The Nuclear Power Quandary: Climate Protector or Existential Threat?

By Tom Baker 

In the battle against fossil fuels, is nuclear energy a magic bullet, a necessary lesser evil, an expensive, slow, and potentially dangerous distraction, or a technology to avoid at all costs? 

 With the planet teetering on the brink of climate disaster and the goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 rapidly slipping away, the need for alternatives to polluting fossil fuels has never been more evident. Should nuclear power be part of a safe and reliable electrical supply solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Canada? 

There are many thorny questions yet to be resolved. Is nuclear power too dangerous? Is it too expensive? Does it present too much of a security risk? Is the problem of finding a safe way of storing nuclear waste insurmountable? Is it scalable soon enough to make a meaningful difference in the battle against climate change? Is it a distraction from investing in renewable energy? 

The scientific consensus is that no net addition to current coal or gas plants can be built and that existing ones need to be closed down within a decade if we are to meet the target of staying below 1.5°C. While COP28 did call for fossil fuel reductions for the first time, there was more enthusiasm for tripling nuclear power by 2050. There seems to be little political appetite in Canada to break from the status quo petro-economy. 

Any attempt to transition out of climate-changing fossil fuel use is likely to require more electricity. Technologies such as electric vehicles and heat pumps require a stable, reliable supply of electricity. Economic development domestically and in the oppressed neo-colonial world will increase demand. 

Canada’s Petro-Economy 

Canadians consume about five times as much energy per capita as the global average and emit three times the global average of emissions. Canada has pledged to reduce emissions to 40–45% below its 2005 levels by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. Canada Energy Regulator (CER) has projected that the policy measures in place in 2023 would result in reducing emissions by only 16% lower than 2022 levels by 2050. 

Canada’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels for domestic energy supply and export revenue only deepens this challenge. In 2022, 77.4% of the nation’s end-use energy demand was met with fossil fuels. Canada also exported 63% of its oil, 34% of its gas, and 67% of its coal production! While over 80% of Canada’s electricity supply is emissions-free due to hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar generation, electricity represented only 17.6% of end-use energy demand in 2022. 

The federal government has promised to deliver 100% “clean power” across the country by 2035, but there’s a loophole in its draft regulations: New gas plants are allowed to be built before 2025 and to continue operating and polluting beyond 2035. Ontario is using this loophole to massively ramp up the use of “natural” gas—a fossil fuel—to generate 1500 MW of new gas-fired generation capacity, allegedly to avoid the need for conservation appeals and rotating blackouts. 

Canadian governments heavily subsidize oil and gas companies—and have been for decades. In 2022, a year when the industry was making record profits, the Government of Canada provided over $20 billion in federal financial support. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies only spent 0.4% of their record-high revenues on reducing their greenhouse gas pollution. 

Oil and gas companies are promoting false solutions (like carbon capture and storage) that will have a negligible impact on emissions but give the industry excuses to continue expanding their production, destroying ecosystems, and perpetuating injustice. 

For decades, oil and gas companies have been spreading lies and misleading the public and governments. They have successfully manufactured doubt about climate science and uncertainty about climate solutions like renewable energy. 

How Can Net Zero Be Achieved? 

Canada Energy Regulator (CER) has offered—for the first time—energy supply scenarios to align with Canada’s 2050 net-zero target. These scenarios call for major changes in Canada’s energy supply, including reducing oil and gas production; a several-fold increase in renewable generation from solar, wind, and biomass, a near tripling of nuclear capacity; and a many-fold increase in carbon removal technologies such as carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), and direct air capture (DAC). 

Centre for Policy Alternatives researcher David Hughes has recently assessed the feasibility of CER’s scenarios and found them all overly optimistic. 

• Industrial carbon removal: This technology is highly unlikely to succeed due to high cost and slow rate of deployment. 

• Hydrogen: The current production of hydrogen is very energy- and emissions-intensive, and producing it from electricity consumes 54–82% of the electrical energy in the conversion process. 

• Electricity generation requirements were underestimated and would need to increase from 17.6% to 55% of the end-use supply. Many governments without ready access to hydro-electric power or nuclear power are defaulting to natural-gas and coal-burning power plants to meet increasing electrical demand. Non-carbon-emitting renewables such as solar and wind have become more popular but are dependent on weather conditions. Battery storage technology has yet to be scaled up. The Small Nuclear Reactor (SMR) Feasibility Study concluded that despite its prohibitive cost and construction times, modular SMRs are commercially and technically feasible with support from federal and provincial governments and the nuclear industry. SMRs have a capacity of 300 MW or less. 

Ontario’s electricity demand is rising in Ontario for the first time in 18 years. The publicly owned Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is refurbishing its “nuclear fleet” of 18 reactors to add new capacity. This is the largest nuclear construction in North America. In Ontario, nuclear and hydro-electricity make up 76% of the energy supply, with solar and wind forming 12%. 
 
