In part three of our mini-series on nuclear energy, we'll discuss the state of nuclear energy today, and what this means for nuclear energy in the future.
From costs to environmental concerns, we'll explore whether nuclear energy is a key tool in the fight against climate change or a dangerous and expensive distraction.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three, the final part, of our three-part series on nuclear power.
[00:00:28] As a reminder, in part one we talked about the early days of nuclear power, Dwight Eisenhower’s famous Atoms for Peace speech, and how countries adopted it with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.
[00:00:43] In part two we talked about an event that turned excitement into fear and opposition: the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
[00:00:53] And in today’s episode, we are going to be talking about the state of nuclear power today, and what this means for nuclear power in the future.
[00:01:03] OK then, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:08] On the 15th of April of last year, April of 2023, the power was turned off at three nuclear power plants in Germany.
[00:01:18] Not just any three. The last three.
[00:01:22] Germany went from a country that had built 36 nuclear reactors, which provided at their peak 30% of the nation’s power, down to 0.
[00:01:34] It was a spectacular reversal of policy, and is emblematic of the fate that nuclear power has had in many countries.
[00:01:45] In Germany, nuclear power was initially met with mixed excitement when the first domestic nuclear power plant came online in 1961, but the 1970s saw a growing anti-nuclear movement.
[00:02:00] Nuclear power was associated with nuclear weapons, there was the issue of nuclear waste, and there were unanswered questions about the environmental impact of nuclear power.
[00:02:12] These questions translated into large-scale protests, and then in the 1980s, the anti-nuclear movement morphed into its own political party in the form of The Greens, which won 6% of the vote in the 1983 federal elections.
[00:02:29] Then, in 1986, not so far away from Germany, Chernobyl happened.
[00:02:36] Anti-nuclear sentiment ratcheted up a notch, and by 2000 there was an official agreement between the German government and the energy sector to phase out nuclear power.
[00:02:50] And just over 20 years later, it happened.
[00:02:54] Germany is now nuclear power free.
[00:02:58] When the last power plant wound down its generators for the very last time, it evoked very different emotions.
[00:03:07] To the Greens, it was something they had been fighting for for the best part of half a century. It was the end of an environmentally unfriendly, dangerous and unsustainable power source, and the sign of a bright step forward towards a renewable, green, sustainable energy future.
[00:03:27] To others, a minority of others in Germany, I should add, it was a step backwards.
[00:03:33] Shutting off domestic nuclear power as an option meant more reliance on dirty fossil fuels such as coal and gas, it meant greater reliance on Russia, and it would result in the German consumer paying more for less environmentally friendly electricity.
[00:03:51] So, before addressing the arguments on both sides of the nuclear debate, let us first take a look at the state of nuclear energy around the world today.
[00:04:03] Today, there are around 440 nuclear reactors in 32 different countries, which provide around 10% of the world’s energy.
[00:04:14] But, that number is very different on a country-by-country basis.
[00:04:21] Germany, as you heard, has no nuclear power plants.
[00:04:25] Neighbouring France, on the other hand, gets around 70% of its power from nuclear sources, and is the third largest nuclear producer in the world, after the United States and China.
[00:04:38] In fact, France generates so much energy from nuclear sources that it is a net energy exporter, meaning that it sells electricity to other countries.
[00:04:51] And of its three largest energy customers, two–Germany and Italy–are countries that turned their backs on nuclear power, so even though Germans and Italians are nuclear power plant free, they are most certainly not nuclear energy free.
[00:05:08] If you’re wondering who the other top-three customer is, it’s the UK, which does have its own nuclear energy sector, but turns to France when there is particularly high domestic demand and it needs a bit of a top-up.
[00:05:23] So, to recap, there are currently just under 500 nuclear reactors worldwide, producing around 10% of the world’s power.
[00:05:33] Interestingly, this number has hardly changed since the early 1980s.
[00:05:40] This doesn’t mean that no nuclear power plants have been built, quite the opposite.
[00:05:44] Around 300 new nuclear reactors have been built since Chernobyl, with a large proportion of those coming from Asia, and there are dozens more currently under construction, again, primarily in Asia.
[00:05:58] But these new reactors have largely been offset by the decommissioning of old reactors, especially in countries that have chosen to phase out nuclear power, like Germany and Italy, meaning that the total number of nuclear reactors worldwide has not really changed.
[00:06:17] So, why this division?
[00:06:20] Why are some countries rushing towards nuclear power, and others abandoning it?
[00:06:28] The early promise of nuclear power was that it was going to be a cheap, abundant, clean and safe source of electricity.
[00:06:37] So, let’s look at these in detail to see whether nuclear has achieved each of its promises.
[00:06:45] First, let’s talk about cost.
[00:06:48] The measure that analysts use here is the total cost per unit of electricity produced, which takes into account everything that goes into creating the electricity: mining the fossil fuels, in the case of coal, oil and gas, building the power plants, building a dam in the case of hydroelectric power, installing the solar panels, and of course the ongoing operational costs of generating the electricity.
[00:07:17] It can cost anywhere from a couple of billion dollars to 10 billion dollars to build a nuclear power plant, and although the major costs are related to construction, the operational costs of nuclear energy are not insignificant.
[00:07:35] And unlike almost every other energy source, these costs have increased, not decreased.
[00:07:43] This is primarily to do with increasing safety and regulatory requirements, which few are arguing against, but it is completely the opposite of what has happened to something like solar, for example, which has come down in cost by a whopping 90% in the past 10 years alone.
