Final

Paper Introduction to International Relations and Global Governance Professor Jeremy Ghez
Nuclear Reactors Stability and Climate Change
By Victor Fayad May 2012

Among the international forces which are permanently changing the equilibrium of politics and economics all over the world, one of the main sources of instability is the lack of compatibility between actual and future energy production sources and the growing concerns about global warming. Particularly, in this essay, we will assume a hypothetical scenario supposing a new nuclear catastrophe occurs combined with the need of accomplishing the carbon reduction the goals set up at Kyoto. We will first analyze the background of these two possible facts separately, then we will join them and make some assumptions about the possible consequences, finally, we will draw some possible outcomes and conclusions. The following graph is quite illustrative about this problematic, showing how much will the carbon emissions rise is nuclear power plants are retired from the electricity generation sector. Graph 1: Impact of nuclear power plants retirement on carbon emissions.

Source: International Atomic Energy Agency (2011 post Fukushima)

The nuclear electricity generation

The actual energy generated by nuclear reactors all over the world is 372 GWe1 accounting for more than 13% of the energy production for electricity generation purposes. There are now over 430 commercial nuclear power reactors operating in 31 countries mainly in European countries (east and west), Japan and USA although nuclear share on energy production is considerably growing in emerging countries. As many other technology developments, nuclear technology was first developed in the 1940s, during the Second World War the main focus of research was put on producing bombs. Then the attention turned to peaceful purposes of nuclear fission, notably for power generation. The civil & military actual scenario of nuclear is the following. Only eight countries are known to have a nuclear weapons capability. By contrast up to 31 countries, as said before, operate civil reactors, 92 of 434 reactors are settled in developing countries. Over 60 further nuclear power reactors are under construction, equivalent to 17% of existing capacity. A couple of years ago, before Fukushima, over 150 reactors firmly planned to be built, equivalent to 48% of present capacity2. Graph 2: Number of nuclear reactors by continent (2012)

Source: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Dependence on nuclear energy among countries The dependence on nuclear energy yields huge differences among countries. Sixteen countries depend on nuclear power for at least a quarter of their electricity3. France gets around three quarters of its power from nuclear energy, while Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia and Ukraine get one third or more; Finland normally get more than a quarter of their power from nuclear energy, while in the USA one fifth is from nuclear. Among countries which do not host nuclear power plants, Italy gets about 10% of its power from nuclear, and Denmark about 8%. Let us call this countries nuke-sensitive countries. Enough evidence has been shown up to this part of the essay, about the importance of nuclear energy in the international scenario. Rounding up the idea, if the
1 2

IEA-World Energy Outlook, November 2011 Op. Cit. 3 World Nuclear Association, April 2012

nuclear reactor construction slows down, we will get to a situation where the demand on other energy sources will transfer to the usual fuel based or renewable. As renewable energy is technically not able to grow at a high rate and requires a huge initial investment (which at the same time requires fuel), we will observe an increase on oil, gas and coal demand and price. This will also cause countries with huge energy subsidies as USA or Russia to reconsider their policies with consequences such as economic slowdown or social complains. The consequences of the former will be more expenses on energy imports by the nuke-sensitive countries also driving a decrease in imports from other goods. As regards to the latter, among other consequences, imports from long distance markets will became more expensive promoting local production or neighbor imports. Finally, we will see OPEC countries increasing its power as energy providers and a decrease of long distance commerce. This will turn some attention from Asia to Middle East forcing the nukesensitive countries to optimize diplomatic relations with OPEC countries. The nuclear energy main input: Uranium Nuclear energy production main resource is uranium, the good thing about this mineral is that is present all over the world, it is 5 times more common than silver and its energy production per ton is extremely high. Also, except for Europe, it is mainly located at the consumption centers. Graph 3: World Uranium Reserves

