The 10th Anniversary of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Where Will Nuclear Power Go on the World Energy Map? -Scientific exploration-cnBeta.COM

News of March 12 Beijing time, can humanity rely on nuclear power to reduce net carbon emissions to zero, that is, to achieve so-called “net zero emissions”? This question is not easy to answer. From Chernobyl to Fukushima, two large-scale nuclear power plant accidents can give us a deeper understanding of the challenges facing nuclear power and nuclear technology.

In 1953, then-US President Eisenhower delivered a landmark speech at the UN General Assembly, proposing the creation of an international atomic energy agency. There is a phrase that says: “It is not enough simply to take this weapon from the soldier. It must be handed over to those who know how to remove the military shell and use it for the cause of peace.” This passage is worth remembering. So far, there have only been two major level 7 nuclear accidents in the world: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident on March 11, 2011; and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident on April 26, 1986.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake with a magnitude of more than 9 occurred near the island of Honshu, Japan, which subsequently triggered a large-scale tsunami, killing approximately 19,300 people. The tsunami also washed away the protective boardwalk around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The resulting flooding partially melted all three reactor cores, causing fires and explosions. 25 years ago, in Pripyat, the Soviet Union, Ukraine, a series of human errors led to the collapse of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, overturned the roof of a nuclear reactor and released nuclear radiation across Europe.

Today, nuclear power supplies about 10% of the world’s energy, up from 13% in 2010. This downward trend may continue, although nuclear power will continue to be part of the world’s energy fabric for decades to come. With the end of the era of fossil fuels, can nuclear power play an important role in the process of reducing carbon from the energy supply?

After Eisenhower’s speech at the UN General Assembly in 1953, many people were filled with confidence in the prospects for nuclear power, but with the occurrence of nuclear accidents, this optimism gradually disappeared. To this day, Eisenhower’s speech still reminds people that nuclear power and weapons of mass destruction come from the same source, which also hampers the great prospects for nuclear power as a universal power source.

In countries like China and India, new nuclear reactors are still being planned and built. However, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) has pointed out, the global absorption of nuclear energy remains below its so-called “sustainable development scenario”, especially in high-income countries. Also, as the cost of renewable energy sources like solar and wind continues to decline, the demand for nuclear power may not pick up in the future.

When the nuclear disaster has attracted everyone’s attention, it is hard to imagine people’s enthusiasm for nuclear power. At the time, nuclear power was viewed by many people as one of the important ways to respond to global energy demand. Starting with the first experimental nuclear reactor in 1951, new reactors have grown at an increasingly rapid rate, peaking in the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Every year between 20 and 30 are put into operation. reactors. In 1957, a fire broke out at the Winsjoe reactor (later renamed Sellafield) in the northwestern corner of Cumberland (now Sellafield, Cumbria), but this was the worst nuclear accident in British history. Has not hindered the growth of the world’s nuclear energy Power industry.

In 1979, after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, the situation changed. The accident occurred due to a failure of the cooling system, which caused the partial meltdown of the reactor core and the leakage of radioactive materials. Fortunately, this accident did not cause any loss of life, but in the Chernobyl nuclear accident that occurred 7 years later, 31 people were directly killed. In the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe at that time, there were thousands more. People were affected by radiation, but the specific number of victims remains controversial. In the Fukushima nuclear disaster, up to 50 people suffered non-fatal radiation burns and one person subsequently died of lung cancer caused by radiation exposure.

In addition to death and health risks, losses from the Chernobyl nuclear accident are believed to exceed US $ 200 billion, and the Japan Center for Economic Research estimates the cost of removing nuclear contamination from Fukushima is between 470 billion and 660 billion US dollars. After the 2011 disaster, 12 nuclear reactors in Japan were permanently shut down; 24 other reactors are still out of service, awaiting the ongoing safety review, which undoubtedly increased costs a lot.

All of this means that, in addition to construction costs, any country investing in nuclear power must be prepared and set aside sufficient funds to deal with potential disasters, whether due to human error or natural causes.

Countries planning to carry out nuclear power projects must also cooperate with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The former is primarily responsible for the supervision and control of peaceful nuclear trade, and the latter is more important. The IAEA is not a traditional energy regulatory body. It is not only charged with supervising and inspecting nuclear power plants, but also strives to ensure that certain countries do not use nuclear fissile materials to make weapons. This is in part because some countries, such as India and Pakistan, and possibly Israel, have become major nuclear powers after initially seeking nuclear technology for nuclear power research or development.

Given the various technical barriers to the use of nuclear energy, most of the world’s nuclear energy is still produced by nuclear-weapon states. On the other hand, if the total cost of building a nuclear power plant reaches hundreds of billions of dollars, most countries will reject it. On the contrary, although renewable energy technology is still in a relatively early stage, its cost is gradually decreasing and supervision is more direct. This is an important point, because these new technologies do not need to involve national teams or related to national defense.

Clearly, nuclear power will be with us for some time: new nuclear power plants are being built and it will be some time before old nuclear power plants are dismantled. However, the facts have shown that nuclear power is not once seen as a carbon reduction solution in the global energy market. Nuclear power has certain advantages, but its persistent low utilization rate shows that some countries believe that the risks of developing nuclear power outweigh the benefits. For other countries, the development of nuclear energy is an unaffordable undertaking. If the world wants to achieve net zero carbon emissions, it must focus on renewables, because one of the biggest advantages of these energy sources is that they can be obtained for free in almost every country.