[00:08:03] As a result, when compared to almost every other source of energy, nuclear power is still not cheap.
[00:08:11] Its supporters, however, argue that this is not a failure of nuclear energy per se, but a product of the fact that government investment in nuclear energy has been dwarfed by investment in renewable technologies.
[00:08:27] If governments had invested as much in nuclear as they had in solar and wind technology, then the price would have come down even further, so this is a direct result of anti-nuclear policy, not any inbuilt failure of nuclear energy.
[00:08:44] Now, as to the question of abundance, of whether nuclear energy is truly renewable, by the standard definition it is not renewable.
[00:08:55] Nuclear power requires uranium, of which there is a finite amount. By some estimates, there is only enough uranium for another 20 years, while other estimates put it at 80 or 90 years.
[00:09:10] However, this is hotly debated.
[00:09:14] Firstly, there is the argument that mining companies always underestimate the total reserves, because the process of locating and proving reserves is expensive. In other words, there is no reason to suggest that the world is running out of Uranium just because we don’t have the exact locations and details of every single Uranium deposit; more will be found to be used for many, many years to come.
[00:09:41] And secondly, there is the more interesting argument that nuclear waste, the toxic byproduct of producing nuclear energy, can actually be reused again and again.
[00:09:54] So we have a load more fuel just sitting there, and this can be used multiple times to generate more electricity.
[00:10:03] Not only this, but reusing nuclear waste also reduces its radioactivity levels, so if countries heavily invested in reusing their nuclear waste, not only would this reduce the need for new Uranium mining, but it would also help address the question of the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power.
[00:10:25] Now, the third promise of nuclear power was that it was going to be clean.
[00:10:32] Ever since the industrial era, and still today, the primary way that humans have generated electricity has been by burning fossil fuels.
[00:10:43] Coal, oil, and natural gas, they all work beautifully well as a way to generate electricity, apart from the fact that burning them releases all sorts of chemicals into the atmosphere that causes air pollution and climate change.
[00:10:59] Now, when nuclear power was first proposed, the attraction around cleanliness had nothing to do with climate change; it was that people wouldn’t have to live near large chimneys that billowed nasty black smoke into the atmosphere.
[00:11:15] Nuclear power stations might have large chimneys, but what they release is water vapour, it is steam.
[00:11:24] There have been accusations about plants occasionally releasing trace elements of other chemicals, but the steam coming from the chimney of a nuclear plant is not dangerous.
[00:11:35] So is nuclear power “clean”?
[00:11:40] Well, when trying to calculate the environmental impact of an energy source, like when calculating the financial cost, analysts take into account all of the emissions that go into producing a unit of electricity.
[00:11:55] In the case of nuclear energy, there is the environmental impact of building a nuclear power station, the not-insignificant environmental cost of mining the Uranium, the transportation and all of that, but when you look at the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of electricity produced by nuclear power, it compares incredibly favourably.
[00:12:18] To give you some numbers on this, nuclear power emits three tonnes of CO2 for every gigawatt hour, which is roughly the energy needs for 160 people in Europe.
[00:12:31] Now, this probably doesn’t mean very much as an isolated fact, three tonnes of CO2 per gigawatt hour, but this compares to 820 tonnes for coal, 720 for oil and 490 for natural gas.
[00:12:49] In other words, coal emits 273 times more CO2 per unit of electricity, and even innocent-sounding natural gas emits 163 times more.
[00:13:03] And even compared to universally accepted “green” technologies, nuclear power scores very favourably.
[00:13:11] It emits up to 76 times less CO2 than biomass, and 11 times less than hydropower.
[00:13:19] It is even lower on a CO2 emissions level than solar and wind energy when you take everything into account.
[00:13:27] On almost every possible emissions scale, it is as clean as it gets.
[00:13:33] But, and it is a big but, moving onto the final question of safety, there is the large question of nuclear waste.
[00:13:42] Producing nuclear energy results in highly radioactive material that will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
[00:13:51] Yes, there might have been no major incidents relating to nuclear waste storage to date, but this is only the very start of the nuclear waste lifecycle. It’s like saying a runner setting off on an ultra-marathon takes their first couple of steps and then assumes that just because the first two steps were fine, the next 100,000 will be fine as well.
[00:14:15] It is, by definition, a problem that will be left to future generations to resolve, not just my kids or their great grandchildren, it is even more extreme than people today having to deal with a problem left by the Ancient Greeks, so the argument goes.
[00:14:33] Then there is the question of what happens if there is an accident or a deliberate attack, are we really so stupid as to knowingly and willingly choose a power source that creates such a potentially deadly byproduct and have no real solution about what to do with it?
[00:14:51] But on the other hand, proponents of nuclear energy argue that the problem of what to do with nuclear waste has largely been solved. It can be stored safely and securely, the radioactivity levels decay at such a speed that after a few hundred years it is no longer nearly so dangerous, there haven’t been any incidents to date, and there is ever-evolving technology about reprocessing it and improving how it is stored.
[00:15:19] In short, it isn’t a genuine concern.
[00:15:22] And to address the additional part of the safety issue, there is the question of the safety of a nuclear power plant itself.
[00:15:31] Chernobyl, as we talked about in the last episode, was a tragic example of what can happen when things go wrong at a nuclear power plant.
[00:15:41] There had been an incident at the Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, 8 years before Chernobyl, when there was a partial core meltdown, and the most recent disaster at a nuclear power plant happened at Fukushima, in 2011.
[00:15:56] All three of these nuclear accidents, to different degrees, severely damaged public trust in the safety of nuclear energy.
