This blog is a summary of three books: A Bright Future & Nuclear Power: A Very Short Introduction & How To Avoid a Climate Disaster. It’s a recap of what I learned — an advocacy for more nuclear power to decarbonize the planet.
Tl;dr
[Problem] Fossil fuels (coal, oil, and methane) make up ~85% of the world’s energy production. They are the main sources of greenhouse emission. 51 billion tons get added every year. We have to reduce this emission to nearly zero by 2050 to prevent catastrophic consequences.
[Solution] Solving climate change does not require us to produce and consume less energy. We can fix climate change while prospering economically by following the footsteps of Sweden and France — a rapid decarbonization through nuclear power.
The rest of this blog is broken into Q&A. There are some cross-references between the sections, but feel free to read them out of order.
What is causing the climate change, and why is that bad?
CO2* occurs naturally, helping our planet stay warm by trapping radiation from leaving the atmosphere. Unfortunately, humans changed the balancing act by burning fossil fuels and dumping uncontrollable amounts of CO2 into air since the Industrial Revolution.
*Greenhouse gases compose of more than just carbon dioxide. For simplicity, I’m referring CO2 in this blog as all carbon dioxide equivalents, including methane, nitrous oxide, etc.
Three fossil fuels — coal, oil, and methane (gas) make up ~85% of the world’s energy production. They are the main sources of CO2 emission, and we’re pumping more into air everyday.
Accumulation of CO2 leads to the rise in our planet’s temperature. Rise in temperate leads to consequential events like extreme weather, drought, rising ocean, etc. To put things into perspective, if we do absolutely everything right starting now, we’ll be 1.5–2C hotter by 2100. If we go business as usual, we’ll be over 4C hotter by 2100. Once we go beyond 2C, we enter uncharted territories; the exact level of catastrophe isn’t clear yet but most experts agree that it would be disastrous. We probably shouldn’t wait to find out.
Here’s an interactive site showing how the climate change is projected to affect the world and its regions as temperature rises above 2C.
How much time do we have?
Not much. Regardless of anything we do, the world will pass 1.5C+ around 2040. The Paris Agreement urged us to stay below that level, but it’s already too late. The UN established a new upper limit of 2C+. If we cut greenhouse emissions by 2–3% each year starting now, the global temperature rise is estimated to peak at around 2C by the second half of century with CO2 emissions reaching near-zero. That’s our best case.
Most experts believe 2C rise in temperature is still catastrophic. If we get our shit together and act now, our best case is still terrifying. Everyday that we don’t act aggressively, our best case gets worst. Timing is everything.
Why can’t we just spend less energy and/or be more efficient?
Unless we literally shut down the global energy usage — through extreme economic depression — no amount of conservation and efficiency will move the needle. COVID decimated the world economy, but achieved only 5% reduction in global CO2 emission. By all means, become vegans, recycle, ride bikes, but they won’t solve the problem.
It’s also important to consider that energy use per person in poorer countries is about the tenth of richer countries. People there want to become richer. They want more energy as it builds up their economy, and lifts people out of poverty. Growth from poorer countries will overwhelm our current energy supply.
How much of the problem is due to population growth?
If the poorest half of humanity ceased to exist today, population growth would be about zero, but carbon emissions wouldn’t drop by much. 40% of the world’s emissions are produced by the richest 16%. Europe, Russia, and Japan all have declining population growth, but continue to dump astronomical amounts of CO2 into air.
Ironically, the way to reduce population growth is to raise income in poor countries, which results in using more energy to build up their economy. Income and energy use go hand in hand. More energy means more CO2 unless we can scale carbon-free energy production.
Why don’t we replace fossil fuels with 100% renewable energy?
Renewables make up about ~18% of the global energy consumption. We should absolutely continue to invest in renewables. The problem is that with today’s technology they are not at the capacity to replace fossil fuels entirely. We need different energy.
