https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Asia-s-nuclear-power-dilemma-Ukraine-war-drives-energy-turnarounds
Asia's nuclear power dilemma: Ukraine war drives energy turnarounds
From Japan to Singapore, Russia sanctions and carbon-zero targets push states to reconsider nuclear energy
Earth Day is an annual event held on April 22 to celebrate the environment and support environmental issues. Nikkei Asia is dedicating its Big Story this week to greener energy generation, as part of a global call to take concerted action and find better solutions to restore our planet.
BANGKOK -- Who could possibly resist a power source that "emits 70 times less CO2 than coal, 40 times less than gas, four times less than solar energy, two times less than hydroelectricity and the same amount as wind energy?"
That is the question posed by Orano, a nuclear fuel cycle company that preaches the environmental virtues of nuclear power generation. As economies, particularly in Asia, burn ever more coal to fuel growth and combat energy shortages, nuclear power's sparklingly green credentials are becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
In the recently published third installment of its sixth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025 and be dramatically reduced in the latter part of the decade if there is to be any chance of keeping global warming within the COP21 Paris Agreement goal of below 2 C by midcentury.
"It's now or never if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 C," professor Jim Skea of Imperial College London, the report's co-chair, told reporters. "Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible."
"It is damning," said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in an impassioned response to the report. "A litany of broken climate promises. It is a file of shame cataloging the empty pledges that put us firmly on track to an unlivable world -- we are on a fast track to climate disaster."
"Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness," Guterres pleaded. "Such investments will soon be stranded assets, a blot on the landscape and a blight on investment portfolios."
At the COP26 conference in Glasgow in November, nuclear energy was presented to the nearly 200 attending states as a valuable potential component in decarbonization strategies, and governments across Asia are certainly reconsidering.
Singapore is the latest to announce a turnabout. Alvin Tan, the minister of state for trade and industry, earlier this month made an 11-minute appearance in the world's least boisterous parliament to update rows of impassive, masked parliamentarians who looked on in silence.
Tan, 41, guided the chamber through hydrogen, geothermal and nuclear options outlined in the Lion City's recent Energy 2050 Committee report. He spoke of optimizing safety, reliability, cost and environmental impact factors, and of international best practices and compliance.
Talk of nuclear power is revolutionary for Singapore. A 2012 study concluded that "conventional large reactor technologies were not suitable for deployment in Singapore." But the world has changed. Reactors today can be much smaller, have better cooling systems, faster shutdowns and quicker emergency responses.
"These include small modular reactors, or SMRs, and Generation IV nuclear technologies which incorporate enhanced safety systems that may not be possible for old generation technologies," Tan said.
Singapore set aside 63 million Singaporean dollars ($46 million) in 2014 to monitor nuclear safety and development, but Tan admitted the government has yet to assess Singapore's optimal energy mix. One of his questioners, Liang Eng Hwa of the People's Action Party, was bullish. He wanted to know, why not go for nuclear power sooner? "So we can be among the early adopters?"
It is a question being asked by politicians and scientists alike as the nuclear debate gains momentum across the continent.
"There is no activity where there is no risk," Anil Kakodkar, a nuclear physicist and former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India, recently told students at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. "You may say radiation causes cancer, I may say radiation cures cancer, and both are true."
"If we have a sufficient share of nuclear electricity in the energy system and we successfully avert carbon dioxide increase [and global warming], then we will avert so many deaths as a result of climate change," Kakodkar said.
A nuclear revolution?
Orano, which is over 45% owned by the French government with Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries holding a 5% stake, maintains that the IPCC's four model pathways laid out in its 2018 report on how to limit global warming to 1.5 C by 2100 all require increases in the use of nuclear power.
"Pathway P3 [under which emissions reductions are achieved mainly by changing the way energy and products are produced] shows the most notable rise in nuclear generation (+501%) by 2050," Orano said in response to the IPCC report. "This means that, if current trends continue, compliance with climate objectives will require a sixfold increase in global nuclear capabilities."
Philippine Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi for one strongly backs nuclear options, including Russian SMRs. "We are pushing for nuclear because that will reduce our imports of petroleum," he told TV channel ANC last year.
"I firmly believe that our country's economic landscape would be much different had we tapped nuclear power [in the 1980s]," Cusi earlier told the Philippine News Agency. "Instead, our economic development was stunted."
For China, which accounted for 56% of the world's total coal consumption in 2020, nuclear power offers reliable energy and the possibility of a cleaner environment. By the end of 2019, China's total installed capacity of nuclear power plants had reached nearly 66 gigawatts, the second-highest in the world after the U.S. It ranks first for installed nuclear capacity and plants under construction, with 53 operable reactors as of February, according to the World Nuclear Association.