[00:16:05] If a mechanical failure, or human error, or a natural disaster can have such an impact on a nuclear power station, which is home to such toxic and radioactive material, then surely we can’t continue to call them “safe”.
[00:16:22] But, the proponents of nuclear energy argue, these accidents simply couldn’t happen anymore. Modern nuclear plants are far more secure and safety is taken far more seriously, it simply wouldn’t happen.
[00:16:37] What’s more, these three accidents caused very few deaths.
[00:16:43] Nobody died in the Three Mile Island incident, Chernobyl was only responsible for around 30 direct deaths, and Fukushima only resulted in one suspected death, which happened four years later.
[00:16:58] Even if we take the much higher estimated numbers from Chernobyl, so 200,000, total deaths from nuclear power pale in comparison to deaths from fossil fuel pollution.
[00:17:11] Yes, fossil fuel pollution might be less visible, and there isn’t the scary issue of cell-destroying radioactive material, but fossil fuels have killed many more people, not just in total but on a “deaths per unit of electricity produced” scale.
[00:17:31] To put a number on this, on a “deaths per unit of electricity produced”, nuclear energy, for all of the scaremongering, to date has been 1% as deadly as fossil fuels. In other words, every unit of electricity produced by fossil fuels has caused 100 times more deaths than a unit produced by nuclear power.
[00:17:57] And perhaps even more surprising is that, according to one study, on a “deaths per unit of electricity produced”, nuclear power is even less deadly than renewable energy like solar, hydro and wind.
[00:18:12] Now, you might be thinking “That can’t be true”, but this takes into account stuff like industrial accidents when putting up wind farms or solar panels, or hydroelectric dams breaking.
[00:18:24] The point is, in the 60-plus years of nuclear power, on a per unit of electricity produced, it is about the least deadly source of power available.
[00:18:36] All of this puts nuclear energy in an unusual situation.
[00:18:42] It is both loved and loathed by environmentalists, seen as a vital tool in the fight against fossil fuels and a dangerous risk to the environment and a barrier to the adoption of truly renewable energy sources.
[00:18:56] Greenpeace, perhaps the best-known opponent to nuclear energy, makes its position abundantly clear, writing “Greenpeace has always fought – and will continue to fight – vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.” End quote.
[00:19:24] But other environmental groups, such as Environmental Progress, argue that it is a necessary key tool in the fight against dependence on fossil fuels.
[00:19:37] It isn’t the solution, but it is part of the solution.
[00:19:42] Nuclear reactors are safer than ever before, new technologies will bring the cost down, they argue, and these fears about catastrophic nuclear meltdowns are, quite simply, unfounded.
[00:19:56] Now, to wrap things up, as of the time of writing this episode, there are 59 nuclear reactors currently under construction, with two-thirds of those in Asia.
[00:20:08] It might sound like a lot, but it’s about half what it was at its peak, in the early 1980s.
[00:20:16] While many European countries are turning their backs on nuclear energy, and have either shut down all plants or are in the process of doing so, other countries, principally in Asia, are investing heavily into it.
[00:20:31] The International Energy Agency predicts that the nuclear energy sector could increase in size by 2.5 times by 2050, with practically all of that growth coming from Asia.
[00:20:44] So this presents an interesting dynamic; a nuclear-powered East, and a largely nuclear-shunning Europe.
[00:20:54] Time will only tell which is the smarter decision.
[00:20:59] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the future of nuclear power.
[00:21:04] And with that comes the end of this three-part mini-series on this complicated, controversial and important subject.
[00:21:11] I hope it's been an interesting one, and if you had strong opinions on the matter beforehand, well that you might have learnt something new.
[00:21:19] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:21:22] What do you think about nuclear power? Is it a potential solution in the fight against climate change, or is it a risk that countries are too willing to take?
[00:21:32] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:21:35] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:21:43] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:48] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three, the final part, of our three-part series on nuclear power.
[00:00:28] As a reminder, in part one we talked about the early days of nuclear power, Dwight Eisenhower’s famous Atoms for Peace speech, and how countries adopted it with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.
[00:00:43] In part two we talked about an event that turned excitement into fear and opposition: the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
[00:00:53] And in today’s episode, we are going to be talking about the state of nuclear power today, and what this means for nuclear power in the future.
[00:01:03] OK then, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:08] On the 15th of April of last year, April of 2023, the power was turned off at three nuclear power plants in Germany.
[00:01:18] Not just any three. The last three.
[00:01:22] Germany went from a country that had built 36 nuclear reactors, which provided at their peak 30% of the nation’s power, down to 0.
[00:01:34] It was a spectacular reversal of policy, and is emblematic of the fate that nuclear power has had in many countries.
[00:01:45] In Germany, nuclear power was initially met with mixed excitement when the first domestic nuclear power plant came online in 1961, but the 1970s saw a growing anti-nuclear movement.
[00:02:00] Nuclear power was associated with nuclear weapons, there was the issue of nuclear waste, and there were unanswered questions about the environmental impact of nuclear power.
[00:02:12] These questions translated into large-scale protests, and then in the 1980s, the anti-nuclear movement morphed into its own political party in the form of The Greens, which won 6% of the vote in the 1983 federal elections.
[00:02:29] Then, in 1986, not so far away from Germany, Chernobyl happened.
[00:02:36] Anti-nuclear sentiment ratcheted up a notch, and by 2000 there was an official agreement between the German government and the energy sector to phase out nuclear power.
[00:02:50] And just over 20 years later, it happened.
