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Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     In December of 2018, the WNA revealed plans for the “Harmony” program. This is a global initiative for the nuclear power industry. It “provides a framework for action, working with key stakeholders so that barriers to growth can be removed.” The plan calls for twenty-five percent of the electricity in the world to be generated by nuclear power by 2050. This will require that one thousand gigawatts of new nuclear capacity be added in the next thirty years. Acknowledging that they have set an ambitious goal, the WNA says, “This is an ambitious target, but the rate at which new reactors will have to be built is no higher than what has been historically achieved. To achieve this, new nuclear capacity added each year would need to accelerate from the current 10 gigawatts to around 35 gigawatts for the period 2030-2050. Those countries operating nuclear power plants should commit to continue to do so and those countries with recent experience of new nuclear build should commit to a rapid expansion of their construction programs to deliver significant new nuclear construction from 2025.”     It will be interesting to see if the global nuclear power reactor fleet can grow at the rate envisioned by the WNA.
     The need to find permanents solutions to the spent nuclear fuel storage problem still remains. If it is not solved in the next few years, some reactors may have to be shut down prematurely because their spent fuel cooling pools have filled.
    There is also the challenge from renewable energy sources. The cost of wind and solar installation is dropping rapidly. In addition, the claim that only fossil fuels and nuclear power can provide the base-load power requirements of the world is being disproven by advances in battery technology. For example, in Australia, a major battery installation cost sixty six million and saved forty million dollars in the first year of operation.
     Another challenge for the expansion of nuclear power is the fact that the water from lakes, rivers and seas that is being used to cool nuclear power plants is warming due to climate change. Already, some plants have had to be shut down because their cooling water was too warm to properly cool the reactor.
     With a rapid increase in the number of nuclear reactors, the mean time between failures based on the current competence of nuclear reactor operators will drop. Considering the past rate of nuclear disasters, that means that it is probable that there will be a major nuclear accident before the 2050 deadline for the expansion of the global nuclear fleet.
     As we have seen from the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011, such a disaster delivers a shock to the world-wide nuclear power industry. As a result of Fukushima, all of Japan’s power reactors were shut down for years. Germany decided to abandon nuclear power. Nuclear plants around the world were shut down while they were upgraded to take into account what was learned from Fukushima. If there is another major nuclear accident before 2050, you can bet that it will lead to widespread public skepticism about nuclear power and a reluctance on the part of politicians and investors to support nuclear power.