Introduction
Since the Industrial Revolution, the world has relied on fossil fuels to power increasing energy demands, but the climate crisis is forcing countries to reduce emissions. Nuclear energy might not be renewable energy, but it lasts for a long time and is clean for the environment, releasing very few greenhouse gases while still producing a significant amount of energy for our power grid. So why hasn’t this fuel replaced every other energy source? It’s because of a combination of economic issues that we are yet to fix as well as countries’ split opinions on it. The longer we use fossil fuels, the more harm we cause to the Earth, which means we need to find clean energy sources that can phase them out and nuclear energy could be one. While nuclear energy can’t be a viable energy source on its own, we should try to find out if it can accompany other energy sources to create a sustainable energy grid.
The political duality of nuclear energy
Despite European countries’ positive attitudes towards clean energy like wind or hydroelectricity, they differ in their opinions of nuclear power. Accidents like Fukushima have worsened public opinion on nuclear energy and caused countries like Germany to stay far from it, while some countries like France have developed their nuclear infrastructure extensively. Georgi Chankov, an International Relations professor at the University of National and World Economy, and Nikolay Hinov, a Power Electronics professor at the Technical University of Sofia, found that France depends on nuclear energy for 75% of the whole country’s electricity (Chankov and Hinov 533). One reason they are doing this is that it reduces dependency on a single supplier for fuel supplies. While it remains controversial in the EU and US, nuclear power is growing in popularity throughout the world, however, this may not be entirely due to innocent intentions.
For most people, the first thing that comes to mind when they hear the word “nuclear” would be nuclear weapons, a controversial topic nowadays. With so many nuclear-weapons sanctions, developing countries must find ways to conceal their weapons development programmes. A study published in the peer-reviewed academic journal International Affairs on the proliferation of nuclear energy in the Gulf concluded that “any country with significant nuclear technology should probably be regarded as a latent nuclear weapon power,” however only 1/3 of countries that possess nuclear energy programmes have weaponized them (Jackson 1157). Many countries in the Persian Gulf that are looking into nuclear energy, like the UAE, are oil-rich and dependent on it for their economy, so why would they try nuclear programmes? It may be just to futureproof their economies with a reliable energy source that could replace their oil fields when fossil fuels become obsolete. Unfortunately, the West hasn’t seen it this way and still doesn’t support nuclear energy programmes in developing countries, since some countries like Iran and North Korea have chosen to weaponize their programmes against sanctions. Ian Jackson mentions how Iran has continued to develop their nuclear enrichment facilities and their rejection of western offers of fuel supplies has led to worries of militarization (Jackson 1160). North Korea on the other hand, doesn’t try to hide its rising stockpile and Mujid Kazimi et al., a renowned nuclear scientist, wrote in a journal article that this rapid development was assisted by power plant designs sent by the US that couldn’t be weaponized, and centrifuges sent by Pakistan for weaponizing the power plants in exchange for missile designs (Kazimi et al. 408). It is important to note that, in the case of Iran and many other developing countries, there isn’t always definitive proof that developing nuclear energy programmes will lead to militarization and the decision not to support developing energy programmes is coming from developed countries in the West that already have nuclear arsenals.
Countries like the US condemn foreign nuclear enrichment projects yet spend billions on beefing up their nuclear arsenal built from their power plants. This reveals the real issue behind the political divide, money. A Forbes article by William Hartung, a political scientist focusing on the US military budget, found that government contractors assigned to build warheads and delivery vehicles have been given up to $2 trillion by the Pentagon (Hartung 3). He also found that “major nuclear weapons contractors made a total of over $119 million in campaign contributions from 2012 to 2020,” perhaps explaining the Pentagon’s willingness to throw cash at them (Hartung 5). Nevertheless, while nuclear energy might be controversial in its politics, the other side of the coin that explains nuclear energy’s popularity stagnation is the economics behind it: the energy provided for electrical grids and the money spent on waste storage facilities.