[00:02:54] Germany is now nuclear power free.
[00:02:58] When the last power plant wound down its generators for the very last time, it evoked very different emotions.
[00:03:07] To the Greens, it was something they had been fighting for for the best part of half a century. It was the end of an environmentally unfriendly, dangerous and unsustainable power source, and the sign of a bright step forward towards a renewable, green, sustainable energy future.
[00:03:27] To others, a minority of others in Germany, I should add, it was a step backwards.
[00:03:33] Shutting off domestic nuclear power as an option meant more reliance on dirty fossil fuels such as coal and gas, it meant greater reliance on Russia, and it would result in the German consumer paying more for less environmentally friendly electricity.
[00:03:51] So, before addressing the arguments on both sides of the nuclear debate, let us first take a look at the state of nuclear energy around the world today.
[00:04:03] Today, there are around 440 nuclear reactors in 32 different countries, which provide around 10% of the world’s energy.
[00:04:14] But, that number is very different on a country-by-country basis.
[00:04:21] Germany, as you heard, has no nuclear power plants.
[00:04:25] Neighbouring France, on the other hand, gets around 70% of its power from nuclear sources, and is the third largest nuclear producer in the world, after the United States and China.
[00:04:38] In fact, France generates so much energy from nuclear sources that it is a net energy exporter, meaning that it sells electricity to other countries.
[00:04:51] And of its three largest energy customers, two–Germany and Italy–are countries that turned their backs on nuclear power, so even though Germans and Italians are nuclear power plant free, they are most certainly not nuclear energy free.
[00:05:08] If you’re wondering who the other top-three customer is, it’s the UK, which does have its own nuclear energy sector, but turns to France when there is particularly high domestic demand and it needs a bit of a top-up.
[00:05:23] So, to recap, there are currently just under 500 nuclear reactors worldwide, producing around 10% of the world’s power.
[00:05:33] Interestingly, this number has hardly changed since the early 1980s.
[00:05:40] This doesn’t mean that no nuclear power plants have been built, quite the opposite.
[00:05:44] Around 300 new nuclear reactors have been built since Chernobyl, with a large proportion of those coming from Asia, and there are dozens more currently under construction, again, primarily in Asia.
[00:05:58] But these new reactors have largely been offset by the decommissioning of old reactors, especially in countries that have chosen to phase out nuclear power, like Germany and Italy, meaning that the total number of nuclear reactors worldwide has not really changed.
[00:06:17] So, why this division?
[00:06:20] Why are some countries rushing towards nuclear power, and others abandoning it?
[00:06:28] The early promise of nuclear power was that it was going to be a cheap, abundant, clean and safe source of electricity.
[00:06:37] So, let’s look at these in detail to see whether nuclear has achieved each of its promises.
[00:06:45] First, let’s talk about cost.
[00:06:48] The measure that analysts use here is the total cost per unit of electricity produced, which takes into account everything that goes into creating the electricity: mining the fossil fuels, in the case of coal, oil and gas, building the power plants, building a dam in the case of hydroelectric power, installing the solar panels, and of course the ongoing operational costs of generating the electricity.
[00:07:17] It can cost anywhere from a couple of billion dollars to 10 billion dollars to build a nuclear power plant, and although the major costs are related to construction, the operational costs of nuclear energy are not insignificant.
[00:07:35] And unlike almost every other energy source, these costs have increased, not decreased.
[00:07:43] This is primarily to do with increasing safety and regulatory requirements, which few are arguing against, but it is completely the opposite of what has happened to something like solar, for example, which has come down in cost by a whopping 90% in the past 10 years alone.
[00:08:03] As a result, when compared to almost every other source of energy, nuclear power is still not cheap.
[00:08:11] Its supporters, however, argue that this is not a failure of nuclear energy per se, but a product of the fact that government investment in nuclear energy has been dwarfed by investment in renewable technologies.
[00:08:27] If governments had invested as much in nuclear as they had in solar and wind technology, then the price would have come down even further, so this is a direct result of anti-nuclear policy, not any inbuilt failure of nuclear energy.
[00:08:44] Now, as to the question of abundance, of whether nuclear energy is truly renewable, by the standard definition it is not renewable.
[00:08:55] Nuclear power requires uranium, of which there is a finite amount. By some estimates, there is only enough uranium for another 20 years, while other estimates put it at 80 or 90 years.
[00:09:10] However, this is hotly debated.
[00:09:14] Firstly, there is the argument that mining companies always underestimate the total reserves, because the process of locating and proving reserves is expensive. In other words, there is no reason to suggest that the world is running out of Uranium just because we don’t have the exact locations and details of every single Uranium deposit; more will be found to be used for many, many years to come.
[00:09:41] And secondly, there is the more interesting argument that nuclear waste, the toxic byproduct of producing nuclear energy, can actually be reused again and again.
[00:09:54] So we have a load more fuel just sitting there, and this can be used multiple times to generate more electricity.
[00:10:03] Not only this, but reusing nuclear waste also reduces its radioactivity levels, so if countries heavily invested in reusing their nuclear waste, not only would this reduce the need for new Uranium mining, but it would also help address the question of the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power.
[00:10:25] Now, the third promise of nuclear power was that it was going to be clean.
[00:10:32] Ever since the industrial era, and still today, the primary way that humans have generated electricity has been by burning fossil fuels.
[00:10:43] Coal, oil, and natural gas, they all work beautifully well as a way to generate electricity, apart from the fact that burning them releases all sorts of chemicals into the atmosphere that causes air pollution and climate change.