Let’s start with solar. It is wonderful, but it has scaling problems for now. In theory, you would need twenty of the largest solar facility ever built at peak capacity to equal one nuclear plant. In reality, you would need many more because every night, every winter, and every cloudy day, production becomes close to zero. Backup power from fossil fuels would still be needed in the grid to offset production loss. Until we invent super cheap batteries with huge capacity, solar isn’t scalable. Leading European solar countries top out solar at 5–10% of total electricity. Wind has the same set of problems — scale & intermittency.
Related to battery technology — if we built a new Tesla-level Gigafactory every year (first one took 5 years to build), it would take sixty years to cumulatively produce enough batteries to hold just one day’s storage of the world’s electricity. Bill Gates summarized it best: “There’s no battery technology that’s even close to allowing us to take all of our energy from renewables and be able to use battery storage in order to deal not only with the 24-hour cycle but also with long periods of time where it’s cloudy and you don’t have sun or you don’t have wind.”
Two-thirds of renewable energy worldwide comes from hydroelectric power, nor solar & wind — but most of the prime sites have already been dammed.
Over time, we would naturally start using more renewables. The problem is that we are running out of time, and renewables cannot scale fast enough to rapidly decarbonize the planet yet. What’s worst is that many countries tend to add renewable plants to offset nuclear plants rather than fossil plants. Phasing out nuclear power is in direct competition to phasing out fossil fuels.
Why is nuclear power superior?
(1) Scalability & Timing
What’s different from renewables is that nuclear power can scale up faster. Fundamentally, this is because the energy in nuclear fuel is millions of times more concentrated than wind or solar power. Unlike solar, nuclear has no intermittency problem. Nuclear power produces 80–90% of capacity on average, coal at around 50–60%, and solar cells around 20%.
Sweden has already phased out fossil fuels with nuclear power plants between 1970 and 1990. Their climate solution does not come at the expense of capitalism; it’s the opposite. Sweden cut total carbon emission by half while its electricity generation more than doubled. Swedes use plenty of energy per person to stay warm and well lighted in the Scandinavian winter.
France comes second in adopting nuclear power and taxing CO2 emissions to contribute to global decarbonization. Both countries have already achieved what the rest of the world needs to achieve.
(2) Cost
Nuclear power is the only source of carbon-free energy whose electricity generation cost is on part with fossil fuels. Across Europe, nuclear electricity costs 3–5c/kWh. In South Korea, the cost is even lower. In most countries, nuclear-generated electricity is commercially competitive with fossil fuels despite the need to include the cost of capital and all waste disposal and decommissioning (factors that are not normally included for other fuels). Nuclear is also the most efficient non carbon-emitting plant, using the least material per unit of electricity generated.
When we compare the cost of nuclear power-generated electricity vs. renewables (wind, solar, biomass, etc) — it’s important to note that the market is heavily distorted by green policies that favor renewables. Even then, electricity generated from renewables is far more expensive than nuclear power or fossil fuels. Their costs will fall over time. At present time, nuclear is the most cost-effective option.
How is nuclear power generated?
Theoretically there are two ways to produce nuclear power: fusion & fission. Current generation uses fission.
Fission
- Nuclear power works by splitting large atoms to produce energy.
- Uranium is the atom of choice in nuclear power plants. At least 3% of the uranium used here are U-235, a specific isotope.
- Uranium is stacked together into sealed metal tubes called fuel rods. There are hundreds of these rods bundled together to form a fuel assembly. A reactor core is made up of hundreds of assemblies.
- Neutrons are shot into fuel rods, colliding into uranium atoms, and breaking them up. This creates a chain reaction; uranium beaks up to create more neutrons, which breaks up more uranium. Every split of uranium releases a large amount of energy in the form of heat.
- This heat is transferred outside of the reactor, most commonly water. This water turns into steam, which spins a turbine to produce electricity.
- A nuclear chain reaction is stopped with control rods made up of materials that absorb neutrons used in the chain reaction.
Fusion
Whereas the current nuclear reactors release energy by fissioning heavy nuclei, a fusion reactor does the opposite. It joins together light isotopes of hydrogen to form heavier nuclei.