"Nuclear power, as a clean energy source, is a fundamental measure to solve environmental issues such as haze and carbon emission reduction," a 2021 report by Beijing's Nuclear and Radiation Safety Center concluded. "Actively developing nuclear power is not only needed for China's energy demand growth, but also for environmental protection and sustainable development."
The only question is, how much nuclear power will be needed in the mix?
"From my research, China's future power system will be quite sensitive to how much nuclear [power] China can put online," Gang He, assistant professor at Stony Brook University in the U.S., told Nikkei Asia. "I have seen the nuclear power projections by 2050 outlining an increase [in power generation] from 300 GW to 500 GW."
Gang added that China's need for nuclear power could be kept down at around 300 GW, "if China manages to accelerate the expansion and integration of solar, wind and other renewables," but that would require an installed capacity of 800-1,000 GW in renewables to cope with generating fluctuations.
Public perceptions
But the nuclear power debate is about more than environmental benefits and energy efficiency. A highly sensitive issue, moves toward or away from nuclear are also driven by public opinion.
Before the war in Ukraine, Russian gas was considered by many in Asia and Europe to provide a safer main source of energy than nuclear. This idea took hold in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, when Thailand spiked plans for five nuclear reactors.
But 11 years after a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami triggered the meltdown and subsequent disabling of the Fukushima Daiichi plant on the country's northeast coast, even Japan is rethinking its nuclear game in the light of sanctions on Russia.
On April 8, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters that he aims to maximize the use of renewable energy and nuclear power following a ban on Russian coal imports. Three days later, shares of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which powers the capital and ran Fukushima Daiichi along with two other nuclear plants, jumped 16%.
Kishida's relatively pronuclear approach is nothing new -- shortly after being elected in October, he told Japan's Diet that "it is crucial that we restart nuclear power plants" -- and is welcomed by some experts.
"It is high time for Japan to seriously think about how to secure power sources on its own," Ryuzo Yamamoto, an energy security expert and professor emeritus at Tokoha University in Shizuoka Prefecture, told Nikkei.
Yamamoto said Japan, despite being faced with many energy challenges, has so far ducked the nuclear issue. The country pays more for energy because it is an island, and grids on the eastern and western sides run on different currents. In late March, the eastern grid, which supplies Tokyo, could not cope with demand, and businesses and households were urged to moderate consumption.
"There are no other alternatives to increase our energy self-sufficiency," Yamamoto said. "It is a global trend to use nuclear power. Continuing to purchase fossil fuel from Russia means we are handing over funds for war."
For the first time since the Fukushima disaster, a Nikkei poll last month revealed that a narrow majority (53%) of respondents favored the restarting of Japan's nuclear plants, given their safety had been checked. For much of the population, though, memories of March 2011 are still too fresh to support a move back to nuclear power -- 38% responded that Japan "must not proceed" with the reopening of reactors.
According to the Reconstruction Agency, as of late last year, around 39,000 people remain displaced from the disaster zone, and more than 2,500 are still missing. Although government decontamination projects are underway, a January surveyrevealed that more than 52% of people evacuated from Namie, a town just north of the Daiichi plant, had no plans to ever return.
Concerns about the safety and livelihood of Fukushima's largely agrarian community were amplified last year when the government officially announced plans to release over 1 million tons of treated water from the Daiichi plant into the nearby sea.
The decision was met with criticism from around the world and is currently under review by a United Nations nuclear task force. The plant's 1,000 storage tanks are set to reach capacity by October this year.
Fueling the fire: War in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine is driving both sides of the debate, stimulating demand for energy alternatives whilst raising once more the specter of a deadly nuclear mishap.
Following their invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russian forces overran the site of the Chernobyl power plant near the Belarusian border, where in 1986 human error and technical faults caused the worst nuclear disaster on record. Some of the buildings surrounding the embalmed plant -- which has been officially closed since 2000 -- were set on fire in the onslaught.
The jaw-dropping recklessness was the stuff of nuclear nightmares. Russian troops rounded up the garrison and technicians, looted the buildings, dug trenches in the highly contaminated Red Forest nearby, and filled sandbags with radioactive earth, thereby returning radioactive material to the plant.
News of the Chernobyl attack, combined with unverified claims that Russian troops had shelled Zaporizhzhia, Europe's largest nuclear plant, in early March, seem to have fueled sympathy for Ukraine -- and distrust for nuclear power -- in Japan.
"What we learned from the ongoing Ukraine war is that reactors can be targets in wartime, and this part seems to be ignored," said Koichi Nakano, a professor of politics at Sophia University.
"I think the nuclear element is what makes many Japanese particularly interested in this war, because it's something they can relate to," Sasha Kaverina, co-founder of NGO Stand with Ukraine Japan, told Nikkei. "We've been overwhelmed with donations for Ukrainian refugees, and many donors say it was news of the power plant attack that made them want to help."