[00:10:59] Now, when nuclear power was first proposed, the attraction around cleanliness had nothing to do with climate change; it was that people wouldn’t have to live near large chimneys that billowed nasty black smoke into the atmosphere.
[00:11:15] Nuclear power stations might have large chimneys, but what they release is water vapour, it is steam.
[00:11:24] There have been accusations about plants occasionally releasing trace elements of other chemicals, but the steam coming from the chimney of a nuclear plant is not dangerous.
[00:11:35] So is nuclear power “clean”?
[00:11:40] Well, when trying to calculate the environmental impact of an energy source, like when calculating the financial cost, analysts take into account all of the emissions that go into producing a unit of electricity.
[00:11:55] In the case of nuclear energy, there is the environmental impact of building a nuclear power station, the not-insignificant environmental cost of mining the Uranium, the transportation and all of that, but when you look at the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of electricity produced by nuclear power, it compares incredibly favourably.
[00:12:18] To give you some numbers on this, nuclear power emits three tonnes of CO2 for every gigawatt hour, which is roughly the energy needs for 160 people in Europe.
[00:12:31] Now, this probably doesn’t mean very much as an isolated fact, three tonnes of CO2 per gigawatt hour, but this compares to 820 tonnes for coal, 720 for oil and 490 for natural gas.
[00:12:49] In other words, coal emits 273 times more CO2 per unit of electricity, and even innocent-sounding natural gas emits 163 times more.
[00:13:03] And even compared to universally accepted “green” technologies, nuclear power scores very favourably.
[00:13:11] It emits up to 76 times less CO2 than biomass, and 11 times less than hydropower.
[00:13:19] It is even lower on a CO2 emissions level than solar and wind energy when you take everything into account.
[00:13:27] On almost every possible emissions scale, it is as clean as it gets.
[00:13:33] But, and it is a big but, moving onto the final question of safety, there is the large question of nuclear waste.
[00:13:42] Producing nuclear energy results in highly radioactive material that will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
[00:13:51] Yes, there might have been no major incidents relating to nuclear waste storage to date, but this is only the very start of the nuclear waste lifecycle. It’s like saying a runner setting off on an ultra-marathon takes their first couple of steps and then assumes that just because the first two steps were fine, the next 100,000 will be fine as well.
[00:14:15] It is, by definition, a problem that will be left to future generations to resolve, not just my kids or their great grandchildren, it is even more extreme than people today having to deal with a problem left by the Ancient Greeks, so the argument goes.
[00:14:33] Then there is the question of what happens if there is an accident or a deliberate attack, are we really so stupid as to knowingly and willingly choose a power source that creates such a potentially deadly byproduct and have no real solution about what to do with it?
[00:14:51] But on the other hand, proponents of nuclear energy argue that the problem of what to do with nuclear waste has largely been solved. It can be stored safely and securely, the radioactivity levels decay at such a speed that after a few hundred years it is no longer nearly so dangerous, there haven’t been any incidents to date, and there is ever-evolving technology about reprocessing it and improving how it is stored.
[00:15:19] In short, it isn’t a genuine concern.
[00:15:22] And to address the additional part of the safety issue, there is the question of the safety of a nuclear power plant itself.
[00:15:31] Chernobyl, as we talked about in the last episode, was a tragic example of what can happen when things go wrong at a nuclear power plant.
[00:15:41] There had been an incident at the Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, 8 years before Chernobyl, when there was a partial core meltdown, and the most recent disaster at a nuclear power plant happened at Fukushima, in 2011.
[00:15:56] All three of these nuclear accidents, to different degrees, severely damaged public trust in the safety of nuclear energy.
[00:16:05] If a mechanical failure, or human error, or a natural disaster can have such an impact on a nuclear power station, which is home to such toxic and radioactive material, then surely we can’t continue to call them “safe”.
[00:16:22] But, the proponents of nuclear energy argue, these accidents simply couldn’t happen anymore. Modern nuclear plants are far more secure and safety is taken far more seriously, it simply wouldn’t happen.
[00:16:37] What’s more, these three accidents caused very few deaths.
[00:16:43] Nobody died in the Three Mile Island incident, Chernobyl was only responsible for around 30 direct deaths, and Fukushima only resulted in one suspected death, which happened four years later.
[00:16:58] Even if we take the much higher estimated numbers from Chernobyl, so 200,000, total deaths from nuclear power pale in comparison to deaths from fossil fuel pollution.
[00:17:11] Yes, fossil fuel pollution might be less visible, and there isn’t the scary issue of cell-destroying radioactive material, but fossil fuels have killed many more people, not just in total but on a “deaths per unit of electricity produced” scale.
[00:17:31] To put a number on this, on a “deaths per unit of electricity produced”, nuclear energy, for all of the scaremongering, to date has been 1% as deadly as fossil fuels. In other words, every unit of electricity produced by fossil fuels has caused 100 times more deaths than a unit produced by nuclear power.
[00:17:57] And perhaps even more surprising is that, according to one study, on a “deaths per unit of electricity produced”, nuclear power is even less deadly than renewable energy like solar, hydro and wind.
[00:18:12] Now, you might be thinking “That can’t be true”, but this takes into account stuff like industrial accidents when putting up wind farms or solar panels, or hydroelectric dams breaking.
[00:18:24] The point is, in the 60-plus years of nuclear power, on a per unit of electricity produced, it is about the least deadly source of power available.
[00:18:36] All of this puts nuclear energy in an unusual situation.
