Davos discusses nuclear power as a least-worst option

This NYT story looks at the corporati at Davos are discussing how Europe is considering giving nuclear power a second look.

An excerpt:

At a time when industrialized countries are wrestling with how to curb carbon dioxide emissions, nuclear energy has one indisputable advantage: unlike coal, oil, natural gas, or even biological fuels, it emits no carbon dioxide. That virtue, in the view of advocates, is enough to offset its well-documented shortcomings.

“It has put nuclear back into the mix,” said Daniel C. Esty, director of the Center for Environmental Law and Policy at Yale University. “We’re seeing a new balancing of the costs and benefits.”

But being in the mix does not mean nuclear energy will shove aside fossil fuels any time soon. In a way, the revival of interest in nuclear power illustrates the lack of palatable choices to combat global warming.

Renewable energy, while growing steadily, has limitations. Windmills don’t turn when the wind isn’t blowing; solar power and geothermal energy are not yet economical enough; hydroelectric dams can be disruptive themselves.

That leaves nuclear power as a “clean” alternative to fossil fuels. It already generates one-sixth of the world’s electricity, but it fell out of favor in the West two decades ago after the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents. The previous German government, in fact, pledged to shut down its last nuclear power station by 2022.

But now Germany has also committed to deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions in the next decade, and its new chancellor, Angela Merkel, rekindled the debate over nuclear energy by saying, “We should consider what consequences it will have if we shut off our nuclear power plants.”

That comment was a reference to Europe’s increasing vulnerability as an importer of foreign fossil fuels. Just as the United States worries about disruptions in the supply of Middle East oil, Europe worries about Russia’s penchant for using its gas and oil pipelines as a political weapon.

In a recent report, Deutsche Bank declared that Germany’s energy policy was untenable. “Far from reducing carbon emissions and securing future energy supplies,” it concluded, “current policies would increase both emissions and Germany’s dependence on foreign gas imports.”

Even in the United States, which has not ordered cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, there are more voices in favor of building nuclear plants. “The question is, how do we produce enough electricity?” said James E. Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy Corporation, a major energy supplier. “We need to put our money on nuclear.”

Critics point out that nuclear reactors are astronomically expensive, and take a decade or more to build, even if environmental groups fail to block construction altogether.

Given the entrenched opposition in parts of Western Europe and America, some experts say that if the world does turn to nuclear power, most of the new plants will be in China, India and other developing countries.

They also point out that the issue of security cuts both ways. Building more plants may reduce a country’s reliance on imported oil and gas, but it also creates more targets for terrorist attacks. And there is the nuclear fuel cycle: North Korea and other countries are already suspected of diverting enriched uranium to try to make nuclear weapons. Those dangers would only multiply with an increase in the global demand for nuclear power.