Nuclear skeptics fear Russia's invasion of Ukraine is being used as cover to promote nuclear power as a clean alternative. "The government is picking up convenient rhetoric [for pronuclear arguments]," Nakano said.
Yuichiro Tamaki, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party for the People, made the point to reporters on April 12: "If we are to reduce energy dependence on Russia, our party believes that we should continue to operate nuclear power plants that meet safety standards."
Small modular reactors: Changing the game
Risks aside, the nuclear lobby contends that fission is not just one of the least polluting ways to generate energy -- the European Union awarded nuclear power a green label in February -- it is also the cheapest and one of the most reliable.
According to joint research by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2020, "identified recoverable conventional resources" of uranium are sufficient for 135 years, but could stretch to 250 years with the right investment and innovation. The element even exists in minute quantities in seawater.
"We have a good story to tell because we have been doing this for the last five decades," Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, director-general of the World Nuclear Association, a nonprofit in London, told a webinar last May. She reminded attendees that nuclear power is the largest source of low carbon electricity in developed countries, after hydropower. "Nuclear power plants have operated safely, reliably and cost-effectively all over the world for more than 60 years already."
During the same webinar, Diane Cameron, head of the Nuclear Technology Development and Economics Division at the OECD's NEA, spoke of "a pipeline of nuclear innovation" that could transform power options dramatically.
"Advanced SMRs could be game-changers," she said. "With the right enabling policy measures, SMRs could be commercialized in the coming five to 10 years -- we are talking about near-term innovation. This is not 20, 30 years out -- it is not nuclear fusion, it is happening and it's happening soon."
SMRs offer the possibility of much more graduated nuclear entry. Typically under 300 megawatts, they have small footprints and do not require large amounts of water for cooling. Modular construction in factories improves delivery times, build quality and testing.
SMRs could be installed in small countries like Singapore, on resort islands like Phuket in Thailand, or across the archipelagoes of Indonesia and the Philippines where noncontiguous land masses frustrate all kinds of infrastructure development.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries recently announced that it was developing smaller reactors for the 2030s and 2040s that will be able to adjust output in under 17 minutes -- about a quarter of the time it takes at present -- to improve baseload power supply in combination with naturally fluctuating renewable sources.
Proponents say the cost of building a nuclear power plant has fewer of the location variables that come with more diffuse and intermittent hydro, wind and solar power. A nuclear plant can run at 90% capacity all the time, even in a frozen, dark and windless winter.
Others are not so sure. "There are major climate, security and financial perspectives for nuclear that don't make it the most viable of the zero-carbon technologies, and an unlikely solution for most countries," Isabella Suarez, a senior analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) told Nikkei Asia.
"I think what has changed is that countries have had to come up with clear road maps to a net-zero future and governments are looking at their options. My sense is that many of these will not go beyond exploratory phases," Suarez said.
Political collisions
The downsides of nuclear power do not seem to faze South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, who enters office in May. He plans to boost nuclear power to 30% of the country's energy mix and resume construction of two new units at the Shin Hanul nuclear power plant on the country's eastern coast. As of 2020, the country sourced more than 81% of its energy from fossil fuels, and only 15% from nuclear power, according to the International Energy Agency.
Outgoing President Moon Jae-in introduced a nuclear phaseout plan in 2017, and polls at the time showed that over 60% supported the scheme. Under Moon's plan, nuclear capacity was set to fall to 19.4 GW by 2034. Four new nuclear plants were canceled and plans were made to replace them with liquefied natural gas (LNG).
"The demographic split between continue and cancel are pretty much the same as party demographics," said Joojin Kim, managing director of Solutions For Our Climate, a Seoul-based nonprofit, of recent opinion polls on new nuclear plants. "It's more about politics rather than a general opinion on the nuclear industry."
Shares in Doosan Heavy, which supplies state utility Korea Electric Power's nuclear subsidiary, rallied 10% in the days after Yoon's election in March. Once licenses are granted for Shin Hanul and two new reactors are completed at the Kori nuclear plant, the incoming president's 30% target should be easily reached, Chung Bum-jin, professor of nuclear engineering at Kyung Hee University, told Nikkei.
The Philippines is also undergoing a nuclear turnaround, even though nuclear power has never fed its grid. In February, President Rodrigo Duterte signed an executive order directing that nuclear power be included in the national energy mix, and that an interagency panel be set up to reopen the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP).
At one stage, the Philippines led ASEAN countries, where currently only Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have dipped their toes into nuclear power with experimental reactors. Construction of the BNPP, near Manila, began in 1976 in the wake of the 1973-1974 Middle East oil crisis.
