File image: Barakah nuclear power plant in the western desert of Abu Dhabi
Photo: AP
There is a delicious irony in the fact that, even as the sun slowly sets on the age of fossil fuels, two of the oil and gas-reserving countries that have powered the world economy for decades are now at the forefront of the nuclear energy. rebirth of power
Oil and gas will continue to flow out of the region for years to come. But what both countries understand, and what those calling for an immediate halt to fossil fuel production and consumption refuse to acknowledge, is that without fossil fuel revenues, the costly transition to renewable energy simply cannot be achieved. achieve.
“Rebirth” may seem like an odd term for a technology that lit its first lightbulbs nearly 70 years ago. But during the years of abundant fossil fuels, nuclear power has gotten a lot of bad press.
Others point to the potential for disaster. The latest example of this type of anti-nuclear propaganda is the book “Atoms and Ashes” by Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy.
Mistakes were undoubtedly made and shortcuts were surely taken in the early years of the reactor design. But lessons have been learned, and modern reactors are extremely safe. The thorny issue of spent fuel disposal is also being resolved.
More specifically, despite the widespread science fiction hysteria about nuclear power, there have only been two major accidents: Three Mile Island was a partial reactor meltdown with no casualties, the consequences of which were much less severe than many have had. believe.
To date, 46 deaths have been directly attributed to the Chernobyl explosion in 1986, although the total number of deaths related to the accident is widely discussed along with the scale of the health impact of radiation. Either way, the accident was the result of a faulty Soviet-era reactor operated by poorly trained personnel.
The Fukushima plant was damaged in 2011 by a tsunami, triggered by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan. No one died.
Compare these nuclear disasters to the death toll from fossil fuels: For starters, the 8.7 million people who die each year from related air pollution, not to mention the countless lives that have been lost to coal mining.
No form of mass energy production is without risk. In 1975, the collapse of the Banqiao hydroelectric dam in China killed more than 170,000 people. But has the world abandoned hydropower? Nope.
However, after Fukushima, the nations that really should have known about it panicked and abandoned nuclear power for purely political reasons. Germany, faced with anti-nuclear protests throughout the country and pressure from the green vote, switched off nuclear generation practically overnight.
Until 2011, 25 percent of the country’s energy came from 17 nuclear reactors. Today, the three that remain operational are marked to close at the end of this year. Meanwhile, Germany is reopening shuttered coal plants.
The reality is that nuclear power is the last clean and reliable source of energy. Wind, solar, and hydroelectric power are great, but when the wind isn’t blowing, the sun isn’t shining, and the water isn’t flowing, there are only two options: fossil fuels or nuclear power.
This is recognized and embraced by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, countries where important decisions can be made and acted upon quickly, and whose leadership in the nuclear field bodes well for all our futures.
By working with the IAEA, the two Gulf states are showing what can be achieved in a remarkably short time and encouraging the global nuclear industry to develop ever more compact and affordable nuclear reactors. This, in turn, is paving the way for other nations, further down the development ladder, to follow suit.
Whenever world leaders meet for climate change conferences, much of the debate self-righteously focuses on the need for developing countries to curb their appetite for fossil fuels. Coming from European nations like the UK, which launched the fossil fuel era and fueled the growth of their economies with coal and oil, this is laughably hypocritical.
The West should stand up to the perversely disruptive green lobby, embrace nuclear power as the technology that saves the planet, and instead of suggesting that developing countries kick the fossil fuel habit and hamper their economic growth, support them with funding and technical knowledge. they need to adopt nuclear energy.
Without her, the world might well be doomed. In 2005, 66.5 percent of the world’s electricity was generated by burning fossil fuels. In 2019, it was 63 percent. In 14 years, we have made almost no progress.
The solution, as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia acknowledge, is nuclear power. It is time for the world to grow up, abandon the irrational attitude towards nuclear energy and follow his lead.
In agreement with the Union Office
Jonathan Gornall is a guest contributor. The opinions expressed are personal.