Fusion is considered the future of nuclear power by many experts. Its fuel is cheaper (hydrogen not uranium). Unlike fission, there is no chain reaction to run out of control. It emits more energy. Fusion is literally how our sun works.
Shouldn’t we go 100% nuclear power?
We cannot yet. We absolutely should scale up nuclear power to its full capacity, but it should be incremental to renewables. The biggest reason why we can’t go 100% nuclear today is because nuclear power only generates electricity. There are large industrial sectors that consume non-electric sources of energy today. Take a look at transportation. Simply put, most cars cannot run on electricity. The good news is that the world is rapidly turning electric; think of Tesla. Most experts agree that as we electrify carbon-intensive processes like making steel and running cars, the world’s electricity supply will triple by 2050.
Nuclear power can generate most of the world’s electricity needs, but for reasons above, it cannot replace fossil fuels completely today. Along with more nuclear power, we need aid from renewables, and transition of energy consumption into electricity to decarbonize our planet completely.
On top of renewables and electrification, we should be adding carbon tax the way Sweden has done since 1991. It is currently the world’s highest carbon tax at more than $150/ton. Sweden figured out how to fight climate change; the rest of the world needs to follow.
Aren’t nuclear power plants dangerous?
Absolutely not. Much of the concern comes down to a gut-level fear of radiation. Fixing climate change requires setting aside habitual fears and understanding that carbon-free nuclear power is vastly safer than fossil fuels. Simply put, even if a Boeing jet hijacked by terrorists flew straight into a nuclear power plant, it wouldn’t cause nuclear radiation at the scale that would impact our lives.
Let’s start by observing that in the US, nuclear power continues to produce a fifth of the nation’s electricity, but never killed anyone. In contrast, coal is estimated to kill millions of people through emission that give people cancer and other diseases. Even when you factor in total deaths from Chernobyl and Fukushima, the comparison is stark.
We would certainly face a moral dilemma if fossil fuels were safer, but the situation is the opposite. People fear radiation, but we actually get higher dose of radiation living next to a coal plant than a nuclear plant. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the largest human-contribution to radiation comes from burning coal. People shut down nuclear power plants over fears of safety but allow coal plants largely because of psychological reasons.
In the 2011 Fukushima disaster, the WHO estimated radiation exposure at 10–50 mSv/year in the most affected areas and 1–10 mSv in the rest of the surroundings. In comparison, granite from Grand Central Terminal in New York radiates about 5 mSv/year. Separately, a single CT scan exposes you with ten times more radiation than what an average nuclear worker is exposed to in a year.
Imagine if people got together and said “Let’s stop driving cars. They’re dangerous!” Perhaps what we need is a rebrand to avoid the word ‘nuclear’.
But… What about Chernobyl and Fukushima!?
Two important things to understand here:
- The impact of Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents have been sensationalized
- These accidents had nothing to do with the “nuclear” parts of the plants
(1) The actual impact was sensationalized
The health risks of Fukushima were so low that the optimal response would have been to avoid evacuation. 18,000 people from the earthquake/tsunami died, but the “nuclear disaster” killed nobody. However, the world panicked with politicians siding with forces against nuclear power. Japan took extreme measures, shutting down fifty-four nuclear power plants, and replaced them with fossil plants. Germany followed suit. Radiation doesn’t kill people; the fear of radiation does.
Chernobyl was by far the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. 31 people died from the immediate result, mostly first responders who rushed to the scene to put out fire. UN estimates up to 50 deaths directly attributed to the accident, with an upper limit of 4000 people potentially dying from cancer as the result of radiation exposure in the future.
The point isn’t that these accidents are ok — but rather the world’s worst nuclear power accidents were far less deadly than many recent industrial accidents. The record of nuclear power is that a handful of people have died over the span of 16,000 reactor-years, but we continue to shut down nuclear plants in exchange for fossil fuels. We are solving one problem by creating vastly greater problems for ourselves.