OPG is supporting the design and development of SMRs in Ontario, with one under construction and three others planned. OPG is partnering with Alberta, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick to assess the viability of SMRs. 

Ontario has a large potential supply of offshore wind and solar energy that could be developed to help phase out dirty gas plants. Ontario sees two weather peaks—hot sultry days and crisp, cold days. Both are caused by high-pressure systems that are, by their very nature, wide and slow-moving. Both are characterized by darkness at night and a lack of wind. Renewable energy must be supplemented by continuous on demand generation. 

Batteries can replace the missing power for short periods, especially at peak times. But they can’t be recharged until the peak is over and the supply comes back online. Batteries do not generate a single watt of energy. The energy must be generated and “not used” by the grid, but siphoned to the energy storage device. Enhanced battery storage, together with grid access from other energy sources, could displace peak natural gas generators entirely. 

Between 2009 and 2016, the Ontario private sector built over 2000 MW of solar power and about 3000 MW of wind power. Ontario not contracted any new renewable energy since Doug Ford’s election in 2018. Plans are now under way to contract 5000 MW of renewable energy, but most of that will be from existing wind turbines, with only 850 MW new capacity—a 10% increase. 

Alberta has enjoyed spectacular growth in renewable electricity generation. There appears to congruence between Premier Smith’s ideological commitment to publicly subsidized oil sands growth and her reluctance to permit the further growth of the robust renewable electricity industry, which has cut GHG emissions by 50% since 2015. Last August, as the country struggled with its worst wildfire season on record, she stunned the renewable electricity industry by imposing a moratorium on all new approvals for utility-scale renewable-energy power plants to study whether the renewables boom was taking up too much prime agricultural land and whether it was damaging the grid’s reliability. 

International 

Thanks to China, the costs of renewable power generation from solar and wind power have been falling, and they are now cost-competitive with fossil fuels, even without financial support. China is putting the world on track for a 2½-fold increase in renewables, just below the 3-fold increase agreed to at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai. 

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 caused by incompetent authorities in the Soviet Union exposed tens of thousands to contaminated food for weeks after the event. The 2011 Fukushima earthquake and subsequent tsunami and nuclear plant radiation release confirmed the antinuclear fears of the public. A private company cut corners on safety in the interests of short-term profit. Many activists demanded that all nuclear power plants be decommissioned. 

Some European countries such as Germany have proceeded to close all their plants and rely on imported fossil fuels and recently even coal. Other jurisdictions such as France and Ontario, where nuclear power is the largest energy source, have continued to maintain existing nuclear power plants and phase out coal plants. 

 Nuclear power provides 10% of the world’s electricity, but to stem climate change and allow for sustainable development in the Global South, far greater amounts of clean and reliable energy are needed. Four hundred nuclear plants in thirty-two countries are currently operational. More than two dozen others are looking at nuclear energy to meet their power and climate needs.  

The antinuclear movement has progressed through a sequence of reasons to oppose nuclear power. First, it was too dangerous. Then, it would lead to the proliferation of weapons. Then, it was uneconomical. Then, it was unnecessary because it was argued that renewables could do the job. But in every case where nuclear power was shut down, renewables have not filled the gap and CO₂emissions havegone up due to a return to burning fossil fuels. A final claim, that nuclear power is politically infeasible, is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. We should not be so quick to write off a proven tool for humanity’s most serious problem. 

Issues 

Radioactivity is indeed dangerous at high exposures, but at low doses, it is not a significant problem. Most of the radioactivity we experience is natural. Typical radiation doses annually for a person in the United States are 73% natural, 9% “natural in body,” and 18% medical. The dose from living next to a nuclear power plant is 50,000 times smaller than from natural sources. Unlike many hazards, radioactivity is easily measurable. 

A study published in 2022 found that people living near an oil or gas operation have a higher chance of dying prematurely than those near a nuclear plant. About one in five deaths globally were attributed to fossil fuels through air pollution alone in 2018—about 8.7 million fatalities per year. It is estimated that 1.8 million deaths are prevented annually through the use of nuclear power. 

Carbon emissions from nuclear power are indeed low, but the processes used in all stages of the nuclear power cycle release carbon emissions from mining to decommissioning and site rehabilitation, and all require the use of fossil fuels. The emissions from these processes are close to the emissions produced in constructing facilities for renewables like solar and wind power. 

It’s estimated that each nuclear-generating station discharges about two-thirds of the energy it burns in its reactor core into the environment, while only a third is used for energy (and 10% of that is lost in transmission). Nuclear power releases 3.5 times more CO₂ per kilowatt-hour than photovoltaic solar panel systems, 13 times more than onshore wind power, and 29 times more than electricity produced by hydropower installations. 

