Nuclear proliferation in the ’emerging world’

Environmental risks are effectively unlimited with nuclear power…..proliferation is no-no word for the nuclear industry. Civil and military nuclear power are each day described by world leaders like President Obama as different and separate,…Unfortunately this lyrical vision has no relation to the real world….

The reality bundle inside which nuclear proliferation hides, but which the nuclear industry and leading politicians tirelessly deny, distort or confuse, especially applies in the Emerging economies. ….

The Doomsday Threat Of The “Nuclear Renaissance” : The Market Oracle, By Andrew McKillop, 12 Aug 2010, “……..new power reactors are under construction at this moment, in what industry promoters call “The Nuclear Renaissance”. This renaissance however threatens to be as complex, ambiguous and murky as the Medieval renaissance. Intensifying what are nearly open-ended global security implications, environment risks, economic risks and human hazards of today’s proliferating reactor numbers, growth is now mainly focused in the Emerging and developing countries.

Industry growth in the Emerging economies, formerly called Low income developing countries of the South often features massive, multi-reactor complexes with multi-billion dollar or euro price tags, that are projected or planned for completion in the shortest possible time. The string of “new nuclear” developing countries with absolutely no previous experience of large-scale nuclear power now include Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Nigeria, Ghana, Kazakhstan, the Philippines and others……..

Environmental risks are effectively unlimited with nuclear power, as major environmental NGOs underline by sometimes dramatic actions, but the security issue, which straddles the uncertain civil-military borderline in nuclear power, presents even more extreme hazards. This has a single word title: Proliferation, noting that the world’s worst-possible nuclear disaster to date, causing military-level damage to the Ukrainian economy and massive death tolls in affected regions, Chernobyl in 1986, was purely human error caused………

To be sure, proliferation is no-no word for the nuclear industry. Civil and military nuclear power are each day described by world leaders like President Obama as different and separate, as the day and night and before and after of a global transition from military dominated nuclear power, to a global quick fix technology solution for power shortages thanks to cheap, clean and safe nuclear electricity.

Unfortunately this lyrical vision has no relation to the real world. Nuclear power, today, supplies at most 15% of world electricity (down from 18.5% in the late 1980s) and is far from cheap, clean or safe. Very different energy solutions will be needed for the real and serious Energy Transition that is predicated by declining fossil energy resources, environment issues, and energy infrastructure spending needs. These real alternatives will be needed in a short number of years.

The reality bundle inside which nuclear proliferation hides, but which the nuclear industry and leading politicians tirelessly deny, distort or confuse, especially applies in the Emerging economies. ……By Andrew McKillopgsoassociates.com

Project Director, GSO Consulting Associates

The Doomsday Threat Of The “Nuclear Renaissance” :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website