Rethinking nuclear energy

the terrible devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan did not just take a toll on human lives it also took a toll on our future in terms of energy development particularly with nuclear power here with us to tell us more and what some of the implications may be is inad Professor Paul kleindorfer our expert in sustainability thank you

for being with us well happy to be here Impact on alternative energy Shelly obviously the human toll was by far at the moment the the part of this disaster but looking forward a little bit there’s the immediate problem of radiation and the impact on alternative energy can we look a little bit right now at what the immediate

impact is of any kind of ir radiation clouds problems for for the world the problems resulting at the Fukushima reactor site are going to be I think fairly significant they are class currently as a level six on the international atomic energy scale of nuclear incidents the only class 7 incident that we had was the 86 Blowout at

the Chernobyl insulation so it’s a very serious matter this is an extremely rare event perhaps you know one of five such events that we’ve had in let’s say in in in history in which paleo seismologist that is people who go after ancient events can track go back around 5,000 years it’s difficult to find very many 9.0 earthquakes

remember this is 100 times more significant in terms of ground shaking motion than a 7.0 earthquake and the 7.0 earthquakes do a lot of damage we saw the 1999 earthquake in Taiwan the 7.3 earthquake in May in China those do a lot of damage this is 9.0 this is somewhere between 50 and 100 times greater than those

earthquakes that’s a very rare event Japan actually did have state-of-the-art technology here I mean earthquakes are not unknown here they must have been prepared could they have been more prepared these were reactors that were put into place those that failed in the 60s in the 1960s and what will be said and what has already been said exhaustively

is that the containment procedures were not were if you will not as robust as resilient as later containment procedures were the original tradeoffs that were made in terms of cost versus safety were made perhaps more in the direction of cost it will now be asserted at least than should have been and as a result while Japan in

response to your question has a very advanced state of readiness of knowledge of ability to respond to nuclear accidents and incidents certainly one of the best in the world the ability to respond to a 9.0 earthquake the ability to respond to an ensuing tsunami and to do so with technologies that will now be asserted as having not

been up to Snuff with respect to the proper safety cost tradeoffs those are the issues that are going to be examined in some detail Future Development going forward looking at alternative sources of energy to fossil fuels nuclear energy had been touted as the thing that could actually be the economy of scale for the amount of energy that’s

needed in the world what is this accident going to have to the Future development of nuclear energy I certainly think that up until the Japan earthquake there was a huge Renaissance of belief that the nuclear industry all over the world was going to have a significant increase number of installations started in the US and elsewhere was growing

all sorts of licensing and sighting procedures the newest Technologies to be sure but nonetheless the whole spirit of it was a Renaissance in this area you saw it in the stocks of the companies that were involved in these areas you saw it in the risk management and testing procedures anyway that’s pre Fukushima I think post Fukushima we

are going to have a very interesting discussion and it’s going to involve questions first about safety and about whether indeed somehow the cost and safety margins were sold short in terms of safety we now see ourselves with a real problem as to indeed whether nuclear technology is just too complicated for normal mortal man to control over a

period of 50 years which is the life of one of these institutions on an ongoing basis without giving rise to huge risks for third parties my own belief in it is that there are regions of the world France many parts of the United States where that argument has considerable sway because the problems of failing to attend to

climate change issues and fossil fuel dangers and all of the problems of mining coal and the rest of it that have their own mortality in disease all of those problems have to be put on the scale and you put those on the scale and I think that nuclear power does have a proper place as a part of

an efficient portfolio of energy technologies this gives a whole new meaning to risk Risk Management management I see that industry changing a great deal not just in attending to the risk but in paying for the risk can you make any kind of comment as to how that industry is likely to change both in the management of the

risk and paying for the risk this is all giving rise I think to a healthy reassessment of how it is that strategic risk management for companies should take place against a new tone of humility given the complexities and interdependencies of the global economy so that’s what I think is in front of us and I think the risk

management parts of that are going to be put through a real scrutiny as we start to look at some of these events of the past year and ask ourselves the direct question what do we really know about how able we as a company I’m thinking from a company’s perspective or as a society what do we really know

about our resilience in the ability to respond to events that we haven’t really expected until now but that we are reminded of very forcefully through the processes and the events taking place in Japan before our very eyes these days Outlook let me end by asking you for your assessment of going forward now the outlook for nuclear energy

as a part of a portfolio of alternative energy to fossil fuel I expect Japan China and the Far East to continue on their path of nuclear power development to make the case that the mark one or the earlier versions of those reactors are not what is in the later versions of those reactors that they are much more

resilient and robust and that this is in fact an important part of their energy portfolio going forward I expect that in the United States where there is already considerable resistance in certain parts of the country that anywhere approaching a seismic zone that includes the Midwest and the great Memphis area which had one of the greatest earthquakes around

1812 this includes California any area which is seismically active we’re going to see a more or less a halt a moratorium for a while and perhaps for a long while to new reactor sightings and in fact even to the use of nuclear power in the portfolio but we’re at the level of less than 5% production of global

energy through renewable energies at this point and so it’s going to be a long while before we are in a position to replace let’s say the prospect of nuclear as a low carbon production Basel load facility so this is an area of great uncertainty going forward regionally there would be big differences and some very difficult questions both

for business people involved in this for regulators involved in this but also for the citizens of the planet to come to grips with this huge trade off that we have between on the one side the risks of carbon producing fossil fuel plants and the steady rundown of our fossil fuel supplies and on the other side the evident

dangers of relying on very complicated technologies such as nuclear how that will be resolved is yet to be seen but it’s of course going to be if not the major topic in the energy area certainly one of the crucial energy topics in policy for the next five years Professor Paul Kleindorfer thank you for being with us on

in-have knowledge my pleasure Shelly