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change. can. start. to think. well come across talk i'm peter level twenty five years ago the world was coming to grips with the catastrophe unfolding it turn no ball today the same could be said

about the sheema what is the future of nuclear power does it run its course or isn't eval that it will be with us for a very long time. can come. across the pros and cons of nucular energy i'm joined by william tucker in new york he's a journalist and author of terrestrial energy in paris we cross to benjamin so cool he is an assistant professor at the national university of singapore he is also author of the forthcoming book contesting the future of nuclear power a critical global assessment of atomic energy and in austin we have robert bryce he's a senior fellow at the manhattan institute and author of power hungry the myths of green energy and the real fuels of the future all right gentlemen this is cross talk that means you can jump in since is the twenty fifth anniversary verse three of the tragedy at chernobyl let's take a look back. the tongue optional goal in nothing ukraine is destined to stay

abandoned it's high radiation levels and again infrastructure so this is a reminder of the worst nuclear plant is in human history since then nuclear technologies have been modernized significantly to survive the accidents of the scale the industry was virtually forced to invent itself bridging industry to culture nevertheless those who posed use of nuclear energy will always play the tribal card because the damage caused is hard to forget. thirty one people were killed by the chernobyl accident in the first three months but many more days later it's a result of radiation related sickness the impact on public health remains in the shoots at this stage radioactive contamination spread over about forty percent of europe and turned the trend of blast into an international tragedy today only tourists are permitted to enter the exclusion zone but there are extreme health risks when doing so the proponents claim nuclear technology is have become much more sophisticated this chill vulnerable to natural disasters that earthquake and

tsunami the tourism thank you japan turned to the city for her she went into a dead zone because afraid and levels pushing the severity level was raised to seven the same as. some experts remain steadfast in the face of chernobyl and for the sheema and continued to think nuclear the only major energy source that is available when oil storage missing and running short is nuclear power and we better get prepared for many european countries continue to have the rely on nuclear power in france for example it amounts to seventy five percent of its receipts in needs to not go seriously undermines the nuclear industry and many conflicts are fused to build more nuclear power plants but resistance soon gave it to many coal and nuclear renaissance with more confidence and opting for nuclear energy the same may happen in light of fukushima it's may encourage a global great thing but the world is unlikely to rule out the nuclear option and

it time in a severe trauma cross-talk r.t. . ok william greider in new york if i go to you first block for the industry reason knockout and because of the severity of the of the action it's going to be with us for quite a while still. yeah i think it's a black eye it's definitely not a knockout most countries are not going to abandon nuclear those that there were putting themselves in a real bind i mean you already see germany is floundering around what are we going to do next if we ban a nuclear italy has the highest electrical costs and europe and they think they're going to abandon that i think i think it'll it'll countries will react to different degrees some may quit altogether but those that move ahead i think are going to reap the advantages for benjamin what do you think about that in paris i mean this

is that this is a second really serious accident here and is as much as people talk about new technologies we still have the same kind of critical. level of danger seven ok we had a twenty five years ago we have it now ok and that's the nuclear technology that has been improved others will say these were not it this was an old plant but nonetheless tragedies out there when it happens it happens speak. you know i think the person is correct is that you know fukushima and sure noble aren't the only major nuclear accidents if you use the i.n.t.'s scale it's true that these are the only two that are level seven we did a long to do a study of one hundred years of energy accidents of my own university and we found that there are one hundred three significant nuclear incidents or accidents that either resulted in if they tally or cause more than one million dollars of damages so the question of will this be a black eye to the nuclear industry is probably not because the industry is very used to dealing with incidents and accidents but this is also a pretty big disadvantage to nuclear power these facilities are so large so

expensive that some to lock in different decisions so even if japan wanted right now to kind of abandon the player power plants they can't because they've build an infrastructure that is so capital intensive that switching trajectories because of any reasons disaster shortages of fuel high costs is virtually impossible which is something that you don't see with your energy efficiency measures or your renewable energy technologies which are quicker cheaper and more widely available to you and we locked into the a nuclear future we don't even have a choice right now do we. well. i agree more with with bill i think than with benjamin the the fact is for the for the near term fukushima is going to hinder nuclear development globally but look at what's happening in china a country that is heavily reliant on coal for what about seven hundred seventy five percent of its electricity they're planning to build sixty new nuclear reactors over the next decade it's clear that in the near term this action at fukushima is

