Resource Centre.

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