The ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan has given the world reason to stop and think about whether we can rely on nuclear power. According to UN estimates, the world’s population is expected to grow to in excess of 8 billion people by 2030. Demand for energy between 2007 and 2030 is estimated to be increasing by around 40% overall, but demand for electricity could increase by up to 76% in the same period. The big question is how this increased demand for energy can be met without causing disastrous climate change.
Nuclear energy has been viewed as a significant part of the solution. There are no carbon emissions in the generation of energy from nuclear power stations, whereas conventional coal or gas fired power stations produce significant levels of CO2 in the generation of electricity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated in 2007 that to keep the increase in average global temperatures to under 3 degrees Centigrade by 2100 will require an increased reliance globally on non-carbon electricity generation (mainly nuclear and hydroelectric power), up from 34% in 2007 to around 50% by 2030.
Newly developed renewable energy technologies (wind, wave, tidal and solar power, for example) will play an increasing part in generating some of our energy, but even by 2015, it’s likely that globally only about 4% of our energy will come from these renewable sources. Renewable technologies are at the moment most useful for small-scale, local power generation, though this situation could change in the future. However, some things won’t change – wind turbines won’t turn when it isn’t windy, solar heating is less effective when it isn’t sunny – and this makes some renewables best suited to applications where the power doesn’t need to be relied on constantly.
Only today, it has been announced that ten turbines will be installed under the sea off the Scottish island of Islay, which will provide renewable power for more than 5,000 homes. The strong tides off Islay make it a great place for this kind of generating equipment to be installed and this project – the largest of its kind in the world so far – may well highlight one of our solutions to our possible future energy crisis. Even bigger projects are planned for Scottish waters, so this is just the beginning of a whole new array of renewable energy generation in the UK.
But that energy crisis will come unless we start addressing the problem now. In 20 years, there will be a lot more people on the planet and with the massive technological advances that we have seen even in the last decade, it seems likely that we will be filling our homes with more and more gadgets, all of which will need energy to power them. The rapid development of huge countries like India and China will help to fuel that increase in demand for energy, but the phenomenon will be repeated across the planet. With demand for electricity up by 76% by 2030, we’re going to need a lot more power stations.
Nuclear energy was viewed as one of the key growth areas, as it’s carbon-free and is in many ways a ‘clean’ energy source. However, Fukushima Daiichi has reminded us of what can happen with nuclear power if things go wrong. The massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake on 11 March 2011, followed by the huge tsunami combined to knock out the reactors’ emergency cooling systems and as a result, we have seen explosions, leaks of radioactive materials and an ongoing crisis which is still far from reaching a resolution. It is still being viewed as a localised incident at the moment, but as the world found with Chernobyl in 1986, a nuclear meltdown can cause radioactive emissions that have the ability to travel across the whole planet and cause damage across a huge area. Even today, nearly 370 farms in Britain are still restricted in the way they use land and rear sheep as a result of nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster.
Levels of radioactivity around Fukushima are high enough that technicians have been pulled away from the area several times already. Attempts to drop water on the plant’s cooling ponds have had to be abandoned because of fears of dangers to the aircrews from radiation that is rising from the plant. But if we saw a full meltdown situation, there would be potential for huge areas to be affected for years to come by the radioactive fallout that would result.
And it’s this nuclear nightmare that presents such a huge problem for governments here and around the world. In the UK, we could have another 10 new nuclear power plants built in the coming years to address our increasing energy requirements. They don’t emit CO2, so they are a great way of maintaining and increasing the capacity of the national grid whilst meeting our targets for reducing CO2 emissions. Mostly, they are safe. It took an earthquake that moved the whole of Japan about 4 metres and shifted the Earth’s axis by 16.5 cm and an immense volume of water from the tsunami to cause the crisis at Fukushima. So it was an extreme, almost unpredictable event that caused the problems we face now. But it’s the extremely unlikely that should really concern us. Events like this, however improbable, do happen. What if something unthinkable happened and we had a Fukushima-like nuclear event here in the UK? Would nuclear energy seem such a good idea then? This is a question that I believe should be (and hopefully is) vexing people and governments across the world. The answer, if there is one, is very far from straightforward.
