Icarus’ Legacy — Episode 5 — Nuclear Energy and Modern Biomass

22 min readMar 21, 2021

“The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light” Plato

(Google Slides version more suitable for large screens here)

In the previous episodes

Energy consumption has been growing at an incredible rate, mostly supported by fossil fuels, and with it the greenhouse gas emissions have piled up in the atmosphere, starting to change our climate, for the worse, and polluting our environment.

The production and use of energy are responsible for nearly ¾ of the global emissions. We need to reduce net emissions down to zero if we want to have a chance to limit the effects of global warming and climate change, and reduce deadly pollution in our cities. To do this, we need a radical transformation of the energy sector, moving to clean and renewable sources.

Energy production WILL continue to grow over the next 30 years, to support the world population growth, and also to lift billions of people from poverty, especially in Africa and Asia.

Hydropower and geothermal energy were the earliest forms of renewable sources used for electricity generation, and we started to harness them over a century ago. With hydro much more impactful than geothermal, we see them evolving and continuing to support the energy transition, but we don’t expect them to increase their share in the overall power generation, due to their limited availability in most regions of the world.

Wind and solar energy are now the stars of renewable sources. They have shown, over the past 10 years, that they can reliably deliver at competitive costs in large scale deployments, and they are accessible to most countries.

Most of the current investments in renewable energy are going towards new wind farms and solar plants, as most countries progress towards “net zero”.

But even renewable sources have their issues of sustainability to resolve, especially when we look at the materials we use to build solar plants and wind farms.

The full fourth episode is here, the third here, the second here.

In this episode

Clean sources of energy are not always renewable. And renewable sources are not always clean.

Nuclear Fission is clean, as it doesn’t produce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but it uses a fuel (enriched uranium) which is expensive to mine, produce and, once spent, dispose of. And it won’t last forever. Modern Biomass is renewable but it generates GHG emissions and air pollution to produce energy, and it often requires vast amounts of land to be produced at scale.

But, but… we can, and we should, make both of these sources work towards our net-zero objectives. Both can grow in the primary energy mix, and, when carefully managed, their unique features can be key ingredients in our energy transformation plans and help displace fossil fuels.

We will explore the reasons why nuclear power has on one side been the dream energy for over half a century, and on the other it gained a really bad stigma which slowed its development. And also why modern biomass has grown significantly over the past 20 years, slowing down fossil fuel growth, but at the same time generating significant troubles — not just concerns.

Let’s read these stories.

ABC: Atomic & Bio Controversy

Nuclear power and Modern biomass don’t share much in their histories and technologies, but they both attract very polarised and opposing views, the ones totally in favour and the ones totally against their use.

As we’ve seen for solar and wind power, there’s never an easy answer — even when we have clean as well as renewable energy production, which doesn’t require any fuel or combustion, and doesn’t generate emissions or pollution. The reason is that we still need to build the solar plants and wind farms, which in itself is not clean at all.

But for nuclear and modern biomass there’s much more than this.

Nuclear…

…is complex, it requires costly and long implementation projects, and it’s potentially very dangerous. It evokes stories of wars and past tragedies, and the fear of radioactivity is enough to make people, including the most fervent ecologists, revolt and march on the streets with placards.

Should we continue to invest in Nuclear?

… Modern Biomass

…owes its massive development over the past 30 years primarily to the use of vast amounts of land, dedicated to grow crops specifically for energy production.

Very generous government subsidies have also supported its development, but in some cases with unintended results.

Is this the best use of land and public funds?

So why should we consider nuclear and biomass?
Because they can provide solutions which are unique in the toolset currently at our disposal to decarbonise the energy sector:

Nuclear…

…can operate at over 90% capacity factor as a base load for power generation.

In a world that is predicted to boost electricity production from intermittent sources like solar and wind by a factor of 23 by 2050, we will need a dependable and scalable source that is available all seasons, all weather.

This would help displace fossil fuels for power generation, reduce the need for utility-level energy storage and simplify grid infrastructure and operations

… Modern Biomass

…can be used in combination, or as a direct replacement, of fossil fuel sources, with minor modifications, including biofuels for combustion engines (in transportation) in place of oil products, biogas and solid biomass for domestic and industrial use, including electricity and heat production, replacing natural gas and coal.

They can also be produced from residential and agricultural waste, or even sewage, providing the best example of reuse and recycle, and an excellent solution to reduce environmental pollution.

These are two energy sources which are not easy to manage for the international community and for governments, and they will need improved policies and regulations, to make sure they can continue to play an important role, as we decarbonize the energy sector.

Modern Biomass

We distinguish between “traditional biomass” and “modern biomass”. In both cases the source of energy is organic, non-fossil material from plants or waste, but the big difference is in the processes used to produce energy, and their sustainability.

Henry Ford proudly having fun in 1880 with his Ford Quadricycle. It was the first vehicle he developed, and ran on ethanol, a biofuel

Traditional biomass, including wood, agricultural waste and traditional charcoal, has been used for millennia, typically in an unsustainable and unsafe way for domestic use (heating and cooking) and is still widely adopted in developing countries. The modern form of biomass, instead, also sometimes called “bioenergy” refers to biomass in liquid (biofuels), gas (biogas) or solid form, produced with modern technologies and largely sustainable processes.

The novelty of modern biomass production is that we are both making better use of wasted biological material, taken from agricultural, forest, residential and industrial processes, as well as using significant amounts of land to grow crops and trees explicitly as energy sources.

Modern biomass has developed significantly over the past 10–15 years, owing to the flexibility of its end-products, which can often be used as a direct substitute of, or in combination with, fossil fuels. In 2019 biofuels contributed to around 0.72% of the global primary energy. Small, but in a similar scale of solar and wind.

Schematic for modern biomass cyclical economy

The Good of Modern Biomass

The use of modern biomass involves the combustion of gas, liquid or solid fuels in engines, gas burners, stoves, power plants. So how can all this burning contribute to net zero carbon objectives?

First of all, the use of biomass for energy production will typically generate a reduced amount of emissions respect to the equivalent fossil fuel, but in reality the key is the sustainable sources and processes. When the sustainability criteria are met, the lifecycle of biomass produces very limited emissions, as the CO2 released by the combustion of biomass will be recaptured, through photosynthesis, by regrowing the same forests and crops that were used in the first place to produce the fuels.

It is clear that all crops, forests, and biological waste must be managed to strict sustainable standards. See example here: the EU sustainability criteria for biomass

Modern biomass has a huge growth potential in the space of waste: significant residues from municipal/residential, industrial and agricultural activities and production could be channelled towards energy production, and would also reduce pollution and landfill use.

For instance, the old style “incinerators” are very inefficient and create much more pollution respect to proper selective waste management and generation of biogas via “digesters”.

The flexibility of biofuels, biogas and solid biomass have allowed these sources to make important inroads over the past decades in the energy market, replacing or reducing the use of fossil fuels. Let’s see some of these stories more in detail.

Liquid Biofuels

Bioethanol, biodiesel and biojet can be used alone or blended with oil products to fuel road vehicles and airplanes. They are normally produced from the fermentation of plants such as sugar beets, corn, soya or sugarcane, which are grown and produced specifically for energy, or can be synthesized from the processing of agricultural or household waste.

Fuels marked as E10 or E85, respectively with 10% and 85% blend of bioethanol with normal petrol, are common at petrol stations in many countries. