The recent explosions at the Japanese nuclear power plant at Fukushima, resulting from Tsunami devastation during the past few days and with more bad news likely to follow, are bound to have a major impact on the global nuclear power industry, including India. At the turn of the century, analysts had begun to talk of a possible “nuclear renaissance’. This was spurred by the rising costs of fossil fuels, concerns over climate change resulting from carbon-intensive energy use and helped by receding public memories of the nuclear disasters at Three Mile Island in the U.S. (1979) and at Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986). Taking into account the time lag associated with construction, the global nuclear power industry grew from 1 GW only in 1960 to 100 GW by 1980, 300 GW by 1990, but only 360 GW by 2005.
The slowdown in later years has been attributed to mounting project costs and to concerns over safety. The public mind associates nuclear power with all the negativity inherent in nuclear weapons. Nuclear power stations are often depicted by opponents of nuclear power as virtual nuclear bombs ticking away in our midst, likely to blow up as a result of accident, human error or design defect. There are also fears of what radiation leakage from such plants can do in causing a range of health hazards, including cancer. The disposal of highly toxic radioactive waste adds to public concerns. The latest developments in Japan are likely to revive and reinforce all these fears, even though some are exaggerated and not always based on scientific assessment.
It is estimated that currently the world has 448 nuclear power plants operating in 30 countries and with a total capacity of 376 GW. These plants generate 15 per cent of the world’s electricity and as much as 30 per cent in Japan and 80 per cent in France. A major expansion of nuclear power is being planned in the next two decades. It is projected that by 2020, 73 GW of additional capacity will come on stream and by 2030 there may be nearly 600 GW of nuclear power capacity world-wide. Until recently, it was expected that the rate of construction would accelerate over the next several years. Will these expectations be belied?
In the 1980s, two-thirds of all nuclear power plants, mainly in Europe and the US, were cancelled under the impact of the Three Mile and Chernobyl accidents, though compounded by higher costs and other factors.
The nuclear renaissance that is now under threat has been largely the result of rising demand from countries in Asia, particularly, China and India. China currently operates 13 reactors with a 10.2 GW capacity and has 25 new reactors under construction. Its target is to achieve a capacity of 75 GW by 2020. India has 22 reactors with a total capacity of 4 GW but has plans to achieve 20 GW by 2020 and 60 GW by 2030-31. Together, the Chinese and Indian nuclear capacity additions constitute by far the largest part of capacity addition in the next couple of decades. Whether nuclear renaissance survives the Fukushima disaster will essentially depend upon whether these two Asian countries alter their plans.
The latest reaction from China appears unequivocal. It intends to go ahead with its planned nuclear power expansion though it intends to absorb the necessary lessons from the Japanese experience. In India, there has been an immediate and hopefully reassuring decision to thoroughly review the safety standards and procedures at all nuclear power plants. Undoubtedly, there will be a careful scrutiny of what went wrong at Fukushima and implement preventive measures. However, unlike in China it will be easy for mass media and anti-nuclear NGOs in India to play on public fears to retard, if not derail, the ambitious nuclear plans that were made possible by the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement in 2008. At the minimum, government may be compelled to adopt more elaborate and expensive safety methods to reassure a more fearful populace, thereby adding to the cost of nuclear power.
It is worth noting that major nuclear accidents that have occurred so far have all been in the developed world. The record of developing countries like India has been rated as among the best in the world. The people of India deserve to be advised in the most transparent manner possible, the risks as well as benefits from nuclear power and the credible ways in which the risks can be minimised. Public confidence can be built only if an effort is made to educate public opinion on nuclear energy and create an intelligent awareness of the technical, political and economic risks involved in comparison to other energy options.
At the Nuclear Security Summit convened by President Obama last year in Washington, it was agreed that international cooperation must be pursued in ensuring the safety and security of all nuclear and fissile material, living as we are in an age where non-state actors and terrorist groups could gain access to such materials and trigger a nuclear catastrophe in any part of the world. The future of the nuclear power industry requires a similar spirit of cooperation in ensuring the highest possible safety standards and security of our nuclear power plants, the formulation and adoption of global benchmarks and a world-wide disaster management network to help countries affected to draw upon the wisdom and resources from across the globe to cope with accidents of the kind being witnessed in Fukushima. For what happens to a nuclear power plant in one country is not just a matter of concern for that country alone. The nature of nuclear fallout and radiation is such that national borders become meaningless.
At the Washington Summit, India, China and Japan, all Asian countries, each announced the setting up of respective Nuclear Security Centres, open to participation by other countries, to promote security of nuclear materials, capacity building and research into safer and proliferation-resistant technologies. The three countries should take the lead to follow up on their initiatives and establish a collaborative effort to ensure the safe and less risky development of nuclear power in the 21st century. The fate of nuclear renaissance may well depend upon the success of their efforts.
The author is a former foreign secretary and currently senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research
