The nuclear picture overseas

By Rob Nikolewski, The San Diego Union-Tribune

June 06--For going on 40 years, the nuclear energy industry has often found itself on the defensive in the United States.

The partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania came less than less than two weeks after the release of the 1979 movie, "The China Syndrome," which told a story about safety cover-ups at a fictitious California facility.

The disaster in Russia 30 years ago at Chernobyl and the accident at Fukushima after a tsunami hit Japan in 2011 as a result of a magnitude 9 earthquake has kept large segments of the public wary, especially in a seismically active area like California.

"One thing you've proven in California is if you build a nuclear plant, you'll probably find an earthquake fault," said
Rochelle Becker, executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility in San Luis Obispo.

After shutting down nuclear facilities after Fukushima, Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe has brought nuclear power back after the country had to rely on fossil fuel energy that proved much more expensive.

"Our resource-poor country cannot do without nuclear power," Abe said a news conference in March. Abe's decision has prompted protests and lawsuits.

Related: Read our in-depth story on the future of nuclear in California

China has been aggressively expanding its nuclear energy sector.

No other country in the world has more civilian nuclear power stations under construction.

Last month, a state-run newspaper reported that a Chinese corporation plans on constructing floating nuclear power plants to deliver electricity.

Anxious to wean itself away from coal, China has a team of researchers and engineers at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics working on molten-salt reactors.

Instead of using solid fuel rods, molten-salt reactors use liquid, rather than solid fuel rods, as its fuel to generate electricity.

The program has collaborated with Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory to move the technology along.

"They're going to demonstrate it for 10 years before they try to sell it," said
Michael Shellenberger, who founded Environmental Progress, an organization that supports nuclear power.

The picture in Europe is mixed.

After Fukushima, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel spearheaded legislation to essentially shut down nuclear power, which provided 26 percent of country's electricity. Germany's "Energiewende" program has focused on cranking up renewable sources such as solar and wind.

But while nuclear has been disappearing, Germany is producing 43 percent of its electricity by burning coal.

France has long used nuclear power as its dominant source of electricity but French President
Francois Hollande recently announced a proposal to boost renewables and shut down aging nuclear plants, moves that could cut the country's nuclear mix from 75 percent to 50 percent by 2025.

Eager to close all of its coal-fired power plants, the government in Great Britain wants to build two reactors at Hinkley Point, on the southwest coast of England.

"We have a technology that enables that," said
Fiona Rayment, director of fuel cycle solutions at the U.K.'s National Nuclear Laboratory to the Union-Tribune while attending a nuclear conference in San Francisco April 18. "You talk to a lot of people in the U.K. right now and they absolutely see nuclear as part of the energy mix."

But Hinkley Point has been hobbled by engineering problems and construction delays.

The U.K. has agreed to significant carbon dioxide emissions reductions -- 80 percent by 2050.

California has its own ambitious climate goals, including Senate Bill 350 that mandates 50 percent of the state's energy to come from renewable sources by 2030.

That, nuclear's proponents say, offers the industry an opportunity to highlight its clean air attributes, especially to a younger audience worried about global warming.

"We are seeing a lot of young people who are more comfortable with technology," said
Josh Freed, vice president for the clean energy program at Third Way, a think tank that bills itself as politically centrist.

Gen Xers and millenials, born and raised amid laptops and IPhones, may be more willing to give nuclear power a chance, the thinking goes.

"They come to the conclusion," Freed said, "that nuclear has to be part -- not the entire -- but part of the solution to climate change."

Freed acknowledged the evidence of a youth movement for nuclear is anecdotal.

Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California, said she's not seeing it.

"The younger people who are working with us, " Phillips said, "they want renewable energy" from wind and solar.

___

Visit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.