Source: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) This means that nuclear energy, for civil purposes, has never been an international issue. The huge reserves in Australia are much more than enough to serve European and Asian Tigers demand and the high concentration of uranium in USA, Canada and China is sufficient for their own needs. The fact that the world could reduce a local (demand) - local (supply) energy resource as uranium based nuclear; at the same tine increasing a local (demand) - foreign (supply) energy resource as oil or gas is what could add up this scenario to change the

world international relations scenario. The OPEC countries trying to keep their reserves reduction at a constant rate, the oil prices going up as a direct consequence of a growing demand and constant supply, the risk of economic slowdown due to high oil prices, and the tensions of the emerging economies competing for this resources could create instability. What would bring us to this scenario? Nuclear development for military purposes could force the nuclear powers to watch and try to stop emerging countries in their nuclear progress. Let us leave military issues behind and analyze the consequences of the disaster occurred at Japan on March 11th. The consequences of Fukushima The earthquake-tsunami disaster at the Fukushima power plants in Japan, which are still being cleaned up, led many to sour on nuclear energy. Soon afterward, Germany and Switzerland decided to completely phase out their nuclear plants within a few decades, and some of Germanys oldest nuclear plants were shut down indefinitely. Altogether, 13 nuclear plants shut down in the first 10 months of 2011. Construction of new nukes also slowed, with 16 plants getting started in 2010, but only two this year one in India and one in Pakistan1. The incident in Fukushima seems to have had a lot more influence over nuclear energy development than Mayak (Rusia) in 1957, Windscale (UK) in 1957, Three Mile Island (EE. UU.) in 1979, Chernbil (Ucrania) in 1986 and Tokaimura (Japn) en 1999. Maybe because of the terrible consequences that took place in a highly developed country as well as a world nuclear power. After the accident, the international press reflected these increasingly higher worries about nuclear energy mainly in European countries and USA. The Economist reported that nuclear power "looks dangerous, unpopular, expensive and risky", and that "it is replaceable with relative ease and could be forgone with no huge structural shifts in the way the world works". Swiss-based investment bank UBS said: "At Fukushima, four reactors have been out of control for weeks; casting doubt on whether even an advanced economy can master nuclear safety ... We believe the Fukushima accident was the most serious ever for the credibility of nuclear power". Deutsche Bank analysts concluded that "the global impact of the Fukushima accident is a fundamental shift in public perception with regard to how a nation prioritizes and values its populations health, safety, security, and natural environment when determining its current and future energy pathways. Also the private sector most relevant reaction was the one of the German engineering giant Siemens which announced it will withdraw entirely from the nuclear industry, as a response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, and said that it would no longer build nuclear power plants anywhere in the world. The other side of the story is being told by the IEA. In their last World Energy Outlook, even though it includes a chapter covering what might happen if the world gradually shifted away from nuclear power; its expects nuclear power to keep growing.

Additionally, nuclear proponents argue that nuclear power is a highly sustainable energy source that reduces carbon emissions and dependence upon foreign oil. But the possibility of another nuclear accident, unfortunately, is different from zero. The lifecycle of nuclear plants Most of today's nuclear plants were originally designed for 30 or 40-year operating lives. However, with major investments in systems, structures and components lives can be extended, and in several countries there are active programs to extend operating lives. In the USA most of the more than one hundred reactors are expected to be granted license extensions from 40 to 60 years. This justifies significant capital expenditure in upgrading systems and components, including building in extra performing margins. Although in Japan new legislation is emerging to limit the life of nuclear reactors up to 40 years. We will now show when the nuclear energy boom took place so as to give us an idea about the age of nuclear reactors, this of course will be correlated with the probability of an accident. Graph 4: Number of nuclear reactors listed as Under Construction

Source: IAEA-PRIS, MSC 2011 As the graphic shows, at least half of the current operating reactors are aged more than 30 and over a fifty are more than 40 years old. Being less fatalists, before an accident occurs, the government may reconsider the construction of new reactors but the costs of decommissioning a nuclear reactor is incredibly high (around 400 Million USD), incredibly long (more than 75 years) and extremely risky (the radiation management is considered to be 15 times more risky for decommissioning than for operating)4. Having said all of this, the nuclear energy generation is going to be reviewed in the following years. The huge costs, extremely long time horizon and high riskiness of decommission may lead to a reduction of nuclear power share on energy production. Definitely, a new accident will have dramatic consequences on this energy source.
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Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Strategy document for 2012

The alternatives for nuclear energy generation reduction Extending our analysis horizon, what are the possibilities for a country (USA, Japan, Europe) that is actually importing fuel to generate electricity and also uses some nuclear reactors? Well, if the latter is coming to an end and the OPEC countries are not willing to increase the supply, nothing but renewable or unconventional fuel are the solutions. The main unconventional fuel resource with local (demand) local (supply) characteristic is coal, but it is the most CO2 emission fuel source. To give an example, the USA, increasingly willing to cut off their oil dependence from the Middle East was considering three courses of action; go renewable, go nuke, use the huge unconventional oil/coal reserves. The first one requires a huge initial investment due to the low productivity of renewable energy, the second was reconsidered after Fukushima, probably the third one was the most reasonable. But climate change is still an issue under that choice, investment on research & development to find out how to get coal cleaner maybe the answer, but there are no progress informed on this issue.

