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| Sunday, 27 June 2004 |
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Despite fears, nuclear power industry growing -UN MOSCOW, June 26 (Reuters) Fears that nuclear power means catastrophic accidents and the proliferation of atom bombs have not stopped the nuclear industry from growing, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday. It was exactly 50 years ago at 5:30 p.m. Moscow time when the Soviet Union put the world's first nuclear power plant on line in a town called Obninsk, not far from Moscow. This was nearly nine years after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, bringing a quick and violent end to the Second World War and ushering in the nuclear age with its mushroom clouds and nightmares of nuclear holocaust. "The more we look to the future, the more we can expect countries to be considering the potential benefits ... expanding nuclear power has to offer for the global environment and for economic growth," IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said before travelling to Moscow for a conference on nuclear power. During his four-day official visit to Russia, ElBaradei will have a series of meetings with high-level Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, to discuss the future of nuclear energy and the problem of arms proliferation. But IAEA officials acknowledge that the 50-year life of nuclear power has hardly been an easy one. Accidents at Ukraine's Chernobyl plant and Three Mile Island in the United States have boosted the world's anti-nuclear "green" lobbies and left atomic energy with a very bad name. The image of nuclear power has also not been helped by the fact that the number of atomic weapons states has nearly doubled since the Non-Proliferation Treaty entered into force in 1970. But despite its bad image, the IAEA says countries are still building power plants and the industry is far from dying. Alan McDonald, an IAEA nuclear analyst, said the reason some countries choose nuclear energy over more traditional energy sources like oil, gas or coal was a lack of resources. Energy demand is growing "Nuclear power looks good if you have weak alternatives," he said. While North America has an abundance of coal and gas, countries like Japan and South Korea do not, and so choose nuclear energy as the most economically viable energy source. There is another aspect of nuclear energy that could help the industry improve its image - the fact that generating atomic energy produces almost no "greenhouse" gases, which many countries want to limit to help stem global warming. "New nuclear plants are most attractive where energy demand is growing and alternative resources are scarce, and where energy security and reduced air pollution and greenhouse gases are a priority," ElBaradei said. The agency said that while Europe and North America have virtually stopped building nuclear plants, Asian countries continue to construct them to satisfy their power needs. 27 plants under construction Of the last 31 nuclear power plants connected to the world's power grid, 22 were built in Asia, the IAEA said. The agency noted that there are 27 plants now under construction around the world and 18 of them are in Asia. Mike Townsley, a nuclear analyst for the environmental campaigning group Greenpeace, said it was irresponsible to build new nuclear power plants since many "civilian power" schemes have fed into military atom bomb programmes. "The problem is nuclear power is still seen as a status symbol," he said, adding: "You only have to look at countries where nuclear programmes have been smokescreens for weapons programmes - Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq" and others. He also said there were insufficient uranium deposits to fuel nuclear power plants indefinitely, though the IAEA said there are "sizable quantities on all continents". Townsley said it was "a dying industry, but one whose deadly legacy will be with us for hundreds of thousands of years". |
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