Nuclear energy: green solution or dangerous?

01What is nuclear energy and how does it work?

Nuclear energy is a form of energy that is released when atomic nuclei are split. This makes use of uranium, which has a heavy and unstable atomic nucleus. This heavy atomic nucleus is split into two or more lighter atomic nuclei. This splitting releases a large amount of energy that causes the other uranium atoms to split. This is the so-called chain reaction that occurs. In a nuclear reactor, this chain reaction is kept under control. In an atomic bomb, this chain reaction takes place uncontrolled.

In practice, there are tens of thousands of fuel rods in a reactor pool through which water flows. It is in these rods that the nuclear fissions take place. These fissions release an incredible amount of heat, which is absorbed by the water. The water heats up to hundreds of degrees and turns into steam. This steam then drives turbines, which thus generate electricity. With a single kilogram of uranium, 7.000 families can be supplied with electricity for a year.

Safety provisions

Because nuclear energy involves a small risk of accidents, various measures have been taken. For example, a nuclear reactor is always placed in a steel casing. This steel casing can withstand the pressure of a runaway nuclear reaction. In addition, a concrete dome is placed around this steel casing. This concrete dome can absorb an impact without any problems, such as an aircraft crashing into a nuclear power station.

Furthermore, a nuclear power station is equipped with a SCRAM, also called an emergency stop. This ensures that, in the event of a calamity such as a power failure or an earthquake, the nuclear reactor is shut down rapidly. How this happens differs per type of reactor. In gas-cooled reactors, for example, boron powder is added, and in light-water reactors control rods are slid into the reactor core. Even after a SCRAM has been carried out, some 10% heat is still generated that has to be removed. If this heat is not removed, a meltdown would still occur. That is why a nuclear power station also has an emergency cooling system. The nuclear disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima (second-generation nuclear power stations) have proven that this is a weak point in the safety system. The newest generation of nuclear power stations therefore no longer needs cooling from outside.

02Nuclear energy in the Netherlands

The Netherlands has one nuclear power station, in Borssele (Zeeland). This nuclear power station supplies about 4% of the electricity consumed in the Netherlands. The nuclear power station in Borssele has an electrical capacity of 485 megawatts and is owned by EPZ, a joint venture of PZEM and Energy Resources Holding BV. There are no plans to build a new nuclear power station and in 2006 the government decided that the nuclear power station will close its doors at the end of 2033 at the latest. However, the government does not intend to ban nuclear power stations.

Despite the fact that there are no plans yet for new nuclear power stations and that the government does not expect a new nuclear power station before 2030, according to the government nuclear energy does have an important part to play in achieving the climate targets. That is why it remains possible for companies to apply for a licence from the Autoriteit Nucleaire Veiligheid en Stralingsbescherming. In addition, research into nuclear energy takes place at six different locations and the Netherlands also purchases nuclear energy from Germany, Belgium and France, among others.

The Doel nuclear power station (Belgium) and the Emsland nuclear power station (Germany), among others, are located close to the Dutch border. The Belgian nuclear power station at Tihange is also located within a radius of 100 kilometres of the Dutch border. As part of the Energiewende, the German nuclear phase-out, the Emsland nuclear power station will be closed before 2023 at the latest. The Doel and Tihange nuclear power stations were supposed to close their doors in 2025. However, this closure had previously been planned for 2015 and was postponed time and again. So there is still a great deal of uncertainty about this.

03The nuclear energy debate: green electricity or deadly dangerous?

In the Netherlands, but this is the case in virtually every country, there are supporters and opponents of nuclear energy. They almost always base themselves on the same arguments. After all, nuclear energy has both advantages and disadvantages. However, it is not right to base oneself solely on these advantages or disadvantages: when making policy decisions, all arguments must be taken into account. The arguments that are used most often are set out below.

Supporters of nuclear energy

When electricity is made from uranium, some ten to a hundred times less CO2 is released net than when fossil fuels are used. On this point, it is even comparable to how wind and solar energy perform. The low emissions depend, among other things, on the transport of raw materials and the construction and maintenance of a nuclear power station, just as a wind farm also causes a small amount of CO2 emissions for similar reasons.

Nevertheless, nuclear energy is usually not counted as green energy, although supporters would like to see that differently. This is because the amount of uranium is not renewable. Although this is rather purely theoretical. After all, so little uranium is needed and so much uranium can be found that the uranium supply will not be exhausted for the next 100.000 years. Moreover, it is then possible to switch to other raw materials, such as thorium. It is true, however, that easily accessible uranium is slowly being depleted, which will bring extra challenges in the future.