[00:18:42] It is both loved and loathed by environmentalists, seen as a vital tool in the fight against fossil fuels and a dangerous risk to the environment and a barrier to the adoption of truly renewable energy sources.
[00:18:56] Greenpeace, perhaps the best-known opponent to nuclear energy, makes its position abundantly clear, writing “Greenpeace has always fought – and will continue to fight – vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.” End quote.
[00:19:24] But other environmental groups, such as Environmental Progress, argue that it is a necessary key tool in the fight against dependence on fossil fuels.
[00:19:37] It isn’t the solution, but it is part of the solution.
[00:19:42] Nuclear reactors are safer than ever before, new technologies will bring the cost down, they argue, and these fears about catastrophic nuclear meltdowns are, quite simply, unfounded.
[00:19:56] Now, to wrap things up, as of the time of writing this episode, there are 59 nuclear reactors currently under construction, with two-thirds of those in Asia.
[00:20:08] It might sound like a lot, but it’s about half what it was at its peak, in the early 1980s.
[00:20:16] While many European countries are turning their backs on nuclear energy, and have either shut down all plants or are in the process of doing so, other countries, principally in Asia, are investing heavily into it.
[00:20:31] The International Energy Agency predicts that the nuclear energy sector could increase in size by 2.5 times by 2050, with practically all of that growth coming from Asia.
[00:20:44] So this presents an interesting dynamic; a nuclear-powered East, and a largely nuclear-shunning Europe.
[00:20:54] Time will only tell which is the smarter decision.
[00:20:59] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the future of nuclear power.
[00:21:04] And with that comes the end of this three-part mini-series on this complicated, controversial and important subject.
[00:21:11] I hope it's been an interesting one, and if you had strong opinions on the matter beforehand, well that you might have learnt something new.
[00:21:19] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:21:22] What do you think about nuclear power? Is it a potential solution in the fight against climate change, or is it a risk that countries are too willing to take?
[00:21:32] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:21:35] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:21:43] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:48] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three, the final part, of our three-part series on nuclear power.
[00:00:28] As a reminder, in part one we talked about the early days of nuclear power, Dwight Eisenhower’s famous Atoms for Peace speech, and how countries adopted it with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.
[00:00:43] In part two we talked about an event that turned excitement into fear and opposition: the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
[00:00:53] And in today’s episode, we are going to be talking about the state of nuclear power today, and what this means for nuclear power in the future.
[00:01:03] OK then, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:08] On the 15th of April of last year, April of 2023, the power was turned off at three nuclear power plants in Germany.
[00:01:18] Not just any three. The last three.
[00:01:22] Germany went from a country that had built 36 nuclear reactors, which provided at their peak 30% of the nation’s power, down to 0.
[00:01:34] It was a spectacular reversal of policy, and is emblematic of the fate that nuclear power has had in many countries.
[00:01:45] In Germany, nuclear power was initially met with mixed excitement when the first domestic nuclear power plant came online in 1961, but the 1970s saw a growing anti-nuclear movement.
[00:02:00] Nuclear power was associated with nuclear weapons, there was the issue of nuclear waste, and there were unanswered questions about the environmental impact of nuclear power.
[00:02:12] These questions translated into large-scale protests, and then in the 1980s, the anti-nuclear movement morphed into its own political party in the form of The Greens, which won 6% of the vote in the 1983 federal elections.
[00:02:29] Then, in 1986, not so far away from Germany, Chernobyl happened.
[00:02:36] Anti-nuclear sentiment ratcheted up a notch, and by 2000 there was an official agreement between the German government and the energy sector to phase out nuclear power.
[00:02:50] And just over 20 years later, it happened.
[00:02:54] Germany is now nuclear power free.
[00:02:58] When the last power plant wound down its generators for the very last time, it evoked very different emotions.
[00:03:07] To the Greens, it was something they had been fighting for for the best part of half a century. It was the end of an environmentally unfriendly, dangerous and unsustainable power source, and the sign of a bright step forward towards a renewable, green, sustainable energy future.
[00:03:27] To others, a minority of others in Germany, I should add, it was a step backwards.
[00:03:33] Shutting off domestic nuclear power as an option meant more reliance on dirty fossil fuels such as coal and gas, it meant greater reliance on Russia, and it would result in the German consumer paying more for less environmentally friendly electricity.
[00:03:51] So, before addressing the arguments on both sides of the nuclear debate, let us first take a look at the state of nuclear energy around the world today.
[00:04:03] Today, there are around 440 nuclear reactors in 32 different countries, which provide around 10% of the world’s energy.
[00:04:14] But, that number is very different on a country-by-country basis.
[00:04:21] Germany, as you heard, has no nuclear power plants.
[00:04:25] Neighbouring France, on the other hand, gets around 70% of its power from nuclear sources, and is the third largest nuclear producer in the world, after the United States and China.
[00:04:38] In fact, France generates so much energy from nuclear sources that it is a net energy exporter, meaning that it sells electricity to other countries.
[00:04:51] And of its three largest energy customers, two–Germany and Italy–are countries that turned their backs on nuclear power, so even though Germans and Italians are nuclear power plant free, they are most certainly not nuclear energy free.
[00:05:08] If you’re wondering who the other top-three customer is, it’s the UK, which does have its own nuclear energy sector, but turns to France when there is particularly high domestic demand and it needs a bit of a top-up.
[00:05:23] So, to recap, there are currently just under 500 nuclear reactors worldwide, producing around 10% of the world’s power.
[00:05:33] Interestingly, this number has hardly changed since the early 1980s.
