The pall of Fukushima overshadows our energy future

The global repercussions of the Fukushima fiasco could threaten our ability to mitigate climate change

TWO years ago, on 11 March 2011, the world watched as technicians struggled to bring the overheating Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in eastern Japan under control. Fears mounted that there might be dire consequences as far away as the west coast of the US.

As it turned out, the effects of the crisis paled in comparison with the destruction wreaked by the triggering earthquake and tsunami. While 16,000 people were killed by the natural disaster, a new analysis suggests that relatively few people will suffer serious health effects from the nuclear fiasco (see "Cancer risk lower than feared for Fukushima locals").

Fukushima has nonetheless joined Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in the roll call of big-headline nuclear disasters; and its impact on the fortunes of nuclear energy ? and low-carbon power generation ? is still playing out.

For Germany, Fukushima was the last straw. Within a decade, all its nuclear plants will be shut. In the UK and the US, public hostility, combined with a commercial reluctance to build nuclear plants without financial safety nets from governments, make any major nuclear revival unlikely. In both countries too, the toxic legacy of past military and civil nuclear endeavours looms large. Even France's legendary enthusiasm for nuclear power has faded under President Fran?ois Hollande.

Today, the majority of new nuclear builds are in China, India and Russia. Nuclear's future looks increasingly Asian ? including, perhaps, Japanese. Most of the country's nuclear plants will probably reopen next year, following costly safety upgrades.

Worldwide, nuclear capacity continues to rise, but more slowly than before Fukushima. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported this week that construction began on seven new plants in 2012. So nuclear is certainly not dead. But its rate of expansion is feeble compared with that of coal and gas-fired plants, hundreds of which are opening every year.

And there's the rub. Although renewable energy is making good progress, large-scale power generation is still dominated by burning fuel, whether uranium or fossil carbon. It seems the world still fears nuclear energy more than it fears climate change. That is very probably a mistake.

This article appeared in print under the headline "A dangerous shutdown"

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