Can the world do without nuclear power? Can the world live with nuclear power?

Abstract

Nuclear power produces almost a fifth of the world's electricity at present. Its cost is low enough that in countries with centralised grids nuclear plants could cover essentially all electrical needs. Doubling the world's consumption of electrical energy and providing all this by nuclear generation would exhaust the three million tonne assured terrestrial uranium supply in a few years, but the four billion tonnes of uranium in the oceans could supply these plants for two thousand years (and breeders thereafter for two hundred thousand). A continued and especially expanded nuclear industry will require competitive, commercial, mined geological repositories in several countries, open to approved forms of spent fuel or reprocessed nuclear waste. Increased support for the IAEA will be necessary for it to carry out its traditional roles as well as regulating and securing such storage sites. The safety of nuclear facilities against terrorism or wartime attack would be improved by putting reactors underground. The future economics and proliferation resistance of nuclear power would benefit from the availability of modular high temperature gas turbine plant and a Th/233U near breeder in a deep pool of molten lead, for which the neutron deficit would be supplied by the feeding of small amounts of excess weapons plutonium or ultimately plutonium separated from commercial spent fuel. The long term future of such plants could be assured by the use of sea water uranium or the addition of an accelerator to compensate for the neutron deficit. Technically, nuclear power has a bright future in a greenhouse gas constrained world; organisationally, it is not clear that the world can meet the challenging requirements for safe nuclear power.