The money behind nuclear power plants
One of the biggest downsides to nuclear energy is having to store waste products. According to Adam Vaughan, an energy correspondent for the Guardian, the UK currently has 133,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste that is “projected to swell to 4 million tonnes in the future” (Vaughan 2). Radioactive waste is currently stored above ground, however, there are plans to make underground storage facilities that reduce the risk of contamination. Unfortunately, building these is expensive. The UK’s planned facilities were “estimated to cost between £12 billion and £20 billion,” but now have increased to £53 billion due to increased waste costs (Vaughan 2). If nuclear energy is to be a viable power source, the cost of storage must be reduced significantly. Another thing about nuclear power plants is that, according to Andries Lombaard and Ewert Kleynhans at North-West University, they “have a front-loaded cost structure, as they are initially expensive to build, but have relatively low operating costs” (Lombaard and Kleynhans). However most renewable energies are also front-loaded, so this isn’t a con for nuclear energy. Chankov and Hinov also state in their article that “one ton of natural uranium can produce more than 40 million kilowatt-hours of electricity,” which is the equivalent of burning “16,000 tons of coal or 80,000 barrels of oil” and makes nuclear power more cost-efficient than coal-powered plants (Chankov and Hinov 533). Speaking of fossil fuel plants, James Ellis, a retired admiral, and George Shultz, a former secretary of state, said in an article that “nuclear power plants each employ about six hundred people, about ten times more than an equivalent natural gas plant” and most of these employees are veterans, giving jobs to people who would otherwise have trouble finding employment (Ellis and Shultz 142). Costs like waste disposal and fuel costs, as well as some of the political issues of nuclear energy, might be solved by introducing a new reactor type, one powered by thorium.
Thorium as a possible solution
Traditional nuclear power plants have the risk of being weaponized, which is a political hurdle towards them becoming mainstream. Muzid Kazimi et al. explain that the Radkowsky model thorium reactor solves this issue, as it produces 60-70% less plutonium which makes it “far more difficult to weaponize” as it’ll have a “low explosive yield” and gives off too much heat (Kazimi et al. 413, 415; Jackson 1169). Kazimi also describes how it’s also more difficult for terrorist groups to extract plutonium from the reactors for creating a bomb than current reactors (Kazimi et al. 413). The reduction of plutonium produced, as well as the 30% less uranium needed found by Banerjee et al. in their article published in Current Science, reduces waste which can help with the costs of disposal facilities (Banerjee et al. 1607). Fuel costs are unclear, as Kajimi mentions that their study found “that thorium-based fuels could cost anywhere from 10% less to about 10% more than current fuels” (Kazimi et al. 415). Another disadvantage is that the “manufacture of the fuel and its management within the reactor” is more complicated (Kazimi et al. 414). Considering all these points, thorium should be considered as a possible fuel for nuclear power plants as it addresses many of its issues, increasing its viability as an alternative power source.
Work Cited
Banerjee, S., et al. “Nuclear Power from Thorium: Different Options.” Current Science (00113891), vol. 111, no. 10, Nov. 2016, pp. 1607–23. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.18520/cs/v111/i10/1607-1623.
Chankov, Georgi, and Nikolay Hinov. “Testing the Applicability of ‘Ecologically Friendly’ Energy Sources in Household Electricity Consumption in Bulgaria.” TEM Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, May 2021, pp. 531–39. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.18421/TEM102-07.
Ellis Jr, James O., and George P. Shultz. “Chain Reactions: Before We Jettison Nuclear Energy, Let’s Count the Costs: To the Economy, to the Environment, and to National Security.” Hoover Digest: Research & Opinion on Public Policy, no. 1, Winter 2018, pp. 139–44. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=127971840&site=ehost-live.
JACKSON, IAN. “Nuclear Energy and Proliferation Risks: Myths and Realities in the Persian Gulf.” International Affairs, vol. 85, no. 6, Nov. 2009, pp. 1157–72. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2346.2009.00855.x.
Kazimi, Mujid S. “Thorium Fuel for Nuclear Energy.” American Scientist, vol. 91, no. 5, Sept. 2003, pp. 408–15. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1511/2003.5.408.
Lombaard, Andries Lodewikus, and Ewert P.J. Kleynhans. "The feasibility of a nuclear renaissance: a cost-benefit analysis of nuclear energy as a source of electricity." Acta Commercii, vol. 16, no. 1, Jan. 2016. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A490986914/AONE?u=j043905006&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=bf9c17c7. Accessed 6 Oct. 2022.
Vaughan, Adam. “Price Tag Rises for UK’s Planned Nuclear Waste Facility.” New Scientist, vol. 253, no. 3376, Mar. 2022, p. 19. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=155519068&site=ehost-live.
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