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Energy and Sustainable Development

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Energy and Sustainable Development ENERGY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT one of the eight Millennium Development emphasize that the Bruntdland Commission’s NGoals (MDGs) adopted by the United definition of sustainable development focuses Nations in 2000 directly addressed energy, on growing assets and opening options — not although for nearly all of them — from foreclosing them. Nuclear power broadens the eradicating poverty and hunger to improving resource base by putting uranium to productive education and health — progress has use. It reduces harmful emissions and expands depended on greater access to modern energy. the supply of electricity. Nuclear power Thirteen years later, energy is being given increases the world’s stock of technological more attention. The target date for the MDGs and human capital. And finally, nuclear power is 2015, and in 2012 the UN began deliberations is ahead of other energy technologies in to develop sustainable development goals to ‘internalizing’ all external costs, from safety guide support for sustainable development to waste disposal to decommissioning. beyond 2015. The Future We Want, the outcome ‘Internalizing’ costs means that the costs of all document of the 2012 United Nations of these activities are largely already included Conference on Sustainable Development (also in the price we pay for nuclear electricity. known as Rio+20) gives energy a central role: Were the environmental costs arising from “We recognize the critical role that energy the use of fossil fuels ‘internalized’ in the price plays in the development process, as access to paid for them, the price we would pay for the sustainable modern energy services contributes electricity produced using fossil fuels would be to poverty eradication, saves lives, improves considerably higher. health and helps provide for basic human needs.” National governments need to compare the relative benefits and there needs to be public discussion on the subject. Nuclear power is ahead of other energy technologies in ‘internalizing’ all external The first task of sustainable development is often defined as bringing energy, particularly costs, from safety to waste disposal to electricity, to the fifth of the world’s population decommissioning. without it. For the rural poor, much is being done to make full use of renewable energy technologies that operate in remote areas not In its Report, Our Common Future, published connected to electricity grids, says IAEA energy in 1987, the Brundtland Commission* defined planning expert Alan McDonald. “For the urban sustainable development as “development poor and the needs of growing megacities, the that meets the needs of the present without mix needs to include large centralized power compromising the ability of future generations generation to match large centralized power to meet their own needs,” and that has demand. Nuclear power plants provide large remained the fundamental definition ever since. amounts of steady power to help meet such demand. Moreover, as countries extend their Nuclear power’s role in sustainable electricity grids to ‘connect the unconnected’ development was thoroughly debated at and expand electricity access, the benefits of the ninth session of the UN Commission on large sources of steady power will become Sustainable Development in 2001. While increasingly widespread”, McDonald explains. national views differed regarding nuclear power’s role in sustainable development strategies, there was unanimous agreement that the choice of nuclear energy rested with *The World Commission on Environment and countries. Development was established by 1983 United Nations General Assembly resolution 38/161 to Those who conclude that nuclear power is propose long-term environmental strategies inconsistent with sustainable development for achieving sustainable development. United emphasize the risks of nuclear accidents and Nations Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar, the fact that there is not yet an operating final requested the Norwegian Prime Minister, repository for high-level nuclear waste. Gro Harlem Brundtland, to chair the World Commission on Environment and Development, Those who consider nuclear power an often referred to as the ‘Brundtland important part of sustainable development Commission’. 4 | IAEA Bulletin 54-1 | March 2013 .
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