YYou’d be forgiven for thinking that the nuclear debate is pretty much settled. Sure, there are still some naysayers, but most reasonable people have come to realize that in a time of climate crisis, we need low-carbon nuclear energy – along with wind and solar – to help us moving away from fossil fuels. In 2016, 400 reactors were operating in 31 countries, with one estimate suggesting roughly the same number by mid-2023, accounting for 9.2% of global commercial gross electricity generation. But what if this optimism was in fact wrong, and nuclear power could never live up to its promise? This is the argument that MV Ramana, a physicist, makes in his new book. He says nuclear power is expensive, dangerous and takes too long to scale up. Nuclear, says the work’s title, is not the solution.
This was not the book Ramana, a professor at the University of British Columbia, planned to write. The problems with nuclear power are so “obvious”, he wagered, they don’t need to be spelled out. But with the guidance of his editor, he realized his mistake. Even in today’s environmental movement, which emerged with the anti-war and anti-nuclear movementsthere are converts. Prominent environmentalistsunderstandably desperate about the climate crisis, believe it is rational and reasonable to support nuclear power as part of our energy mix.
But with a PhD in physics, and a previous book examining why India’s nuclear program is not working and will not work, Ramana is well versed in not only the moral but also the technical and practical arguments against nuclear power. He lays this out in his new work and then looks at what he originally set out to explore: why, despite the overwhelming evidence against nuclear power, governments and corporations continue to invest in it.
When we talk online, he obligingly takes me through the problems in detail. It’s past 11pm in Canada, but Ramana, who is enthusiastic and friendly, patiently and carefully explains why he thinks every justification I put to him is wrong.
Perhaps most pressingly, the risks of nuclear power are too great, he says. The technology works in the sense that there are reactors that operate and produce electricity, says Ramana, but it is not stable. In physics you have what are called emergent properties, and we know how atoms behave, but when you put a group of them together, he says, “they start doing things that the individual atoms never do by themselves”. Technology is similar, he explains, to the work of social scientist Charles Perrow. When you bring different elements of nuclear reactors together, they can work together in unpredictable ways. For example, if you add a safety mechanism for one component, it makes the system more complex, increasing the potential pathways for new accidents.
While major malfunctions may be rare, the likelihood of them happening is exacerbated by “extreme weather patterns due to climate change,” argues Ravana, and cost-cutting measures taken by companies that care primarily about the bottom line.
Still, are accidents such a big deal? Fukushima was a turning point for some environmentalists. Where Chernobyl was read as a warning of the dangers of nuclear power, there was a significant disaster, but no one received a fatal dose of radiation; if it’s as bad as it gets maybe there isn’t that much to worry about especially since the technology has improved since it was built? Not so, argues Ramana. “There is a definite link between your exposure to radiation and cancer,” he says, adding that there is currently “no evidence” showing that below a certain threshold there is no risk of cancer. “The absence of evidence,” he tells me, “is not evidence of absence.”
This is not how nuclear power is sold to communities where the plants are located, Ramana argues. What does government and industry say for a community, such as Wylfa on Anglesey (Ynys Môn), where there was talk of building another nuclear power plant? That there is a small chance – small but not zero – that there could be an accident that would mean you have to leave your home and possibly never come back? Or that it is completely safe? It’s almost always the latter and it’s simply not fair, he insists. The safest assumption is that radiation, even at the lowest levels, is dangerous. This also applies to waste, which remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years and cannot currently be safely managed in the longer term, meaning that it could contaminate the biosphere at some point.
What about the argument that the industry provides work to people who need it, and can provide energy to so many around the world who currently go without? Who are we in the developed world to stand in the way of this? Nuclear power creates fewer jobs than renewables per unit of energy generated, he explains in the book, and when it comes to the latter, jobs are more geographically dispersed. In terms of supplying large amounts of energy worldwide, nuclear power cannot be scaled up quickly enough to “match the rate at which the world needs to reduce carbon emissions” or to quickly supply those who are not there. It takes at least 15-20 years to plan and build a nuclear plant and it is likely to be much more difficult in the many countries that do not currently have the infrastructure for it.
Finally, Ramana would like to point out that the nuclear energy industry survives only because of concerted government support. Through electricity bills and taxes, the public often pays a significant amount for building and running nuclear plants, as well as storing the waste. Governments also provide subsidies, skew electricity markets in favor of nuclear power and form such close relationships with the industry ending up repeating their propaganda, he argues.
A key reason why governments sink so much money into nuclear power is because of how closely it is linked to nuclear weapons, which ostensibly guarantee a country’s security and strength, Ramana argues. “Technically speaking, having a nuclear reactor means you’re going to have more capacity to make nuclear weapons,” he says, including through interchangeable personnel.
But where nuclear power is not up to snuff is renewables, says Ramana, pointing to the statistics. The share of global energy produced by nuclear reactors is down from an estimated 16.7% in 1997 to 9.2% in 2022, largely due to costs and the slow pace of deployment. Meanwhile, in the first half of 2024, wind and solar generated power 30% of all the EU’s electricitywhich diminishes the role of fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency suggests that by 2028, renewable energy sources will account for more than 42% of global electricity generation.
Renewable energy does not have to result in unplanned power outages, as is often threatened, if the electricity grid makes use of a diverse number of sources and improved storage. . “This is how we get water in our taps,” says Ravana, “[even though] it doesn’t rain all the time.”
This does not mean that renewable energy is a simple panacea. They also have environmental and health consequences, Ramana explains in the book, and can involve the exploitation of people, land and resources. “The world needs to reduce its material throughput by producing and consuming less,” he tells me.
We are talking about the day of the UK general election in July, and I want to know what he would advise this new Labor government, which speaks glowingly of the country becoming a “clean energy superpower”. He doesn’t hesitate. First, stop building new nuclear plants. There is no reason to expect Sizewell C to be any different to Hinkley Point C. Second, they are “barking up the wrong technological tree”, and instead of investing in small modular reactors – which, he argues, have broadly the same problems as their larger counterparts – they should focus squarely on renewable energy and storage. Thirdly, it is not feasible to close existing nuclear plants tomorrow, but they must start planning for it now. Ultimately, the government must accept that the great promises of nuclear power will not and cannot materialize.
“Sun converts nuclear energy from its core into the energy of sunlight,” wrote physicist Keith Barnham in 2014. That means, the author Richard Seymour writes, “the question is whether, instead of building nuclear reactors on Earth, we can rely on the nuclear fusion reactor in the core of the sun”. Ramana’s answer is yes. Not just because we can, but we must.
