A Sensible Climate Change Solution, Borrowed From Sweden (Nuclear)

Book review from The New York Times. By Richard Rhodes. He reviews A BRIGHT FUTURE: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow by Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist. Excerpt:

"For Goldstein (an emeritus professor of international relations) and Qvist (a Swedish engineer), the only possible solution to this double dilemma is a rapid, worldwide expansion of nuclear power. No other source or collection of sources of energy, they argue, is positioned to meet these challenges in time. Without growth in nuclear power, replacing fossil fuels with renewables simply decarbonizes the existing supply. It doesn’t deal with the increased demand coming from the developing world.

One of the countries that have “solved climate change,” as the book’s subtitle has it, is Sweden, Qvist’s homeland. Much as France did before it, Sweden achieved this by expanding its electrical supply with nuclear power rather than fossil fuels. Its concern at the time, in the 1970s, wasn’t global warming but reliability: Further hydropower development was environmentally undesirable, and the oil crises of that decade made petroleum an unpredictable source.

Between 1970 and 1990, Sweden built a dozen nuclear power plants on four sites, eight of which continue to operate today. They supply 40 percent of Sweden’s electricity, equal to its hydropower. Wind and biofuels supply the rest. As a result, electricity in Sweden is cheap, clean and reliable. Serendipitously, the authors point out, “Sweden became the most successful country in history at expanding low-carbon electricity generation and leading the way in addressing climate change.”

Goldstein and Qvist contrast Sweden’s experience with Germany’s. That country decided to switch to renewables, mostly wind and solar, while eliminating nuclear power. By doubling renewables while cutting nuclear, “it just substituted one carbon-free source for another, and CO₂ emissions did not really decrease at all.” Today, 40 percent of Germany’s energy comes from dirty brown coal; six of Europe’s 10 most polluting power plants are German.

After this initial view of two contrasting European programs, “A Bright Future” is largely devoted to debunking the many attacks nuclear power has weathered over the years. “The antinuclear movement has progressed through reasons to oppose nuclear power,” the authors write, “one after another.” It was too dangerous. Then it would lead to weapons proliferation. Then it was uneconomical, an argument still made, one the authors debunk when it comes to countries like Sweden and South Korea that haven’t experienced the strangulating effect of heavy government regulation and antinuclear litigation.

Then it was unnecessary because it was argued that renewables could do the job. “But in every case where nuclear power was shut down, renewables have not filled the gap and CO₂ emissions have gone up, whereas in places such as Ontario that expanded nuclear power, emissions went down.”"