In addition, nuclear energy is relatively cheap. Uranium is an inexpensive raw material and an incredible amount of energy can be extracted from it.

It is also often argued that nuclear energy is an ideal complement to sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar energy. After all, these energy sources depend on nature and the amount of energy generated is therefore unpredictable. That is why more predictable energy sources such as nuclear energy would be desirable.

Finally, nuclear energy makes us less dependent on politically unstable regions, in contrast to what is the case, for example, with the use of oil and gas. This is because uranium can be found all over the world, from in rocks and the soil to in seawater. Especially during the oil crisis, this argument drastically accelerated the development of nuclear power stations.

Opponents of nuclear energy

An important drawback of nuclear energy has to do with what has to be done with the radioactive waste. This radioactive waste involves environmental and health risks and is dangerous to all living beings. Radioactivity causes hereditary disorders and abnormalities in babies and increases the risk of leukaemia. In large quantities, radiation sickness and death can occur.

That is why it has to be stored safely for a long time. High-level radioactive waste will even continue to emit radiation for tens of thousands of years. Non-heat-generating radioactive waste is compressed and cast in concrete. Heat-generating radioactive waste is currently vitrified into a kind of stable glass form. This is currently stored under controlled conditions in a special storage building in Vlissingen. This is a temporary storage facility because, with current knowledge, we still have no idea how to store this waste definitively and safely in the long term. The nuclear power station in Borssele produces about 1 m³ of heat-generating radioactive waste per year. At the moment, the problems and therefore also the bill are simply being passed on to the next generations, who will have to bear the storage costs of ever larger quantities of radioactive waste.

In addition, nuclear energy involves risks of misuse. Both the nuclear power stations and the plants that process the nuclear waste could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons or a dirty bomb. If terrorist groups could get their hands on radioactive material, they could cause major disasters.

As a counter-argument to the inexpensive nature of the raw materials, it is often pointed out that the construction and decommissioning of a nuclear power station is very expensive. It is also pointed out that uranium mines destroy valuable natural areas and affect vulnerable population groups, such as the Canadian Inuit.

Finally, opponents also point to the constant production of nuclear energy. After all, nuclear power stations cannot simply be switched off. Even after the chain reaction has stopped due to a SCRAM, a nuclear reactor continues to produce heat for a long time. As a result, nuclear energy cannot respond flexibly enough to energy demand and energy consumption has to be encouraged at night, because there is then overproduction. Green energy sources would match actual needs better and require no artificial tricks.

Finally, it is also often pointed out that nuclear accidents can have major consequences and that, although the chance is statistically very small, the world has already experienced two major nuclear disasters with disastrous consequences for local residents and future generations. Supporters in turn counter this by stating that the risk of nuclear accidents is smaller with third-generation nuclear power stations because these power stations do not need cooling from outside, which was the case with the nuclear power stations of Chernobyl and Fukushima (second generation). The nuclear power station in Borssele, just like the power stations in Emsland and Doel, belongs to the second generation.

04Nuclear disasters that fuelled the nuclear energy debate

In the past, there have been two major nuclear disasters that resulted in fatalities and exclusion zones. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the more recent Fukushima nuclear disaster each time revived the nuclear energy debate. In practice, this did not lead to a worldwide turnaround among policymakers.

Chernobyl nuclear disaster

On 26 April 1986, a test took place at the Chernobyl nuclear power station. In this test, carried out by staff who had not been able to prepare sufficiently, it was checked whether the generator had enough power when switched off to keep the cooling installation running. This cooling installation serves to bridge the time until the emergency generators have started up; these are needed for cooling after the shutdown. A technical or human error was made during the test. 700 MW was needed to carry out the test safely, but after various interventions it was still only 200 MW. Nevertheless, the test was continued anyway. This went wrong and the emergency stop was activated. However, due to a design flaw in the control rods, which had a graphite tip, the reactor power increased rapidly. A few seconds after the emergency stop had been pressed, the reactor power had increased to ten times the normal power. This caused a steam explosion that blew off the 2.000-tonne roof and blew a radioactive cloud of smoke into the atmosphere. After the explosion, the reactor was destroyed and the reactor core was on fire.