going to drive the world more toward natural gas because that's the only other source that is scalable and as relatively low carbon but over the long term i think nuclear is going to have to be and will be part of the answer because the demand for electricity globally is so great well you know if i go back to new york william what about the cost of it i mean when when i was preparing for this program i just such a politicized issue would come across articles and say everything's just fine this is just a black eye the future is writing for a radio and then other stuff saying these plants or they're all getting older is not enough new ones being built are extremely expensive they're actually not very efficient eccentric cetera i mean it's very intensely debated it's been debated all of our lives here i mean is it just going to continue on in the way it is because it's just going to always be a certain percentage of our energy needs you know like twenty percent twenty four percent where wherever you're listening to. but i don't think you can say existing

plants are inefficient they're running at about ninety percent capacity which is the best of energy any energy source and they're also immensely profitable the average reactor in the united states is making about two million dollars a day because they had their construction costs retired and now they're just making money the difficulty is that we've had this hiatus where we haven't built anything for twenty five years i it looks expensive you toss five billion dollars to build one reactor but look at the alternatives i mean if you try to duplicate that amount of power with windmills you what you would you would spend more natural gas looks cheap because they're easy to build but who knows what the price of natural gas is going to then. she'd like a reasonable comment there i mean they're profitable and i want to talk a little bit about energy security in the future i mean irrespective if they're expensive to make each country see another can't you country can't turn off your electricity going well i mean there are

a few points the first is that bill's right that the current plants that are operating are very profitable but when you're talking about building new plants which is prone to cost that are incredibly high cost that could be as high as eight or nine thousand dollars per kilowatt cost of building a new winter of mine is about two thousand dollars per installed kilowatt the only other technology that's not expensive on a capital intensive basis is solar panels and nobody's talked about making centralize solar facilities so there's not many countries the second interesting point is that when you talk about capacity factor it is true that most plants in the u.s. are actually close to ninety six ninety seven percent for the last few years but if you look at the worldwide history over the course of nuclear power the global capacity factors below seventy percent and that's a largely due to what's called a steep i don't want to call learning curve with new reactors and so if we're talking about historic reactors keeping the reactors on the line or nuclear point will go to generation three or four reactors. well if you get that when you get to the top of the learning when you get to the top you learning by repair you don't

want to quit then you that's where you got that's the point. the best example you dreamed of derision a girl like that then oh ok go ahead and i'll go to robert but you're going to. measure. the newest reactor being go right now which is a kind of generation three plus there's the european pressurized reactor this one being built in finland and i believe one in sweden in this illustrates the complexity and the difficulty with doing a new nuclear design both of these projects are forty five years behind schedule and i've seen cost overruns of two hundred to four hundred percent so this idea that we've already surpassed the learning curve with even slight modifications of reactor designs i think is completely a false argument ok robert. well i think this is peter this is clearly the issue is how is the nuclear industry industry going to address the cost issue going forward and this make no mistake this is the real problem that the industry faces the capital costs for these these plants is it at minimum five thousand dollars per

installed kilowatt as benjamin pointed out can be much higher given cost inflation but the reality is we just have to get good at nuclear right now i just looked up the numbers and the world's fleet of four hundred reactors or so is avoiding about two point five billion tons of c o two emissions per year that's nearly ten percent of global c o two emissions so if we're concerned about c o two we have to embrace nuclear i think that going forward we have a lot of options going to smaller what are called modular reactors possibly for fueling them with or to reduce proliferation risks that combination of technologies can help bring the price down you go to a manufacturing type of base of production rather than a best poker on site construction methodology that could help bring costs down but in my view if you're anti carbon dioxide in your anti-nuclear you're just pro black out and with global demand for electricity expected to grow by eighty percent over

the next twenty or twenty five years we simply don't have an option but to continue to work hard at getting good at nuclear. all right gentlemen we're going to go to a short break here right now after the break we'll continue our discussion on the use of nuclear power stay with her. up. to. still. want to. thank.

