NUCNET NEWS
THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR NEWS AGENCY
1 March 2007 / News N°54
Scientists Tell UN Climate Change Report To ‘Boost
Nuclear In Energy Mix’
1 Mar (NucNet): A new report by an international
panel of scientific experts endorses the further development of
nuclear energy and renewables as part of a global energy mix to
fight climate change.
The report for the United Nations Department
of Economic and Social Affairs*, released on 27 February 2007
and a copy of which was presented to UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon, says switching from fossil fuels to renewable and nuclear
energy sources is necessary to keep the level of atmospheric CO2
down.
However, the report warns that “a major
expansion (of nuclear power) will only be possible if the nuclear
industry and its regulators can successfully address concerns
about safety, vulnerability to terrorist attack, management of
nuclear wastes, and links to nuclear weapon capabilities”.
One of the report’s authors, Diana Uerge-Vorsatz,
a professor and Ph.D programme director at the Department of Environmental
Sciences and Policy at the Central European University in Budapest,
Hungary, told NucNet today: “Certainly nuclear is included
in the report because of the part it should play. But the committee
had to also point out that the industry first had to clearly explain
how problems of spent fuel storage and waste would be dealt with.”
Nuclear fission generation costs are typically
20 percent above those for conventional electricity generation
from coal (where coal is cheap), but this differential would shrink
or disappear if a substantial price were placed on carbon emissions,
the report says.
Among non-fossil alternatives, the report says
wind power is the most rapidly growing electricity source worldwide
in percentage terms. But while expansion potential for wind power
is large “the practical limit may be considerably smaller
because of high costs at less windy or more remote sites”.
The report urges policymakers to limit temperature
increases from global warming to between 2 and 2.5 degrees Celsius
above the 1750 pre-industrial level to avoid a “sharply
rising danger of intolerable impacts on humans”, adding:
“It is still possible to avoid unmanageable changes in the
future, but the time for action is now.”
*The panel of experts that prepared the report
was convened by Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. The
report, ‘Confronting climate change: avoiding the unmanageable
and managing the unavoidable’, can be downloaded from the
United Nations Foundation web site (www.unfoundation.org).
Contact the editor on this report
john.shepherd@worldnuclear.org
>>Related reports in the NucNet
database (available to subscribers)
Fossil Fuels Are Primary Source Of Increased
CO2,
Says UN Report (World Nuclear Review No. 5, 2
February 2007)
The NucNet database currently contains around
12,000 reports published since 1991. To subscribe or ask for any
further information email info@worldnuclear.org
Source: NucNet
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