Spent nuclear fuel is not always “waste,” as it could be used as feedstock for advanced fast reactors currently under development in over a dozen countries. In addition, medically useful radio-isotopes can be harvested from this product. Spent nuclear fuel is extremely dense, and the quantities are minimal,  mostly with very low radioactivity. After 40 years, the heat and radioactivity of the stored waste will have fallen by more than 99%. No deaths or injuries have been reported due to nuclear waste products. In short, say nuclear power advocates, nuclear waste poses less risk than other hazardous industrial materials, like ammonia, which have caused injuries and fatalities. Constructing storage facilities for nuclear waste is well advanced in Canada, France, Sweden, and Switzerland. 

Nuclear disasters: Modern reactor designs can provide safe and reliable power and have simple mechanisms to avoid the worst issues, like meltdowns. With proper regulation and management, the probability of an accident is extremely low, and the impact of an incident can be managed with existing mitigation protocols. 

Time and expense: One of the principal objections to nuclear power as a solution to climate change is the time and expense required to build a nuclear plant. Building and bringing each plant online generally takes at least 10 years, at an estimated cost of $9 billion. The private sectorcontinues to see nuclear plants as poor investments. Once the plant is built, it’s incredibly expensive to run, and the average plant’s lifetime is 30 years followed by expensive decommissioning and disposal. It’s simply not “efficient” to deploy capital building nuclear infrastructure under a capitalist organization of the economy; literally every other option is cheaper/quicker to deploy and more profitable. 

Summary 

The unofficial UN scientific consensus report stated that possibilities for “the scale-up, diffusion and global spread of carbon capture and storage, nuclear energy, and carbon removal technologies have not progressed as rapidly” as other alternative energy technologies and were not likely to play the major role in climate change mitigation, which, at this point, would have to rely on social change and demand-side, low-energy solutions. 

Many scientists see nuclear energy as a kind of last resort, given the dire planetary threat raised by the burning of even dirtier fossil fuels such as lower grades of coal, oil from tar sands, and shale oil. If nuclear power presents certain dangers to the human population and the Earth, it also cannot be denied that the continuation of “business as usual” with respect to carbon emissions will lead to eventual social, economic, and ecological collapse, threatening civilization and most species, including our own. 

Doubling the capacity of nuclear power worldwide by 2050 would require 37 new large plants a year and only decrease greenhouse gas emissions by around 4%.  

None of this alters the essential nature of the problem: the crossing of planetary boundaries by an economic system that must continually produce more and more goods and thus degrade the environment. The development of alternative energy sources coupled with conservation, in the context of radical transformations in social relations, constitutes the only real, long-term solution. 

Even the Union of Concerned Scientists suggests that, despite its risks, nuclear power might play a role as a “longer-term option” in combating global warming. Shutting down nuclear power plants could be a big setback for climate goals. Jurisdictions with existing publicly owned nuclear capacity have a tremendous advantage in the transition to a fully renewable grid. 

Most countries in the pronuclear list are building out nuclear strictly for new generation requirements, not to decrease fossil fuels use. In fact, many jurisdictions see nuclear energy as a tool to increase fossil fuel exports of raw petroleum products! In most jurisdictions, the closure of nuclear plants has resulted in the increased use of natural gas, coal, and shale. 

Conclusion 

Given the uncertainty around how nuclear power and other low-carbon technologies will evolve over the next three decades, combined with the enormous challenge and urgency of achieving deep cuts in heat-trapping emissions, nuclear power cannot be dismissed as a potential part of a long-term climate solution. Nevertheless, its role in combating climate change will depend on overcoming important economic, safety, and environmental risks. 

Time is running out for the world to carry out the social transformations necessary to avert irreversible climate catastrophe. But achieving this will require a revolutionary-scale transformation in global social relations, affecting the human relation to the climate and the planetary environment as a whole. 

Due to the inner logic of capitalist production, rather than displacing production based on fossil fuels, new renewable energy capacity is augmenting existing energy supply. From 1960 to 2009, each unit of electricity not generated by fossil fuels displaced less than one-tenth of a unit of electricity generated from fossil fuels. Suppressing the use of fossil fuels will require changes other than simply technical ones, such as expanding non-fossil-fuel energy production. 

Production takes place with the primary aim of capital accumulation. Consequently, new renewable energy capacity is put in service of this goal. Money invested in “green” sectors might produce profits that are later invested in “black” sectors. Profit is the “bottom line”; environmental concerns are cast aside. 

As socialists, we cannot magic away these problems. We can bury our heads in the sand, raise demands that no one takes seriously (even ourselves), or provide some scientific-based and socialist answers to the problems we face—the major one being how we put forward a program to massively reduce CO₂ emissions on a world scale to prevent global warming. 
 
However, the challenge remains to build a people’s climate movement strong enough to challenge the power of fossil fuel capitalism and to link up with other social justice movements to fight for an ecosocialist future.