[00:05:40] This doesn’t mean that no nuclear power plants have been built, quite the opposite.
[00:05:44] Around 300 new nuclear reactors have been built since Chernobyl, with a large proportion of those coming from Asia, and there are dozens more currently under construction, again, primarily in Asia.
[00:05:58] But these new reactors have largely been offset by the decommissioning of old reactors, especially in countries that have chosen to phase out nuclear power, like Germany and Italy, meaning that the total number of nuclear reactors worldwide has not really changed.
[00:06:17] So, why this division?
[00:06:20] Why are some countries rushing towards nuclear power, and others abandoning it?
[00:06:28] The early promise of nuclear power was that it was going to be a cheap, abundant, clean and safe source of electricity.
[00:06:37] So, let’s look at these in detail to see whether nuclear has achieved each of its promises.
[00:06:45] First, let’s talk about cost.
[00:06:48] The measure that analysts use here is the total cost per unit of electricity produced, which takes into account everything that goes into creating the electricity: mining the fossil fuels, in the case of coal, oil and gas, building the power plants, building a dam in the case of hydroelectric power, installing the solar panels, and of course the ongoing operational costs of generating the electricity.
[00:07:17] It can cost anywhere from a couple of billion dollars to 10 billion dollars to build a nuclear power plant, and although the major costs are related to construction, the operational costs of nuclear energy are not insignificant.
[00:07:35] And unlike almost every other energy source, these costs have increased, not decreased.
[00:07:43] This is primarily to do with increasing safety and regulatory requirements, which few are arguing against, but it is completely the opposite of what has happened to something like solar, for example, which has come down in cost by a whopping 90% in the past 10 years alone.
[00:08:03] As a result, when compared to almost every other source of energy, nuclear power is still not cheap.
[00:08:11] Its supporters, however, argue that this is not a failure of nuclear energy per se, but a product of the fact that government investment in nuclear energy has been dwarfed by investment in renewable technologies.
[00:08:27] If governments had invested as much in nuclear as they had in solar and wind technology, then the price would have come down even further, so this is a direct result of anti-nuclear policy, not any inbuilt failure of nuclear energy.
[00:08:44] Now, as to the question of abundance, of whether nuclear energy is truly renewable, by the standard definition it is not renewable.
[00:08:55] Nuclear power requires uranium, of which there is a finite amount. By some estimates, there is only enough uranium for another 20 years, while other estimates put it at 80 or 90 years.
[00:09:10] However, this is hotly debated.
[00:09:14] Firstly, there is the argument that mining companies always underestimate the total reserves, because the process of locating and proving reserves is expensive. In other words, there is no reason to suggest that the world is running out of Uranium just because we don’t have the exact locations and details of every single Uranium deposit; more will be found to be used for many, many years to come.
[00:09:41] And secondly, there is the more interesting argument that nuclear waste, the toxic byproduct of producing nuclear energy, can actually be reused again and again.
[00:09:54] So we have a load more fuel just sitting there, and this can be used multiple times to generate more electricity.
[00:10:03] Not only this, but reusing nuclear waste also reduces its radioactivity levels, so if countries heavily invested in reusing their nuclear waste, not only would this reduce the need for new Uranium mining, but it would also help address the question of the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power.
[00:10:25] Now, the third promise of nuclear power was that it was going to be clean.
[00:10:32] Ever since the industrial era, and still today, the primary way that humans have generated electricity has been by burning fossil fuels.
[00:10:43] Coal, oil, and natural gas, they all work beautifully well as a way to generate electricity, apart from the fact that burning them releases all sorts of chemicals into the atmosphere that causes air pollution and climate change.
[00:10:59] Now, when nuclear power was first proposed, the attraction around cleanliness had nothing to do with climate change; it was that people wouldn’t have to live near large chimneys that billowed nasty black smoke into the atmosphere.
[00:11:15] Nuclear power stations might have large chimneys, but what they release is water vapour, it is steam.
[00:11:24] There have been accusations about plants occasionally releasing trace elements of other chemicals, but the steam coming from the chimney of a nuclear plant is not dangerous.
[00:11:35] So is nuclear power “clean”?
[00:11:40] Well, when trying to calculate the environmental impact of an energy source, like when calculating the financial cost, analysts take into account all of the emissions that go into producing a unit of electricity.
[00:11:55] In the case of nuclear energy, there is the environmental impact of building a nuclear power station, the not-insignificant environmental cost of mining the Uranium, the transportation and all of that, but when you look at the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of electricity produced by nuclear power, it compares incredibly favourably.
[00:12:18] To give you some numbers on this, nuclear power emits three tonnes of CO2 for every gigawatt hour, which is roughly the energy needs for 160 people in Europe.
[00:12:31] Now, this probably doesn’t mean very much as an isolated fact, three tonnes of CO2 per gigawatt hour, but this compares to 820 tonnes for coal, 720 for oil and 490 for natural gas.
[00:12:49] In other words, coal emits 273 times more CO2 per unit of electricity, and even innocent-sounding natural gas emits 163 times more.
[00:13:03] And even compared to universally accepted “green” technologies, nuclear power scores very favourably.
[00:13:11] It emits up to 76 times less CO2 than biomass, and 11 times less than hydropower.
[00:13:19] It is even lower on a CO2 emissions level than solar and wind energy when you take everything into account.
[00:13:27] On almost every possible emissions scale, it is as clean as it gets.
[00:13:33] But, and it is a big but, moving onto the final question of safety, there is the large question of nuclear waste.
