More on the Trade-Offs of Rejecting Nuclear Energy

By James Pethokoukis of AEI.

"The need for abundant clean energy, combined with the energy shock from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, had led to a “nuclear renaissance”—although more of intention than action so far. “From Japan to Germany to Britain to the United States, leaders of countries that had stopped investing in nuclear power are now considering building new power plants or delaying the closure of existing ones,” noted the Washington Post recently. It’s a resurgence that folks back in 2011 would have found surprising when the Fukushima nuclear meltdown led to both Japan and Germany rejecting the energy source.

What’s super interesting, of course, is that the shift away from nuclear to more expensive and dirtier power sources, fossil fuels, in those two countries has generated a deadly trade-off. The 2019 paper “Evidence from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident” finds “the increase in mortality from higher electricity prices outnumbers the mortality from the accident itself, suggesting the decision to cease nuclear production has contributed to more deaths than the accident itself.” Another 2019 paper, “The Private and External Costs of Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out” finds “increased exposure to local air pollution results in an additional 1,100 excess deaths due to poorer air quality.”

More evidence of that trade-off comes from ”Energy Saving May Kill: Evidence from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident”:

Following the Fukushima nuclear accident, Japan gradually shut down all its nuclear power plants, causing a countrywide power shortage. In response, the government launched large-scale energy-saving campaigns to reduce electricity consumption. Exploiting the electricity-saving targets across regions and over time, we show that the campaigns significantly increased mortality, particularly during extremely hot days. The impact is primarily driven by people using less air conditioning, as encouraged by the government. Non-pecuniary incentives can explain most of the reduction in electricity consumption. Our findings suggest there exists a trade-off between climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation.

Here’s the thing: There will almost certainly be nuclear accidents in the future, even if we move to more advanced fission technologies. And given our collective freak-out about the release of even small amounts of radiation, any accidents will certainly generate new calls to abandon nuclear energy. Studies such as the ones above need to be at the ready and injected into the public debate so we don’t repeat the 1970s mistake when we gave in to the anti-nuclear environmentalists."