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The Global Nuclear Renaissance Ms. Shashi van de Graaff PhD Candidate School of Political Science and International Studies University of Queensland Australia [email protected] Political Studies Association Conference, Sheffield, April 2015 The Global Nuclear Renaissance: Has the R h e t o r i c Become a Reality? Since 2000, swathes of energy experts, government officials, industry representatives and journalists have predicted the emergence of a global ‘nuclear renaissance.’ Nuclear energy was said to be on the precipice of a new era of development, characterised by widespread construction of new nuclear reactors and a concomitant increase in global nuclear capacity. Despite this expectation, there is limited evidence to date which suggests that such a nuclear renaissance has actually taken place. This paper provides an overview of a current PhD research project which is examining the expectation and reality of the nuclear renaissance. It outlines the research problem and design, as well as the core argument which is being developed in the thesis. Firstly, the thesis argues that there is a significant disconnection between the expectation and reality of the global nuclear renaissance, and therefore, that a renaissance has not taken place. Secondly, this thesis argues that the disconnection between the expectation and reality of the nuclear renaissance cannot be attributed to any one cause. Rather, in order to understand why the expectation of a nuclear renaissance has failed to produce a widespread expansion of nuclear energy development, a broad range of both nuclear- specific and broader contextual factors need to be considered. In making this argument, this research challenges pre-existing explanations for the failure of the renaissance, such as the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, as being overly simplistic, a-historical and mono-causal. The paper concludes with a summary of the preliminary findings. A RENAISSANCE IS ANNOUNCED Nuclear energy has immense potential for addressing two of the most pressing policy problems for governments across the globe – ensuring security of energy supply in the face of rising demand and growing geopolitical tensions, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat the onset of global warming. As the need to address these problems has grown, an increasingly favourable political environment for the use and development of nuclear power has emerged throughout much of the world. In particular, from the early 2000s onwards, a growth in public and political support for nuclear power led to the emergence of a widespread expectation that a ‘nuclear renaissance’ was about to take place. This was significant given that the construction of new nuclear power plants had experienced a global decline since the mid-1970s. A number of changes took place which lent credence to the claim that a nuclear renaissance was about to take place across the globe, or was already underway. Ambitious growth targets and expansion plans were set for several countries with existing civil nuclear power programmes in Asia, Europe and North America. In Western Europe, a range of countries which had policies in place to phase-out existing nuclear power plants, or which opposed the development of nuclear power in the country altogether, began to re-evaluate or reverse their policy positions. Figures from the WNA (2013) indicated that over forty-five countries that did not use nuclear energy were seriously considering the development of a domestic nuclear power program. Furthermore, enthusiasm for the nuclear renaissance was driven by numerous political leaders, nuclear industry representatives, and even notable environmental activists who made public statements in support of increased nuclear energy development. In Western Europe and North America, these statements were made by the highest levels of political leaders from both the incumbent political party and the opposition. In the UK, successive Prime Ministers across both party lines have spoken in favour of nuclear power since the mid-2000s. When in power, the Labor Party Prime Minister Tony Blair advised the G8 industrialised nations that a “substantial renaissance of nuclear power” was necessary to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions (Del Buono 2008: 1), while his successor, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, stated he was “convinced that we need a renaissance of nuclear power” (World Nuclear News 2008: 1). This was then followed by the leader of the subsequent Conservation-Liberal Democrat coalition, Prime Minister David Cameron, who described the development of a cooperative agreement between the UK and France on civil nuclear development as “just the beginning” of investment in the nuclear industry (Nuclear AMRC 2012: 1). In 2013, Cameron described the development of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station as “a very big day for our country”, and that it would be the first of many new nuclear power stations in the UK (The Daily Mail 2013: 1). Similarly, in the US, both Republican and Democrat Presidents have spoken publicly in favour of nuclear energy development. Former President George W. Bush showed his support for the emerging renaissance, stating that “nuclear power is going to be an essential source…of future electricity for the United States” (Manor 2006: 1). President Barack Obama declared that in order to “prevent the worst consequences of climate change, we’ll need to increase our supply of nuclear power. It’s that simple’’ (Office of the Press Secretary 2010: 1). For both the US and the UK, the political enthusiasm for nuclear energy was a stark contrast to the previous two and a half decades where nuclear energy had largely been kept off the political agenda. The term ‘nuclear renaissance’ had become common place in media reporting by the mid-2000s. However, exactly what the nuclear renaissance was, or what would constitute a renaissance taking place, was rarely – if ever – defined. Rather, the term was broadly used to refer to a change in nuclear energy development that was defined by two key facets: 1. That there would be a significant increase in the number of nuclear power plants being built. 2. That this increase in nuclear power plant construction would take place both in countries which had stagnating, declining or no nuclear energy industries, as well as in countries which had experienced sustained growth in their nuclear industries. This second facet is crucial to understanding why the emergence of the expectation of a nuclear renaissance was so significant, but is frequently overlooked in existing discussions and analysis of the nuclear renaissance. In order for a nuclear ‘renaissance’ to take place, there must be an earlier period of growth and decline in nuclear energy that is then followed by a resurgence. The expectation of a nuclear renaissance was significant because it was based on the idea that countries which had been experiencing a stagnation or decline of their existing nuclear industries (primarily countries in Western Europe and North America) would once again undertake a significant expansion of their nuclear energy programmes. This would be a significant development given that the vast majority of nuclear growth that had been occurring since the 1990s was located primarily in the regions of Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe (IAEA 2014). While the growth in these regions is an important phenomenon worthy of consideration, it was not the sustained growth of nuclear energy development in these regions that drove the expectation of the nuclear renaissance, nor was it the sustained growth in these regions that made the renaissance such a surprising, interesting and attention-grabbing phenomenon. Rather, it was the expectation of a new era of growth in countries where nuclear energy had been stagnating and declining for several decades that was going to underpin the rebirth, or renaissance, of nuclear energy. This is what made the expectation of a nuclear renaissance so significant, and a stark turning point from the previous two and a half decades of nuclear history. The expectation was not simply that extensive growth in nuclear energy development would occur, but that it would occur in places where no such growth had taken place for more than two decades. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING? Over time, however, it became increasingly clear that the reality of nuclear energy development was not living up to the earlier grand expectations of a renaissance. Already from 2010, social and political commentators began pronouncing the nuclear renaissance to have failed, or to never have existed at all. Headlines described the nuclear renaissance as a “myth” (Financial Chronicle 2010: 1) and as having “failed to materialize” (Wald 2010: 1). An article in The Economist branded nuclear energy as “the dream that failed”, concluding that “the promise of a global [nuclear] transformation is gone” (The Economist 2012: 1). The anti-nuclear lobbyist, Jim Green, declared that “the nuclear renaissance can now be pronounced stone cold dead” (Green 2013: 1). The nuclear renaissance was described as “just a fairy tale” that had been “based on rhetoric” (Bradford 2013: 1), while others stated that the “nuclear industry ‘rebirth’ is instead stillborn” (Becker 2012). An article in The Telegraph described the nuclear renaissance as “heading the same way as Thatcher’s nuclear rebirth – down the drain” (Warner 2012). Another headline affirmed that “North America’s ‘nuclear renaissance’ grinds to a halt”. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2012: 1) reported that
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