Burn, baby, burn: Why we're back to nuclear power
By WILLIAM THORSELL
Monday, July 26, 2004 - Page A13
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As the anniversary of Ontario's power blackout approaches, the volatility of energy markets rises around the globe. Our social survival depends on the consumption of energy, especially electricity. Oil requires a military perspective on the world. The environment weighs in. And so we contemplate the resurrection of nuclear power.
The Chinese are running out of electricity to feed their economic boom; brownouts and shutdowns have been common this summer as hot weather drains power for air conditioning even as manufacturing continues to expand. While Ontario plans to shut down five coal-fired generating plants by 2007, China is striving to open at least 16 by the same date, as well as gas and nuclear plants.
Approved new power plants in China will create almost twice the electrical capacity of Britain in 10 years. And China is just getting started on the road to much higher power consumption as a neo-capitalist society thrilled to be back in economic action after a dark age.
Throw in the explosion of car sales in Asia and the emergence of India and Russia in the global economy, and it's "burn, baby, burn." If consuming fossil fuels creates global warming, we are in for a lot of global warming.
We are also in for supply restrictions and higher prices on oil and natural gas. Global demand for oil is expected to expand by 50 per cent in the next 25 years, as developing countries take up the torch. Unlike the occasional restriction of oil supply through OPEC's political actions, the growth in demand tips the market toward shortage. At the same time, the world's major sources of oil have rarely been more politically insecure.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. military has been spending $4 to $5 a barrel to protect oil exports by sea from the Middle East since the early 1980s, a transaction cost growing higher as the adventure in Iraq ignites Arab-on-Arab terrorism. New supplies elsewhere do not promise to fill any void created by Middle East internecine passions.
North America, meanwhile, is no longer replacing its consumption of natural gas with new reserves.
No surprise, then, that we are turning more attention to nuclear power. What else offers more security at digestible cost with little environmental consequence? What provides more insurance against external events? Wind? Solar? Hydrogen power cells?
Ontario has just announced a $900-million refit of another generator at its old Pickering nuclear power plant, an inevitable consequence of the decision to close the coal-fired plants. Coal supplies about 22 per cent of the province's current electricity demand, so Ontario has to replace that and create additional supply as well. With nuclear power already producing 40 per cent of the province's power, its seems inevitable that additional nuclear capacity will soon be required.
Natural gas supplies will be volatile and expensive over time. And the priority claim on natural gas should be home heating.
Conservation will not close the gap. Wind does not have the credibility yet, either in its capacity or price, on which to bet the welfare of 12 million Ontarians. The same goes for small-scale generators here and there. Water is pretty much exhausted except in Manitoba and Quebec. So nuclear it is.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are 442 nuclear power plants in the world, with another 27 under construction, 18 of them in Asia. There is little current development in North America and Western Europe, where fears for safety, some concern for cost, and a dollop of ideology have interrupted things.
But France, Finland and Ontario look to be moving back into the nuclear market, as the options become more stark. On all three major grounds -- security of supply, environmental weight and cost -- nuclear comes through quite nicely, compared with the alternatives. The challenge for hapless Ontario will be producing new capacity competently, perhaps through new suppliers.
The handling of nuclear waste is not a pressing technical issue, and can be safely enmeshed in endless public hearings, where its essentially political nature ensures harmless inaction.
With nuclear back in favour, prospects for supply brighten, but the dependability of distribution remains at issue, as we saw Aug. 14. Technical and terrorist threats to this centralized system remain significant, and contingency planning for long-term distribution interruptions appears inadequate.
What is the emergency plan for 30 days without any home heating or water in Toronto in January if the power goes down because of a distribution failure? Maybe there just can't be one, given the certainty of chaos, so a dependable supply of electricity is the closest equation there is these days to peace, order and good government. Lose electricity and we lose the social order.
Medicare gets all the political attention, while the much more fundamental question of our energy supplies and systems percolates off-stage. The first duty of the state is the security of the citizen, not the care of the ill. We got a glimpse of that last August.
William Thorsell is director and CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum.
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