Last month, a report by Germany’s Green party concluded that 18 nuclear power plants in the European Union are operating without having been subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The conclusions were meant to suggest that the EU’s NPPs are unsafe. However, not only is an EIA a legal requirement that is only required in certain circumstances, it is entirely unrelated to safety.

To address safety considerations, there are bespoke EU stress tests along with national appraisals. However, headline-grabbing news – like the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) recent ruling that a 2015 decision to extend the life of two Belgian nuclear power plants by 10 more years was unlawful because Brussels failed to conduct EIAs – effectively serves to undermine popular support of nuclear power.

That the Belgian greens reacted to the ECJ ruling by stating that “the energy transition towards renewable energy must now be accelerated” indicates greens remain deeply skeptical of nuclear power, while championing renewables. But even in the green movement, the tide is turning.

According to the International Energy Agency, nuclear energy is the second-largest low-carbon power source in the world today, accounting for 10 per cent of global electricity generation. That’s only second to hydropower, which accounts for 16 per cent. It warns that without policy changes, advanced economies could lose 25 per cent of their nuclear capacity by 2025 and as much as two-thirds of it by 2040. If you’re worried about CO2 levels, that’s bad news. Without nuclear power, emissions from electricity generation would have been almost 20 per cent higher between 1971 and 2018, according to the IEA.

Despite policy changes in countries like Germany and Belgium, 50 new nuclear reactors are currently being constructed around the globe (15 of which are in China alone), and new technologies are constantly being developed. Take small modular reactors (SMRs), which are much safer thanks to their reliance on “passive”, less energy-consuming systems. Companies as diverse as NuScale Power, Rolls-Royce and China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC) are betting on their success.

Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town Show all 18 1 /18 Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town Husky dogs pull musher Audun Salte through the town of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. Salte worries that as temperatures warm, climate change could lead to the extinction of all life on Earth. A man who likes kissing and dancing with his dogs, he has 110 of them, is concerned most about the non-humans on the planet. "If climate change should be the end of humanity, I really don't care, but if climate change is the end of any animal species who hasn't contributed anything towards the speeding up of this process, that's why I am reacting," he said. "On the highway, when people slow down to look at a car crash, climate change is like that because everyone is slowing down to look at the accident but not realising that we are actually the car crash." Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town A reindeer grazes on land. Since 1970, average annual temperatures have risen by 4 degrees Celsius in Svalbard, with winter temperatures rising more than 7 degrees, according to a report released by the Norwegian Centre for Climate Services in February. Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town The Wahlenberg Glacier in Oscar II land Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town Audun Salte prepares his huskies for sledding Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town The town of Longyearbyen in the late evening light Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town Husky dogs relax ahead of sledding Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town International director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, Kim Holmen, relaxes with a cup of tea as he travels past the Wahlenberg Glacier. Holmen has lived in the northern Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard for three decades. He describes the changes he's seen as "profound, large and rapid." "We are losing the Svalbard we know. We are losing the Arctic as we know it because of climate change," he said. "This is a forewarning of all the hardship and problems that will spread around the planet." Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town A sign warns of the danger from polar bears Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town A woman poses next to a polar bear mural in town Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town An iceberg floats near the Wahlenberg Glacier Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town Wieslaw Sawicki holds a photograph of his son 44-year-old Michal Sawicki who was killed by an avalanche in Svalbard earlier this year. He worked as a geophysicist at the Polish Polar Research Station in Hornsund on the southern side of Svalbard. The Polish scientist and meteorologist Anna Gorska died when they fell from a mountain in May. Sawicki was an experienced mountaineer, scientist and explorer on his fifth stint for the institute in the Arctic. "Unfortunately, there was a huge snow cornice which looked like it was part of the peak of the mountain," said his father Wieslaw Sawicki, who was visiting Longyearbyen to meet with the governor of the archipelago. "It collapsed with them; they both fell into the abyss." Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town Christiane Huebner plays with her dog Svea Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town A pile of antlers on a ski sled Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town An aerial view shows snow-covered mountains in Svalbard, Norway, August 3, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay SEARCH "SVALBARD CLIMATE" FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH "WIDER IMAGE" FOR ALL STORIES. HANNAH MCKAY Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town White wooden gravestones at risk of landslides due to the thawing permafrost underneath the ground, stand at the side of a mountain in the Longyearbyen cemetery Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town A man looks at rugs for sale in a store in town Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town A miner works inside the Gruve 7 mine, the only remaining operational coal mine on Svalbard Reuters/Hannah McKay Climate change in the world's fastest-warming town Children play at the skatepark in town Reuters/Hannah McKay

And therein lies the rub: while many proponents of renewables and battery technology point at how future technological development will sort out their many shortcomings, very few assume technological progress is possible for nuclear technology. On the contrary, innovations are routinely dismissed out of hand and painted as dangerous.

Case in point is the the Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant, which Greenpeace dubbed “Chernobyl on ice” a bid to play up fears about it before it even set off from Murmansk to Russia’s arctic region. That scaremongering ignores the fact the plant is meant to replace a coal-fired power plant and an ageing nuclear power plant, eliminating about half a million tons of CO2 emissions per year.

While the Lomonosov is the first of its kind, nuclear reactors have been going to sea since 1955, ever since the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus set off. It’s no surprise then that Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) has declared that the transport of Akademik Lomonosov along the Gulf of Finland “will not pose any concern”.

Against this backdrop of skepticism towards nuclear energy, it’s important to look at how environmentally friendly and economically efficient renewables are. The production of solar panels and wind turbines requires hazardous materials and – unlike in the case of nuclear waste – there are no proper plans on how to deal with these by-products, which are expected to hit 78 million metric tonnes by 2050.

In a special report on Germany’s 2011 decision to phase out nuclear energy, Der Spiegel notes that the “greatest political project undertaken since Germany's reunification, is facing failure”. The magazine notes how “most of the electricity that Germany needs is still produced by burning coal.'' It adds that “technologically speaking, it's possible to make the energy system free of fossil fuels by 2050,” but that it could cost Germany up to “€3.4 trillion”. This, after German electricity prices have already gone through the roof in recent years.

According to the magazine, “there is hardly a wind energy project that is not fought”, with citizens wary of electrical transmission towers pushing politicians to bury electrical lines “underground”, which is “many times more expensive and takes years longer.” As a result, the magazine concludes that “the wind power boom is over”.

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What’s more, Germany’s decision was a kneejerk reaction to the Fukushima disaster in Japan, a move that was not endorsed by all environmentalists. One of the UK’s most respected environmental activists, George Monbiot, wrote that “as a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology”, explaining that this really amounted to the ultimate test for nuclear power: “A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami.[…] Yet, as far as we know no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation”, a figure revised by the Japanese government to 1 last year.

As always in politics, it’s never black and white. A fair debate must involve taking into account the pros and cons of all energy sources. It also means examining both the present and future potential of a technology to respond to the world’s energy challenges. And with all things considered, nuclear energy deserves a fairer chance.