ECO loves tripling — for instance clean renewables by 2030, efforts to protect the environment, organic and fair trade food, medical care for the poor, education efforts, time with family and friends, the consumption of delicious ice cream and the victories of our beloved football teams.
But hang on…does that mean all tripling is good? For the 22 countries which agreed to triple nuclear power by 2050: the answer is no.
The Nuclear Gang consists of the United States, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ghana, Hungary, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
This list contains all G7 countries, with the laudable exemption of Germany, and does not include G20 powerhouses like China, India and Indonesia. But the Netherlands, the country with likely the highest solar power share globally in its electricity mix? Or Ukraine, ECO asks? Any sad lessons learned from the super-dangerous attacks on existing nuclear power stations during the recent and ongoing war by Russia? Hungary, with autocrat Orban banking on support from Rosatom, the nuclear power manufacturer from Russia, is no surprise.
ECO is struggling to understand the economic, technological and environmental wisdom of these 22 governments to embark on this risky endeavor, and here’s why:
Nuclear power presently has 10% of the global electricity supply. ECO insists this is already 10% too much. Even the nuclear-friendly IEA proposes ‘only’ a doubling of nuclear power by 2050.
The declaration suggests that nuclear power expansion has to deal with nuclear waste responsibly and safely. What a cynical approach. ECO is well aware that there is not a single safe geological repository for highly radioactive nuclear waste anywhere in the world that has been verified by independent scientists. Sounds like a bit of an issue when you are dealing with 300,000 tons of the most toxic waste that exists on Earth. Nuclear waste is a massive time bomb. ECO believes in Murphy’s Law: “What can go wrong will go wrong”.
Running nuclear power accident-free is like playing the lottery. For 30 years you do that and win a pittance. But you only have to crack the “jackpot” once and things will never be the same. Just for one example, medical research suggests that the radioactive fallout from the nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl in 1986 has cost several hundred thousands of lives throughout the decades that followed.
Add to that the near bottomless costs and horrendous damage of the cleanup needed after the fallout, for example from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, USD 660 billion and 40 years, respectively. And that’s not the only one.
But even without a big bang, nuclear power is the most costly way of producing electricity. 1 kWh of new nuclear is roughly 3-8 times more expensive than 1 kWh solar or wind today, and the gap will grow as renewable energy expands and becomes cheaper. Nuclear needs significant, unending subsidies to get off the ground in the first place. No surprise that the IPCC, in their most recent Synthesis Report, listed nuclear power as one of the costliest options to produce power, while having among the lowest potential for meeting deep emissions reduction targets early.
Last but not least, the declaration calls on all international funding institutions, including the wider World Bank Group, to break up its longstanding and well-supported firewall on funding nuclear power in developing countries. ECO calls on all anti-nuclear nations, particularly those who are donors to international public funding institutions, to halt that proposal immediately. Tripling the cost, danger and recklessness of energy production is the last thing developing countries or anyone for that matter need.