(2) These failures had nothing to do with the “nuclear” aspect of the plants
These accidents were due to failures unconnected to the nuclear aspects of the plants. For instance — the situation at Chernobyl was so bad (illegal reactor experiments) that it would never have been licensed in North America or Western Europe to begin with. Chernobyl carried a reactor without containment structure, followed series of operator errors, and the Soviet government tried to keep it a secret which compounded the damage.
In the case of Fukushima, the reactors depended on backup generators to keep coolants flowing. All of these generators were flooded by the tsunami. The problem was not the reactor itself but the decision to locate all the backup generators in a location vulnerable to flooding.
The lessons drawn here are that humans are fallible, and reactor designs should receive standardized license for construction.
What about nuclear waste?
We should start off with an important comparison. For electricity to be generated entirely by nuclear power for Americans in their lifetime, its waste would weigh 2lbs. In comparison, if the same amount of electricity were produced by coal, its waste would weigh 136,000lbs.
Radiation from nuclear waste decays quickly, and becomes safer over the years. The problem is that people fear long-term storage of nuclear waste as though any amount of radiation leakage would be catastrophic. As discussed previously, our world is already filled with radiation, and the volume we’re dealing here isn’t catastrophic. People urge nuclear waste to be quarantined forever in a guaranteed fashion — yet few consider how we treat other toxic wastes. Many industrial activities produce much larger quantities of highly toxic and lethal waste that do not even have “half lives” (i.e. they don’t naturally decay like nuclear waste). In general, the safety standards for nuclear waste storage is already far more strict than any other industrial toxic wastes.
Currently, the US policy requires guaranteed nuclear waste storage up to 10,000 years. Many argue about the dangers of risk beyond the 10,000 year mark, but fail to realize that without change, we won’t be around 10,000 years from now to deal with nuclear management.
Why aren’t we rushing to build new nuclear power plants?
If nuclear power is so competitive, why is there no global rush to build new nuclear power plants? It comes down to two things: artificial costs & anti-nuclear narrative.
(1) Artificial costs
Let’s start with a comparison. South Korea constructs nuclear plants for about $2B per gigawatt. These plants generate electricity for 3.7 cents/kWh, cheaper than coal (5.6 cents) and hydro (16.2 cents). In the UK, nuclear power plants cost $8B. In the US — $12B. We have to understand why.
In both the UK and US following incidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, regulatory authorities changed plant requirements that were extremely costly and time-consuming to implement.
The bureaucracy between getting a license to build and a license to operate new plants, often involving extensive public participation, continue to delay construction.
Non-uniform plant designs reduce economies of scale. Equipments are custom-built for each plant, and each design has to obtain a separate licensing approval. UK and US should start to do what South Korea does — build successive plants of the same design with government backing for the long-term investment.
US imposes near-zero risk policy for nuclear power plants — which in turn explodes the cost of power plants. In any real-world policy, zero risk means infinite cost.
While renewables receive heavy subsidies to compete with fossil fuels, nuclear does not. The US’ approach to nuclear power changes every four to eight years with new administration. It’s hard to make progress if every few years you have to kill projects and start from scratch.
(2) Anti-nuclear narrative
Politics have challenged nuclear power adoption for decades. Anti-nuclear groups actively lobby, and shape public opinion. It is ironic to find some groups opposing nuclear power are the most vocal about climate change.
At first — the anti-nuclear narrative was about danger. After decades of exemplary safety record, this argument got thin. Next — it was about nuclear weapon proliferation. Again, the record shows otherwise; nuclear power is not a viable pathway to obtaining highly enriched uranium needed for weaponization. Then it was about nuclear power being too costly. As discussed above, nuclear power should be the cheapest carbon-free electricity. Nuclear power in Sweden and Korea have been highly competitive for decades.
The current anti-nuclear narrative is that we should rely on renewables. But in every single case where nuclear power plants shut down in exchange for renewables, CO2 emissions have gone up. Renewables are simply not scalable enough yet. In California — it has been closing all of its nuclear power plants in favor of renewables. However, more fossil fuels were added to replace the lost electricity production.
