Civil Nuclear Power Might Be Too Hot to Handle
Is nuclear power the cheap energy and climate change holy grail? In their latest Oxford Research Group Briefing Paper, Frank Barnaby and James Kemp say no. Apart from the security problems a nuclear renaissance would bring, the infrastructure required would be beyond the industry’s capacity. Just increasing the share of energy derived from nuclear power to one-third (twice its current level), for the world population of 10 billion expected by 2075, would require opening four new nuclear power plants a month. The authors also dispute the climate benefit of atomic energy: as uranium mining is a very CO2 intensive process, the jury is still out as to whether the atomic energy industry as a whole has a net reduction effect or not.
