Al Gore’s recent call for a “man on the moon” approach to repowering the USA with carbon free electricity certainly went down well with his whooping audience at the Constitution Hall in Washington, thanks to a skilfully crafted script including some very good lines: “We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change.”
He was launching the “We” campaign (see wecansolveit.org) of the Alliance for Climate Protection, which he chairs. This calls for the USA to produce 100% of its electricity “from renewable energy and other clean sources within 10 years” – so certainly cannot be said to lack ambition. But too much ambition may be damaging if it is wildly unrealistic.
There is also the inconvenient truth that nuclear power currently generates about 20% of US electricity. Can this be included under “other clean sources”?
Gore’s speech emphasised the promise of solar, geothermal and wind, but steered away from nuclear power. However, in a subsequent interview with AP he admitted that his plan “counts on nuclear power plants still providing a fifth of the nation’s electricity” and also said that “even coal has a role to play if the carbon dioxide is captured and safely buried.”
This makes more sense. Current best estimates suggest that getting carbon dioxide emissions down to acceptable levels will require a portfolio of technologies to be deployed. A just completed study carried out by the IEA at the request of the 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit for guidance on how to achieve a “clean, clever and competitive energy future” – and submitted to this year’s Hokkaido Toyako G8 summit – concludes, in its 643 page report (Energy technology perspectives 2008 – scenarios and strategies to 2050) that “Renewables, nuclear power, and CO2 capture and storage (CCS) must be deployed on a massive scale, and carbon-free transport developed.”
The Hokkaido summit official communiqué called for the launching of 20 large scale CCS demonstration projects by 2010 and noted that a “growing number of countries have expressed their interest in nuclear power programmes” – which by the standards of G8 communiqué language counts as enthusiastic support for nuclear power.
Recently there have indeed been some very forthright statements about nuclear energy from the leaders of individual governments, notably the UK’s Gordon Brown, “I am convinced we need a renaissance of nuclear power”, and Japan’s Yasuo Fukuda, “Nuclear power is the key to solving the problems of global warming”, while the Bulgarian government has just given approval to the Belene project - although doubts remain about funding.
The nuclear power industry must repay these expressions of confidence by delivering to time and on budget. Particularly concerning in recent months has been the need for the French regulator to call for work to be temporarily suspended at the Flamanville EPR for reasons remarkably similar to those which have contributed to delays at the Olkiluoto EPR in Finland. Paraphrasing Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, to have quality control and subcontractor management failings during the concreting phase of one EPR project may be regarded as a misfortune but to experience them on a second EPR project looks like carelessness.
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