With concerns about global warming and fossil-fuel supplies renewing governments' interest in nuclear power, energy ministers and officials from 74 countries met in Paris for the two-day forum on the future of nuclear energy organised by the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Fears of nuclear accidents, such as those that occurred at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, USA in 1979 and at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986 did much to undermine public confidence. But with the evidence of climate change now almost undeniable, there are calls from many quarters to reconsider the atomic energy.
Even the most conservative estimates predict at least a doubling of energy usage by mid-century and the Kyoto Protocol, which commits governments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from industrial pollution, was prompting a reconsideration of nuclear power, according to IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei.
"It's clear that nuclear energy is regaining stature as a serious option," ElBaradei said.
"Nuclear power emits virtually no greenhouse gases. In the past, the virtual absence of restrictions or taxes on greenhouse-gas emissions has meant that nuclear power's advantage, low emissions, has had no tangible economic value.”
But power plants fired by oil, coal and gas are major sources of carbon dioxide and other gases that cause global warming. The Kyoto accord, which the US and Australia have not signed, will force plant operators to pay for their pollution, making nuclear-power facilities more competitive by comparison.
In a message to the conference, US energy secretary Sam Bodman cited a University of Chicago study that found nuclear power could become competitive with electricity produced by coal or gas-fired plants because of new technologies boosting reactor efficiency.
While Western European countries like Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden have nuclear phase-out policies in place but Italy, which shut down nuclear power in the early 1990s, is noticing a "clear change in public opinion" towards atomic energy, Italy's Minister of Productive Activities Antonio Marzano told the conference.
Finland will begin construction of a new reactor later this year, making it the first Western European country to build an atomic plant since 1991. France also plans to start building a new-generation reactor in 2007.
Nuclear plants produce one-third of Europe's electricity, saving greenhouse emissions equivalent to those produced by all of Europe’s cars, according to French industry minister Patrick Devedjian.
But the real boom in nuclear power is expected to be in developing countries, particularly in Asia.
