Italy Returns to Nuclear Power While the World Looks Ahead
Italy definitively approved the return of nuclear energy after 22 years as part of a new development strategy. Italy abandoned nuclear energy after a 1987 referendum, whose result was strongly influenced by the Chernobyl disaster in Russia the previous year.
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Under the new law, the government will have six months to choose sites for new nuclear energy plants, define the criteria for the storage of radioactive waste and work out compensatory measures for people who will be affected by the plants. The actual building of the plants is expected by 2013 starting with the production of energy by 2018. Opposition politicians said the return to nuclear energy was an “economic and environmental madness”.
While world leaders are addressing the issue of climate change during G8 in L’Aquila, Italy has chosen to ditch research and promotion of renewable energy sources going back into a dangerous past. Environmental organisation Legambiente meanwhile described the law as a ”return to energy prehistory”, saying United States President Barack Obama had ”refused to finance” that technology because it was ”polluting and unsafe”.
The cost of building four nuclear plants would be 20-25 billion euros, while they would contribute less than 5% to the country’s energy consumption. Let’s see why:
- The fuel needed for nuclear energy (uranium) is located for a 58% abroad (Canada, Australia e Kazakhstan). As pointed out by the physicist Nobel Prize Carlo Rubbia, the availability in the world of this resource is limited and its price could raise quickly (from 2000 untill today it increased twenty times from 7 to 130 dollars each pound).
- The law foresee that nuclear power will produce a 25% of the electric energy needed in Italy. But the production of electric energy represents only a 18% of our total energy demand, with a 82% plus required by means of transport. Attending to the new law, the goal of 25%, concerning that 18% of electric production, means that nuclear energy will satisfy only a 4.5% of the Italian energy demand.
- A recent research, “The case for investing in energy productivity” by McKinsey Global Institute, explains that applying energy efficiency in building sector would be possible to cover a 4% of our national consumption, the same percentage predicted by nuclear plants.
Italian politicians don’t understand that change our mind investing in efficiency and renewable energies is possible from now and with lower costs. Do you have any idea to convice them?
Image courtesy of christian.senger on Flickr under Creative Commons
Apparently the anti-nukes are now illiterate.
Why not learn to write before trying to publish?
And get a brain - nuclear power is THE carbon-free power on the planet - it is three times cheaper than the cheapest “renewable” and doesn’t need to be duplicated to allow for peak demand increases. And the amount of energy the world will need is increasing - conservation is a lost cause that won’t accomplish anything. Wake up, folks.
This is a very interesting and important topic. I respectfully suggest, however, that the writer re-read and edit articles before posting.
California reader,
could you please be more specific?
Thank you
The fuel costs for a nuclear reactor are relatively low to begin with and reflect a small percentage of the operating costs. Uranium can therefore increase price quite substantially and not affect costs very much. The fact that most of the uranium would come from sources outside of Italy is not a great concern either. With a fuel source that is 2 million times more dense than coal, nuclear reactors do not suffer through the same price fluctuations as a gas or coal plant. Lessening the dependence on Russian gas is one of the objectives for the new nuclear builds in Italy.
The other arguments for the percentage of energy covered by the proposed nuclear plants and the idea that such a percentage could be covered by other means (efficiency) is not the same as cleanly generated electricity nor are replacements. As Italy currently imports most of its electricity, much of it from France, they are already using a great deal of nuclear power, it’s just not their nuclear power.