Have we been here before? Will nuclear history repeat itself?

Abstract

At least before the Fukushima accident of March 2011, global interest in building nuclear power stations stood at a 25-year high. However, the wave of nuclear construction in the 1970s and 1980s proved not to be sustainable. This article seeks to address whether a new wave of nuclear construction now would prove to be any more sustainable than the first wave by analysing security of supply, economic, and environmental and social/political factors. There are striking similarities between the situation in, say 1982 or 1992 and the situation in 2012, including rising construction costs and questions about safety after major nuclear accidents. There are also major differences, such as greatly raised fears over climate change, a need for significant new power generating capacity of some description in developed and developing countries and high fossil fuel prices. Analysing and quantifying the effects of these similarities and differences should allow policymakers some insight into likely futures, but energy policymaking will never be an exact science, requiring considerable degrees of value judgement and interpretation of uncertain data.