The Need for Nuclear Power

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2000

Article preview: first 500 of 4,735 words total.

Summary:  The world needs more energy, and there is one clean, efficient, and safe way to get it: nuclear power. As the global appetite for electricity grows, atomic power -- which scarcely pollutes, generates relatively little solid waste, and is far more efficient than the alternatives -- should be embraced. A worldwide effort to develop and share nuclear technology is in all our interests.

Richard Rhodes is the author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Dark Sun, and other books. Denis Beller is a nuclear engineer and Technical Staff Member at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

A CLEAN BREAK

The world needs more energy. Energy multiplies human labor, increasing productivity. It builds and lights schools, purifies water, powers farm machinery, drives sewing machines and robot assemblers, stores and moves information. World population is steadily increasing, having passed six billion in 1999. Yet one-third of that number -- two billion people -- lack access to electricity. Development depends on energy, and the alternative to development is suffering: poverty, disease, and death. Such conditions create instability and the potential for widespread violence. National security therefore requires developed nations to help increase energy production in their more populous developing counterparts. For the sake of safety as well as security, that increased energy supply should come from diverse sources.

"At a global level," the British Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering estimate in a 1999 report on nuclear energy and climate change, "we can expect our consumption of energy at least to double in the next 50 years and to grow by a factor of up to five in the next 100 years as the world population increases and as people seek to improve their standards of living." Even with vigorous conservation, world energy production would have to triple by 2050 to support consumption at a mere one-third of today's U.S. per capita rate. The International Energy Agency (IEA) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) projects 65 percent growth in world energy demand by 2020, two-thirds of that coming from developing countries. "Given the levels of consumption likely in the future," the Royal Society and Royal Academy caution, "it will be an immense challenge to meet the global demand for energy without unsustainable long-term damage to the environment." That damage includes surface and air pollution and global warming.

Most of the world's energy today comes from petroleum (39.5 percent), coal (24.2 percent), natural gas (22.1 percent), hydroelectric power (6.9 percent), and nuclear power (6.3 percent). Although oil and coal still dominate, their market fraction began declining decades ago. Meanwhile, natural gas and nuclear power have steadily increased their share and should continue to do so. Contrary to the assertions of antinuclear organizations, nuclear power is neither dead nor dying. France generates 79 percent of its electricity with nuclear power; Belgium, 60 percent; Sweden, 42 percent; Switzerland, 39 percent; Spain, 37 percent; Japan, 34 percent; the United Kingdom, 21 percent; and the United States (the largest producer of nuclear energy in the world), 20 percent. South Korea and China have announced ambitious plans to expand their nuclear-power capabilities -- in the case of South Korea, by building 16 new plants, increasing capacity by more than 100 percent. With 434 operating reactors worldwide, nuclear power is meeting the annual electrical needs of more than a billion people.

In America and around the globe, nuclear safety and efficiency have improved significantly since 1990. In 1998, unit capacity factor (the fraction of a power plant's capacity that it actually generates) for operating reactors reached record levels. The average U.S. ...

End of preview: first 500 of 4,735 words total.