[00:13:42] Producing nuclear energy results in highly radioactive material that will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
[00:13:51] Yes, there might have been no major incidents relating to nuclear waste storage to date, but this is only the very start of the nuclear waste lifecycle. It’s like saying a runner setting off on an ultra-marathon takes their first couple of steps and then assumes that just because the first two steps were fine, the next 100,000 will be fine as well.
[00:14:15] It is, by definition, a problem that will be left to future generations to resolve, not just my kids or their great grandchildren, it is even more extreme than people today having to deal with a problem left by the Ancient Greeks, so the argument goes.
[00:14:33] Then there is the question of what happens if there is an accident or a deliberate attack, are we really so stupid as to knowingly and willingly choose a power source that creates such a potentially deadly byproduct and have no real solution about what to do with it?
[00:14:51] But on the other hand, proponents of nuclear energy argue that the problem of what to do with nuclear waste has largely been solved. It can be stored safely and securely, the radioactivity levels decay at such a speed that after a few hundred years it is no longer nearly so dangerous, there haven’t been any incidents to date, and there is ever-evolving technology about reprocessing it and improving how it is stored.
[00:15:19] In short, it isn’t a genuine concern.
[00:15:22] And to address the additional part of the safety issue, there is the question of the safety of a nuclear power plant itself.
[00:15:31] Chernobyl, as we talked about in the last episode, was a tragic example of what can happen when things go wrong at a nuclear power plant.
[00:15:41] There had been an incident at the Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, 8 years before Chernobyl, when there was a partial core meltdown, and the most recent disaster at a nuclear power plant happened at Fukushima, in 2011.
[00:15:56] All three of these nuclear accidents, to different degrees, severely damaged public trust in the safety of nuclear energy.
[00:16:05] If a mechanical failure, or human error, or a natural disaster can have such an impact on a nuclear power station, which is home to such toxic and radioactive material, then surely we can’t continue to call them “safe”.
[00:16:22] But, the proponents of nuclear energy argue, these accidents simply couldn’t happen anymore. Modern nuclear plants are far more secure and safety is taken far more seriously, it simply wouldn’t happen.
[00:16:37] What’s more, these three accidents caused very few deaths.
[00:16:43] Nobody died in the Three Mile Island incident, Chernobyl was only responsible for around 30 direct deaths, and Fukushima only resulted in one suspected death, which happened four years later.
[00:16:58] Even if we take the much higher estimated numbers from Chernobyl, so 200,000, total deaths from nuclear power pale in comparison to deaths from fossil fuel pollution.
[00:17:11] Yes, fossil fuel pollution might be less visible, and there isn’t the scary issue of cell-destroying radioactive material, but fossil fuels have killed many more people, not just in total but on a “deaths per unit of electricity produced” scale.
[00:17:31] To put a number on this, on a “deaths per unit of electricity produced”, nuclear energy, for all of the scaremongering, to date has been 1% as deadly as fossil fuels. In other words, every unit of electricity produced by fossil fuels has caused 100 times more deaths than a unit produced by nuclear power.
[00:17:57] And perhaps even more surprising is that, according to one study, on a “deaths per unit of electricity produced”, nuclear power is even less deadly than renewable energy like solar, hydro and wind.
[00:18:12] Now, you might be thinking “That can’t be true”, but this takes into account stuff like industrial accidents when putting up wind farms or solar panels, or hydroelectric dams breaking.
[00:18:24] The point is, in the 60-plus years of nuclear power, on a per unit of electricity produced, it is about the least deadly source of power available.
[00:18:36] All of this puts nuclear energy in an unusual situation.
[00:18:42] It is both loved and loathed by environmentalists, seen as a vital tool in the fight against fossil fuels and a dangerous risk to the environment and a barrier to the adoption of truly renewable energy sources.
[00:18:56] Greenpeace, perhaps the best-known opponent to nuclear energy, makes its position abundantly clear, writing “Greenpeace has always fought – and will continue to fight – vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.” End quote.
[00:19:24] But other environmental groups, such as Environmental Progress, argue that it is a necessary key tool in the fight against dependence on fossil fuels.
[00:19:37] It isn’t the solution, but it is part of the solution.
[00:19:42] Nuclear reactors are safer than ever before, new technologies will bring the cost down, they argue, and these fears about catastrophic nuclear meltdowns are, quite simply, unfounded.
[00:19:56] Now, to wrap things up, as of the time of writing this episode, there are 59 nuclear reactors currently under construction, with two-thirds of those in Asia.
[00:20:08] It might sound like a lot, but it’s about half what it was at its peak, in the early 1980s.
[00:20:16] While many European countries are turning their backs on nuclear energy, and have either shut down all plants or are in the process of doing so, other countries, principally in Asia, are investing heavily into it.
[00:20:31] The International Energy Agency predicts that the nuclear energy sector could increase in size by 2.5 times by 2050, with practically all of that growth coming from Asia.
[00:20:44] So this presents an interesting dynamic; a nuclear-powered East, and a largely nuclear-shunning Europe.
[00:20:54] Time will only tell which is the smarter decision.
[00:20:59] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the future of nuclear power.
[00:21:04] And with that comes the end of this three-part mini-series on this complicated, controversial and important subject.
[00:21:11] I hope it's been an interesting one, and if you had strong opinions on the matter beforehand, well that you might have learnt something new.
[00:21:19] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:21:22] What do you think about nuclear power? Is it a potential solution in the fight against climate change, or is it a risk that countries are too willing to take?
[00:21:32] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:21:35] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:21:43] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:48] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