Climate Change
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA)5, the world has only about five years to make a dramatic change in policies if it is to avoid severe impacts of climate change. The lock-in of high-carbon based infrastructure is making the 2C climate change goal more challenging and expensive to meet. Althow WEO was reviewed post Fukushima, a new nuclear accident will for sure add more complexity to the goal achievement. Some quotes from Richard Jones (deputy executive director of the IEA) are enough to make this point clear. "We're increasingly pessimistic", "We've been trying to warn our member countries, " It's getting harder and harder to meet this target.", "We estimate that for every dollar we don't spend today on low-emissions infrastructure, in the future we will have to spend four." This means that the time for acting is now, and as we have seen before, now is also the time of deciding what to do with all of the old existing nuclear reactors. Are countries going to take the climate change problem as serious as it really is? Are annex 1 countries willing to reduce emissions? The fact is that this transition under a high level of uncertainty will lead in the short run to an increase of oil and gas demand. Some reasons for this are the followings. Economically speaking, under incertitude, long term investments are postponed, so we will continue operating existing infrastructure. Most of it is powered by fuel, additionally the investment on new infrastructure will also require fuel, the same happens to the investment required to go from an inefficient energy usage to an efficient one. Moreover, many unconventional oil/coal fields are for the moment economically unreachable. All of this is traduced to high oil demand with the previous referred consequences.

Although there is some skepticism about the question, most of the international organizations and countries agree that global warming has an anthropogenic background mainly consisting of carbon dioxide emissions.

 Nuke and Climate change

Meeting the carbon emission target would require a decrease in coal/oil consumption partially increasing nuclear power as well. Under the Current Policies scenario, global temperature increases by 6 to 7C by the end of the century. Under the 450 ppm CO2 concentration cap scenario, temperature only goes up by 2C by 2100. Graph 5: the IAE Scenario of 450 ppm in Mtoe

Source: IEA, WEO 2010 (Pre Fukushima) So far, Japan's Fukushima disaster has damped enthusiasm for nuclear power in Europe, but elsewhere has had very little impact, with Russia, China, India, and other countries still planning large growth of nuclear power. Are the nuclear (military) powers willing to let nuclear reactors go massive in emerging and developing countries? Is nuclear power going to continue its expansion if another tragedy occurs? Are countries as USA or European, willing to keep their high dependence on Middle East oil and Russian gas respectively? Many countries which are highly depending on nuclear power6 are also in the annex I of the Kyoto protocol and obliged to reduce their carbon emissions. In addition, the population in these countries will strongly react against nuclear if a new accident takes place. How will these countries react? Will they turn to fuel again and postpone Kyoto agreements, will they invest a huge amount of dollars during the crisis so as to go green?

Say nuke-sensitive countries

Conclusions
The consequences of our scenario will be as follow. Another adverse nuclear event will lead to a reduction of nuclear energy share in energy production. This energy source will have to be replaced by oil/gas in the short run; mainly in developed countries in which the society reaction against nuke will be stronger than in emerging countries. The demand of oil/gas will grow and as the supply is not going to grow at the same pace, tension will arise in the Middle East7. Spot Asian LNG prices have this month hit a four-year high of $18 per million British thermal units, up more than 35 per cent over the past year, according to Platts, the price data provider. Commodities traders and bankers in Singapore said LNG spot prices were set to break $20 per mBtu, the record level at which a handful of cargos changed hands at the peak of the commodities boom in 2008. One possible exit is to let developing economies go nuke, as their society is less reacting to a nuclear accident allowing current nuclear expansion plans to be accomplished. This will change the balance of nuclear power and the possibility of further development for military purposes. The other possibility is unconventional coal which is extremely incompatible with carbon emission reduction. If China continues with its coal usage and USA increase it, the target of 450 ppm scenario will be completely left behind increasing the global warming which consequences will for sure change the whole international scenario. Graph 6: Climate change vulnerability index

See how the gas price spread of Japan vs European has grown since Kukushima. Japan: $18 ; Euro: $11.5 ; USA: $2.5 Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/22943afa-a022-11e1-90f3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1vX6OJ74H