As a result of the accident, an area of 150.000 km² in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus was contaminated with radioactive caesium. At the time of the explosion, about 600 staff members and members of the emergency services were present. Many of them contracted radiation sickness. In the period that followed, 600.000 people were called up for clean-up and security work, including 240.000 soldiers. They were all exposed to amounts of ionising radiation many times higher than what one is allowed to receive per year. It is estimated that 2.200 of them died as a result of this exposure. Since 1990, about 6.000 cases of thyroid cancer have been diagnosed in people who were exposed to the radiation as children. Immediately after the nuclear disaster, 116.000 people were evacuated from the region. It was later admitted that too limited an area had been evacuated and a further 220.000 people were evacuated. Tens of thousands of animals were evacuated or put down.

Fukushima nuclear disaster

On 11 March 2011, an earthquake with a magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale took place off the north-east coast of Japan. As a result, the automatic emergency stop, the SCRAM, was activated and the nuclear power station immediately stopped working. It was a nuclear power station of the second type, which means that heat still has to be dissipated even after the emergency stop. It then takes several more days before the power station is completely shut down and everything has cooled. During this cooling procedure, however, the nuclear power station was hit by a tsunami. On the one hand, this tsunami caused the emergency supply of fresh water to be lost, while the cooling sources were flooded. The nuclear power station was simply not able to withstand a tsunami ten to fourteen metres high, much higher than the eight-metre tsunami that had hit the region in 869 and the maximum height of 5,9 metres that the design could withstand.

As a result of this tsunami, the emergency cooling system failed and the nuclear fuel began to melt at an accelerated rate. The most important systems were then supplied with power by batteries. This was not enough and forced the staff to look for solutions without communication and light. In the meantime, the temperature in the reactor cores kept rising. Large quantities of aerosols and hydrogen were meanwhile also released in the containment vessel. To prevent worse, it was decided to vent the steam freely into the atmosphere. Nevertheless, several hydrogen gas explosions still took place. The reactor core was subsequently cooled for a long time. Because seawater was too corrosive and the amount of fresh water in the region was too limited, large quantities of fresh water were shipped from the United States for this purpose.

That same day, the population within a radius of 3 kilometres around the power station was evacuated. The day after, the perimeter was extended to 20 kilometres and 170.000 people were evacuated. On 11 April, one month after the tsunami, this zone was extended to 30 kilometres. It had previously emerged that people up to a distance of 45 kilometres from the nuclear power station had already received the maximum annual dose of ionising radiation after 8 hours. The zone of 20 kilometres around the power station has been declared an exclusion zone. The thousands of animals in the area were subsequently culled. The exact health consequences will only manifest themselves in the long term. Countless studies have appeared that estimate the number of cancer deaths in the long term at between a few hundred and 1.800. Among residents of a number of areas, however, it has meanwhile become apparent that the number of cases of thyroid cancer is up to twenty times higher than expected.

05The future of nuclear energy

The events in Chernobyl and Fukushima have dealt a negative blow to the view of nuclear energy. At the same time, the climate problem means that governments continue to hold on to nuclear energy. In the meantime, research is under way into a new, fourth generation of nuclear power stations that should do away with the many disadvantages. This worldwide research is to produce a new generation of nuclear power stations that are safer to use and produce less radioactive waste. Developments that are to enable the transition to short-lived radioactive material in particular would offer prospects for the future. In any case, it is expected that decades of research will still be needed to arrive at a new generation of nuclear power stations.

In addition to nuclear fission, research is also being done into possibilities in the field of nuclear fusion. In nuclear fusion, the way in which the chemical reactions in the sun also work, atomic nuclei are not split but merged. By merging the atomic nuclei of tritium and deuterium, for example, an incredible amount of energy is created in addition to helium. In practice, this too is still only in its infancy. In the south of France, however, an experimental nuclear fusion reactor is being built in which this would be researched further. It is expected that a demonstration plant can be built only within 30 years.

06Frequently asked questions about nuclear energy

Nuclear energy is a very complex energy source about which many people have questions, for example regarding safety. A number of frequently asked questions about nuclear energy are answered in this FAQ.

Yes, for everyone who lives within a radius of 100 kilometres of a nuclear power station, it is useful to always have iodine tablets to hand. This is because radioactive iodine is released in a nuclear disaster. This is then absorbed by the body and stored in the thyroid gland. From the thyroid gland, the body is then permanently irradiated internally. In addition to thyroid cancer, people also run other long-term health risks. When an iodine pill is taken, the thyroid gland is filled with harmless iodine and becomes saturated, so that no more radioactive iodine is absorbed. The radioactive iodine will then simply be filtered out of the body via the urine. In the autumn of 2017, the government distributed iodine pills to the 1,2 million households living near a nuclear power station. They are also available without a prescription at the chemist. Bear in mind, however, that iodine tablets only offer protection against radioactive iodine and not against the other consequences of a nuclear disaster.