Unclear nuclear future after Fukushima
The ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan has given the world reason to stop and think about whether we can rely on nuclear power. According to UN estimates, the world’s population is expected to grow to in excess of 8 billion people by 2030. Demand for energy between 2007 and 2030 is estimated to be increasing by around 40% overall, but demand for electricity could increase by up to 76% in the same period. The big question is how this increased demand for energy can be met without causing disastrous climate change.
Nuclear energy has been viewed as a significant part of the solution. There are no carbon emissions in the generation of energy from nuclear power stations, whereas conventional coal or gas fired power stations produce significant levels of CO2 in the generation of electricity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated in 2007 that to keep the increase in average global temperatures to under 3 degrees Centigrade by 2100 will require an increased reliance globally on non-carbon electricity generation (mainly nuclear and hydroelectric power), up from 34% in 2007 to around 50% by 2030.
Newly developed renewable energy technologies (wind, wave, tidal and solar power, for example) will play an increasing part in generating some of our energy, but even by 2015, it’s likely that globally only about 4% of our energy will come from these renewable sources. Renewable technologies are at the moment most useful for small-scale, local power generation, though this situation could change in the future. However, some things won’t change – wind turbines won’t turn when it isn’t windy, solar heating is less effective when it isn’t sunny – and this makes some renewables best suited to applications where the power doesn’t need to be relied on constantly.
Only today, it has been announced that ten turbines will be installed under the sea off the Scottish island of Islay, which will provide renewable power for more than 5,000 homes. The strong tides off Islay make it a great place for this kind of generating equipment to be installed and this project – the largest of its kind in the world so far – may well highlight one of our solutions to our possible future energy crisis. Even bigger projects are planned for Scottish waters, so this is just the beginning of a whole new array of renewable energy generation in the UK.
But that energy crisis will come unless we start addressing the problem now. In 20 years, there will be a lot more people on the planet and with the massive technological advances that we have seen even in the last decade, it seems likely that we will be filling our homes with more and more gadgets, all of which will need energy to power them. The rapid development of huge countries like India and China will help to fuel that increase in demand for energy, but the phenomenon will be repeated across the planet. With demand for electricity up by 76% by 2030, we’re going to need a lot more power stations.
Nuclear energy was viewed as one of the key growth areas, as it’s carbon-free and is in many ways a ‘clean’ energy source. However, Fukushima Daiichi has reminded us of what can happen with nuclear power if things go wrong. The massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake on 11 March 2011, followed by the huge tsunami combined to knock out the reactors’ emergency cooling systems and as a result, we have seen explosions, leaks of radioactive materials and an ongoing crisis which is still far from reaching a resolution. It is still being viewed as a localised incident at the moment, but as the world found with Chernobyl in 1986, a nuclear meltdown can cause radioactive emissions that have the ability to travel across the whole planet and cause damage across a huge area. Even today, nearly 370 farms in Britain are still restricted in the way they use land and rear sheep as a result of nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster.
Levels of radioactivity around Fukushima are high enough that technicians have been pulled away from the area several times already. Attempts to drop water on the plant’s cooling ponds have had to be abandoned because of fears of dangers to the aircrews from radiation that is rising from the plant. But if we saw a full meltdown situation, there would be potential for huge areas to be affected for years to come by the radioactive fallout that would result.
And it’s this nuclear nightmare that presents such a huge problem for governments here and around the world. In the UK, we could have another 10 new nuclear power plants built in the coming years to address our increasing energy requirements. They don’t emit CO2, so they are a great way of maintaining and increasing the capacity of the national grid whilst meeting our targets for reducing CO2 emissions. Mostly, they are safe. It took an earthquake that moved the whole of Japan about 4 metres and shifted the Earth’s axis by 16.5 cm and an immense volume of water from the tsunami to cause the crisis at Fukushima. So it was an extreme, almost unpredictable event that caused the problems we face now. But it’s the extremely unlikely that should really concern us. Events like this, however improbable, do happen. What if something unthinkable happened and we had a Fukushima-like nuclear event here in the UK? Would nuclear energy seem such a good idea then? This is a question that I believe should be (and hopefully is) vexing people and governments across the world. The answer, if there is one, is very far from straightforward.