While some are looking to revive the nuclear industry as an effort to reduce carbon emissions, others believe it’s time to hang up nuclear power for good and let renewables take center stage.
Not only does research indicate that nuclear investments around the world tend to be less effective than renewables at carbon-emission mitigation, but nuclear and renewable energy compete for space on the grid, diluting the potential for clean, safe energy production.
With renewable energy seriously outpacing nuclear power, why is there still a push to go nuclear?
In most cases, developments in nuclear energy are used as a means for a country to increase its military nuclear capabilities, often at the taxpayer’s (unknown) expense.
Not only does this mark nuclear energy as a threat to global security, but it adds yet another level to the towering cost of running nuclear facilities.
Furthermore, the aging power plants built during nuclear’s “golden age” are not only deteriorating rapidly from years of neglect and mismanagement but also proving incapable of meeting energy needs as our climate and weather changes. Some scientists would go so far as to label nuclear as a “climate casualty” based on their inability to adapt to changing climate and weather conditions.
Nuclear reactors in France, for example, could only operate for limited hours of the summer as river temperatures rose too high to properly cool the reactors. These limitations will only increase as the impacts of weather chaos making a concentrated effort toward safe energy even more important.
We’ve already experienced the “worst case scenario” in the nuclear industry with Fukushima. The nuclear disaster occurred when a tsunami surged over the coastal defenses and flooded the reactors, a scenario that threatens to become a regular occurrence as tropical storm seasons get longer and more intense.
Many experts refer to Fukushima as a cautionary tale, warning that this “accident” could have been anticipated had the industry spent less time using risk assessments to demonstrate reactor sites as safe, and more time imagining how they might fail.
The subsequent impact of this disaster on human health included increased rates of cancer, behavioral problems, and psychosocial effects. Additionally, the evacuation and long-term displacement of local communities created severe healthcare problems for the most vulnerable, such as hospital inpatients and the elderly.
Over a decade has passed and still much of the land remains unoccupied, marked off as radioactive and unsafe as far as 100 km away from the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.
There is increasing scientific effort to follow such radionuclides through the environment, as the fate of these particles directly impacts public health and safety.
Japan continues to dump radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima area's compromised nuclear power plant. Just two months ago, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) released 250,000 gallons.
Concerns have been raised calling for more research on the contents of the contaminated wastewater and the impact of radionuclides on marine ecosystems.
Without longitudinal data and adequate experimentation, scientists' concerns about the biological effects of radionuclides like tritium and the marine to human food chain remain unresolved.
TEPCO plans to release radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean over the next 30 years, creating an intergenerational problem with minimal safety assurances. Over time, the currents of Japan’s coastal waters, paired with the biological process of concentration up the food chain, will carry the wastewater throughout the Pacific basin, hence why 18 nations of the Pacific Island Forum consider this a transboundary threat to public safety.