Nuclear power and climate change

This is Joseph.

Is climate change an existential threat? This is from the UN website:

Throughout the morning, the Council’s high-level open debate on climate and security heard from a range of influential voices, including naturalist David Attenborough, who called climate change “the biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced”.  In video remarks telecast at the outset, he warned that concentrations of carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere have not been equalled for millions of years.

“If we continue on our current path, we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security,” he said:  food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperature and ocean food chains.  The poorest — those with the least security — are certain to suffer.  “Our duty right now is surely to do all we can to help those in the most immediate danger.”

While the world will never return to the stable climate that gave birth to civilization, he said that, if Governments attending the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in November recognize climate change as a global security threat, “we may yet act proportionately — and in time”.

Now it is a press release and there might be hyperbole. But, if true, it highlights a classic example of not being able to balance risks. Nuclear power is not risk free but it can clearly be expanded. France gets 70% of its electric power from Nuclear. The United States gets 20%. With the  advent of electric cars, it might even be possible for France to use this capacity to further reduce dependance on carbon emitting technology. 

Now nuclear accidents are bad. But the Chernobyl exclusion zone has actually turned into a refugee for animal life showing a fair degree of resilience. And, let us be clear, nuclear safety has progressed in the last 50 years and the USSR was not known for industrial safety in any context. 

So why is there a challenge getting new reactor designs approved? I am a nature lover and see this viewpoint from the linked article as abhorrent:

Personally, I am very worried about climate change and air pollution and fired up about energy abundance, but I’m not much of a nature lover. So at the end of the day, if we need to cover huge swathes of open space with solar panels, wind turbines, and transmission lines, I’m all for it. But realistically, not everyone feels that way, and the margin does matter. We should cut down some woodlands in New England for the sake of clean energy, but probably not all of it. It would be really nice to get a decent chunk of electricity from microreactors that have small footprints and could fit into the built landscape or be situated in natural settings with minimal disruption.

But Mr Yglesias is correct that some compromise is needed. We can only reduce power use so quickly and there are serious justice issues with telling developing countries to stop improving standards of living. Nor is the typical American going to want to see a huge drop in living standards. 

Now, let us be clear, the original article suggests that carbon emissions are the biggest threat to security that humans have ever faced. In this context, is it not worth at least strongly considering safe nuclear power plants that are properly regulated and developed?  And if this is wrong then it should be clarified as to which part is: 1) is nuclear more dangerous than we expect and, if so, how? or 2) is climate change a smaller threat than we think?

None of this means we should end renewable development and research. But it is quite clearly the case that a modern economy could get the majority of its electricity from nuclear. Some countries do manage this from renewables. Bit if you look at the leaders (countries like Canada, Norway, and Brazil) you see a huge proportion of this comes from hydropower, which rather relies on geography to make work.

I am not sure that I am right about this, but it is definitely worth pondering.