The Nuclear Comeback

In the face of the climate change and oil crisis, the nuclear industry proposes itself as a solution, claiming that nuclear power generation is cheap and with nil carbon emissions, while new plants are safer than older ones and future technological developments are certain to provide solutions for nuclear waste treatment and safe repository location. People are listening; the result is the opening of a global nuclear renaissance, with some tens of nuclear power stations under construction and more than a hundred expected to start within the next decade. Conversely, detractors explain that nuclear power is producing a 100,000-year legacy of radioactive waste, the power stations are chief terrorist targets, and the industry has a reputation for accidents, cover-ups, and links to nuclear weapons production - the so called Siamese twin syndrome. Despite any provided statement, energy making through nuclear power remains a controversial issue: it is impossible to outline completely its life cycle assessment without considering a time span as large as including thousands of the (hopefully) upcoming human generations.

Therefore, a well-informed and open-minded documentary as The Nuclear Comeback can be helpful, probably not in giving conclusive answers about nuclear power, but in seizing correctly its current revival. This movie consists of seven sections dealing with all the contentious aspects of nuclear energy: greenhouse gas reduction potential, economics, risks, accidents, waste management, and comparison with renewable alternatives. A worldwide tour of the nuclear industry accompanies the audience from Sweden and England plants to uranium mines in Australia, to the debris of Chernobyl, offering a direct check of the state of the art in each sector.

Despite the claims of its advocates, the environmental end economics benefits of nuclear power never emerge convincingly. "We have become addicted in consuming huge amounts of fossil fuels - states Bruno Comby, founder of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy - (...) this is why we have absolutely no choice, we need to turn to nuclear energy ". "We're seeing nuclear, the n-world, is much more mentionable in high political places today than it was even two years ago" - adds Ian Hore-Lacy, public communications director of the World Nuclear Association, but the screen reflects a more complex scenario. The open vision of the planet's most famous nuclear facilities, including Chernobyl, and the surrounding apparatus sustaining them (uranium ores, transportation and locations for nuclear waste) rapidly let emerge the hidden costs and latent threats posed by this industry. At the Calder Hall Power Station (Sellafield, UK), the first commercial nuclear plant ever available that closed in 2003, decommission procedures are expected to last 120 years. Exhausted uranium and plutonium fuels are temporarily buried underground in empty salt-mines, or under the Baltic Sea, shielded by concrete or embedded in thick glass matrixes. But, we are warned, there is currently no permanent high level nuclear power waste repository operating anywhere in the world to stock radioactive garbage safely enough to resist earthquakes, floods or other natural occurrences of the next 1,000 centuries. All these open questions make nuclear energy different from any other industry: "I am not entirely sure that it is appropriate to include nuclear power in the regular market economy" - remarks Lars-Olov Hoghrud, nuclear engineer at the Swedish plant of Forsmark.

All along the video, the scenery portrays overcrowded urban traffic, night luminaries in Western towns, and offices where both, advocates and opponents of nuclear power explain their points of view surrounded by energy-consuming technological devices. Even when the discourse heads for renewable energy resources, the video shows large Aeolian and photovoltaic plants set on Northern European seashore or in sunned areas of the African desert, never questioning the aim for the run after such a huge amount of energy supply. It seems like if no other possibility exists for contemporary societies than a self-consistent gigantic cycle of energy production and consume.

The nuclear power dilemma is not only for the rich world to decide, as its demand is most dramatic in developing countries like China, India and North Korea, where energy consumption increases steeply and most nuclear plants are being projected. Little is said about the scarcity of uranium ores. Only Canada, Australia, and Kazakhstan account for further mining, and the three together provide for half of the annual output of nuclear fuel worldwide, but production lags far below demand that is compensated only exploiting older stocks and converting military arsenals.

In summary, The Nuclear Comeback is an informative vision recommended to science teachers and policy makers. Maybe it makes for scary viewing, but awareness is essential if a participated response is required to such a crucial question of our time.