The plant was completed late on President Ferdinand Marcos's watch in 1984 at a cost of $2.3 billion but never commissioned. Initially, there were earthquake-related safety concerns, followed in quick succession by the February 1986 People Power Revolution and Chernobyl in April. President Corazon Aquino finally mothballed BNPP in November 1986.
The ASEAN Post recently reported that 20 experts from Russia's Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation -- a global leader in recycling nuclear fuel and SMR technology -- had paid a "discreet visit" to the mothballed BNPP, and estimated that making it operational would cost over $3 billion.
The commissioning and opening of Bataan, which might take five years, is a signature policy of Ferdinand Marcos' son, Bongbong, the current front-runner in next month's presidential election.
"BNPP can still be used, with retrofitting," Energy Secretary Cusi said. "I believe we can operate it, but the issue is the political will."
The tide may be turning in Vietnam, too, where plans for two reactors with a combined capacity of almost 4,000 MW in Ninh Thuan Province were shelved in 2016 because of safety and cost concerns. There have been reports that the Ministry of Industry and Trade would now like to see nuclear power brought into the mix under Power Development Plan 8, which is still being drafted.
Taiwan's nuclear debate is one of the most politicized. A referendum was held in December to determine the fate of Lungmen, the republic's fourth nuclear plant, a 2,700 MW advanced boiling water reactor that was started in 1980 by the then-ruling Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, but never completed. Almost 53% voted against restarting work on the plant, which was halted in 2014.
The Kuomintang's declining popularity and perceived connivance with China has brought Taiwan's nuclear bandwagon to a virtual halt. President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party has pledged to make Taiwan nuclear-free by 2025 by using renewables to replace the 10% of nuclear power still in the mix.
Angelica Oung, an independent journalist firmly committed to nuclear power, believes this to be folly. "With gangbusters economic growth in recent years, Taiwan is going to come up against an energy crunch," she wrote in March in Spectacles, an independent digital publication on new politics. "Our prized chipmaking industry, for example, is an insatiable consumer of electricity."
Oung argues that abandoning the relative self-sufficiency nuclear power can offer is also a national security risk, particularly if it results in greater dependence on imported LNG from Australia, Qatar and the U.S.
"Would the [U.S.] 7th Fleet come to our rescue as if Taipei had been bombarded?" Oung asked. "Could nuclear power make the difference between holding out and capitulating during a siege?"
Nuclear doubts
With strong arguments on either side of the debate, India remains on the fence about nuclear power, despite having some of the filthiest air on the planet.
The world's second-most populous country hopes to achieve carbon neutrality by 2070, but in 2021 only 3.1% of its power mix was nuclear. While it plans to almost triple output to 22,480 MW by 2031, that remains conservative. Official wariness is driven by safety concerns and perceived costliness since the technology, hardware and fuel must all be imported.
"In the case of fuel, it is a recurring cost," E.A.S Sarma, a former Indian power secretary, told Nikkei. "Decommissioning is a very expensive process and so far has not been done fully anywhere. In Fukushima, the decommissioning will cost billions of dollars and could take another 30 years." According to the Mitsubishi Research Institute, decommissioning costs for Fukushima's Daiichi plant are likely to exceed 8 trillion yen (around $62 billion).
Sunil Dahiya, an analyst at CREA, is also skeptical. "Nuclear energy has been tried for the last so many decades and has never really worked for India," he told Nikkei. "We don't see that it is going to have a major share in India's clean energy basket as compared to renewables, which have a far greater scope."
Although both Chernobyl and Fukushima went awry with mid-20th century technology, there remains the lingering fear that while humanity may have been clever enough to develop nuclear power, it is still not yet wise enough to manage it safely.
The U.N.'s IAEA plays a somewhat schizophrenic role trying to ensure respect for the often disregarded 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) while promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy -- "atoms for peace" -- to ensure nuclear material is not diverted to military use.
"The world is at a loss on how to stop Iran from crossing the nuclear weapons threshold and how to persuade, coax or coerce North Korea to step back into the NPT as a denuclearized member in good standing," Ramesh Thakur, a former U.N. assistant secretary-general, wrote back in 2014. "The NPT is creaking badly even in respect to its nuclear energy bargain."
"The big question for countries to answer is why exactly they want to invest in nuclear power, and whether it's a better option than other renewable sources that are deployable today," CREA's Suarez told Nikkei.
Suarez continued: "A new nuclear plant's gestation period is 20 years, so if the goal is to quickly transition to zero-carbon energy, it will not be built fast enough to meet increasing power demand. Additionally, the variable and capital costs associated with nuclear remain very high, so if the goal is to stabilize or lower power costs, it's not ideal."
Additional reporting by Francesca Regalado and Rurika Imahashi in Tokyo, CK Tan in Shanghai, Dylan Loh in Singapore and Kiran Sharma in New Delhi.