you. can. still. welcome back across the capital of l. to remind you we're talking about the future of nuclear energy. can. still. mention if i go back to you in paris i mean

irrespective of your attitude towards nuclear energy one thing is for sure a man for energy is going to continue to grow expression in china was already mentioned in the program as we speak right now there's a lot of controversy about nuclear power plants being built in india and then another market the desperately needs more energy and and we live in a very volatile world gentlemen i mean the politics of all oil the geopolitics of oil is out there in our face now we don't know what the world's going to be like in twenty years twenty five years but you have everybody has to plan for their energy security so then what about that i mean irrespective you like nuclear power not you there you just a lot of countries just feel compelled to go in that direction because it will be their energy. there's a lot with with a comment first i think bill's you know soundbite that it's either pro-nuclear or probiotic out is brilliant it's a great comment but it kind of illustrates the completely false dichotomy that it's

either nuclear power or fossil fuels if you look including at china and india in the past five years both the fastest growing sources of new electricity supplies what was the cheapest involved in renewable electricity in both europe and the u.s. it's been natural gas wind and landfill gas globally it's been hydro geothermal wind as well as solar electricity even in china you had about six times more renewable energy capacity installed last year the nuclear capacity if you look at global investment patterns you had one hundred eighty five billion dollars invested on renewables you had about six last year and rested on the nuclear reactors you can kind of already see the market is choosing to meet increases in what was the demand with renewable sources as well as energy efficiency what's interesting is if you look at what cuts carbon the fastest as in what does the most bang for the buck about an eight to one ratio favorable to nuclear energy is energy efficiency this is you know it things you can implement demand side management practices more efficient homes more efficient in

a fuel standards for vehicles that cut energy costs far below the price of building any new power plant and you may think that countries like japan or the u.s. or china haven't really tapped this energy efficiency potential of they have tapped it when in reality you've got probably thirty to fifty percent of electricity demand today can be cut with cost effective measures and these are numbers that don't just come from industry trade groups but also consulting groups like mckinsey or the i.p.c.c. just released a report a few months ago so this issue of we have to build more power plants to meet demand rather than let's actually reduce the demand first is another one of these kind of dichotomies that kind of distorts the real picture of the options that countries have to meet and the security needs it will you if i'm going to you i mean i don't know how inefficient countries are. but three. it is but it certainly has the desire. to be have it's own energy independence here and there and nucular is one direction there you know like i said what's going to happen to oil i mean obviously

they're still want oil and gas but this is something for a longer term because the plants last longer investment is huge and as we've been told on this program they're hugely profitable so again kind of repeating my question i mean countries like that really don't have an option they really feel they need to go take the nuclear option for their own energy self-sufficiency. well the thing we always talk about with nuclear power is its energy density it has you get two thousand times the energy from the same volume with than you do with coal and i came across a figure there they really amaze me there are something like two thousand coal mines in the in the entire world is four hundred four hundred coal mines alone in kentucky there are forty five year raney and mines around the world right now one of russia is talking about supplying all the developing countries with uranium on this exchange basis they have one mind one uranium mine it's all going to come out

of one mine so you get such a tremendous advantage when you go with nuclear and of course there's your aim everywhere so really for countries that want to supply their own energy players just ideal robert bryce i mean. benjamin should this program is all legit and you can get is quick ok you dissented go ahead benjamin go ahead and then we'll go to robert sorry and then it's ok that it's interesting that if you're talking about energy security and fuel the ability for uranium isn't everywhere you've got three countries kazakhstan canada and australia that are responsible for more than sixty percent of production and you've got about twelve countries that are responsible for ninety percent of production so it's even as concentrated in terms of supply as boyle is so we're really kind of replacing one set of dependence with another set of dependence ok robert i mean it's go down the road of renewables because a lot of people are saying that again i've come across very different numbers about the efficiency of investment in renewables as compared to fossil fuel and nuclear

energy. sure well two to benjamin's point about efficiency look no one is opposed to efficiency saying you'd be opposed to efficiency is akin to saying i'm opposed to air the world is getting more efficient and it's as you consumption it's happening everywhere the us is now today using about the same amount of oil as it did in one thousand nine hundred eighty three despite the fact that we have twice as many cars and we're driving them at twice as many miles so i'm all for efficiency but we can't keep the lights on with efficiency we have to generate electricity why because we don't have a perfect storage method for electricity if we had such a method then that is the true game changer but with regard to renewables look at the just the latest report from the energy information administration here in the united states the estimated natural gas fired electricity is about the cheapest form of power production and about sixty three dollars per megawatt hour on shore wind generated electricity cost fifty percent more offshore wind cost four times as

much and and solar thermal cost five times as much this idea that renewables are cheaper than conventional for forms of electricity generation is just simply not true further even if it were on par they're not dispatchable the reality is we need electric sources electricity generation sources that we can turn on and off that's what gives them value having them be intermittent and highly variable gives them of a real world value of a centrally zero so that but i think peter just to direct a conversation if i could one idea i think the bigger problem for nuclear going forward is the issue of global cooperation with regard to the fuel cycle this is regard it addresses the issue of proliferation one of the first responders after fukushima was the international atomic energy agency this at the i.a.e.a. and the and the enabling the empowering the funding of the i.a.e.a. is going to be critical for the growth of nuclear globally in the next couple of

decades we think about that william i mean it's kind of global cooperation we're going to have your plan. yeah let me throw out the renewals all you're going to hit with all these are you know you're going to hit a point of diminishing returns very quickly you can throw a lot of windmills at first to get up to maybe five ten percent of your electricity but after that the wind's fluctuation is going to start impacting the grid and at that point it becomes a nuisance more than anything else so what happens is you have to put up natural gas turbines so you can compensate for that and as robert prices pointed out once you start doing that you it would be much more efficient to run baseload combined cycle gas plants just running the gas itself than putting up a windmills and having these inefficient turbines you end up using more gas with windmills than you would without when we think about that benjamin because i do go back to something we said earlier in the program about learning curve i mean what

have we reached the top of the learning curve for renewables i mean it's a relatively new why did it least for commercial use and industrial use. i mean not really of the the one big advantage that renewables have in terms of learning curves and more rapid turnover right it takes two to three four maybe four years of most to build a new wind farm you've got you know pretty simple to be modulated if you manufacture components for a lot of these types of facilities as opposed to nuclear plants which take ten to fifteen years to build if you include permit and so the ability for us to learn more rapidly and integrate their learning into new designs is much quicker when you have technologies that are like cell phones rather than technologies that are like cathedrals the other key thing about cost the elephant in the room which no one has mentioned is subsidies and externalities the reason nuclear power seems so cheap is because most of its development has been subsidized you have a nuclear sector that's eating three quarters of all global research subsidies related to energy going back for fifty years and externalities we're talking about all of these things hazardous pollutants with uranium mining limited liability for

nuclear accidents free on site storage of fuel decommissioning facilities that are always excluded from nuclear costs if you include them the prices. nuclear often doubles or in some cases even triples so let's be honest about what we're actually including and not including when we talk about the cost of generating a certain type of the christie williams i go to and we did a program on energy. a few months ago and we had a gentleman on from france and he was obviously was trumpeting via the. industry in france and was brought up it is intensely subsidized by the state intensely well nuclear construction nuclear plans was never subsidized the actual construction was never subsidized the united states it was built on the old regime where retailers were guaranteed a profit but there were never any government subsidies now if you want to look for subsidies just try the windmill the the collection taxes the investment taxes the mandates whoever mandated that anybody had to build

a nuclear reactor so the on the cost of reactors most of those costs are incorporated the whole business of taking care of fuel has been we've got a fifth twenty billion dollars pot of money waiting to build yucca mountain or something like that but that's all that has already been incorporated what about that robert o. energy is subsidized by somebody and it's almost always the taxpayer. well that's true. yes there there's no such thing as a free market that's certainly true in the energy business but when it comes to the growth of renewables in places like china if you look at what has happened here in the u.s. and in fact if you look at the clean energy which is the clean energy mechanism that was mandated under some of these u.n. rules and then go back and look at china it's clear that that system has been gamed and the chinese have been among the best at collecting these subsidies to build

wind projects that some of which are not even connected to the grid so this idea that somehow investment in renewables is leading the world that this is where the world is going the world is going in chasing renewables in most of these countries simply because of subsidies and mandates it's not because the market as is is is is saying this is the best option benjamin and she gave us one number before of something on the order of two hundred billion invested in renewables ok well that's that seems like a big number here in the u.s. the upstream oil and gas industry alone just in drilling new wells every year since two hundred fifty billion dollars so the idea that somehow that that the world is moving to renewables because this is the cheapest fastest way is simply not true it's because it's subsidized and mandated that they're going to these inefficient and incredibly resource intensive projects particularly like linda that uses up to fifty times more land to the nuclear natural gas and by my calculations about five

hundred. the last movie we've run out of time many thanks to my guest today in new york austin and in paris and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember across tough rules. live. we'll. bring you the latest in science and technology from the realms. of the future covered. here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.