Nuclear power no longer taboo

CHALON-SUR-SAONE, France — Twenty years after the Chernobyl nuclear plant coughed a cloud of radiation over much of Europe and scared consumers and governments away from atomic power for a generation, a new crop of leaders, from North America to Europe to Asia, is thinking nuclear.

One country has done perhaps the most to push back the pendulum: France.

As the only European country that continued making new nuclear plants after Chernobyl, France has up-to-date expertise that it’s keen to export. And the market is ballooning.

Oil threatens to become unaffordable, gas pipelines run through zones of political uncertainty and coal-fired power plants clog lungs and may overheat the Earth. With energy worries topping the world’s agenda, even a few environmental activists are reconsidering nuclear power, persuaded by improved safety and the fear that fossil fuels pose even greater dangers to the planet.

China and India are embracing nuclear energy to support breakneck growth. The United States and Russia are reviving long-dormant nuclear plans, overriding concerns about proliferation of the potentially deadly technology.

Finland is building the first new reactor in western Europe since 1991, made by Germany’s Siemens and Areva, the world’s biggest reactor manufacturer, which operates a factory in Burgundy, France.

Not everyone is softening on nuclear power. Sweden and Germany are shutting down, not starting up, reactors. But even Britain, Italy and the Netherlands are talking about the option. So far it’s only talk — but groundbreaking talk, given these countries’ two-decade taboo on the topic.

France’s key partner in promoting that renaissance is an unexpected one: the United States. After two decades on the defensive, the nations’ industries are cooperating closely in hopes of a new boom in nuclear power.

France is the most nuclear-dependent country in the world, with 59 reactors churning out nearly 80 percent of its electricity. The French state owns the world’s biggest electricity utility, Electricite de France, or EDF, and nuclear group Areva, the key to France’s international nuclear influence.

France is selling more than electricity and reactor parts. It’s preaching an updated version of the long-abandoned nuclear idea, a gospel of emission-free energy to wean nations off foreign fuel and harness the atom for a peaceful, electrified future.

Some 25 reactors are under construction around the world, adding to the network of 440 commercial nuclear power plants spread out over 31 countries that supply 16 percent of the world’s total electricity. To Helene Gassin of Greenpeace, who has fought France’s nuclear industry for years, the thriving reactor factory in this modest industrial town is an alarming sight.

“Whenever we see an offer on nuclear energy, anywhere in the world, it comes from France,” said Gassin. “Nuclear is the French identity.”

Greenpeace insists that despite the industry’s claims, safe nuclear power is a myth. Reduced consumption is the key to the world’s energy dilemma.

Unlike other European countries, France has never had intense debate over nuclear energy. Gassin and the few nuclear opponents in France’s legislature say that’s because the industry is run by a monopoly — EDF — which is in turn run by the state.

France has also never suffered an accident the likes of Chernobyl or the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.

London-based energy analyst David Bryant says the French government has made safety paramount because it’s key to keeping the crucial industry afloat. Now, as more and more governments join research into the next generation of reactors, the industry says Generation IV will be the most efficient yet, will produce less waste and will be simplified to better handle and prevent accidents.

A key to the resurgent interest in nuclear power is cost. While each new reactor costs several hundred million dollars, a University of Chicago study concluded that a new fleet of more efficient reactors can be expected to produce power as cheaply as coal and natural gas.

Still, for anti-nuclear activists, the shadow of the world’s worst nuclear accident, the April 26, 1986, explosion at Chernobyl in then-Soviet Ukraine, will never recede.

Some, though, have switched sides.

Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, now says nuclear plants could safely help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and satisfy rising energy demand in the United States and abroad.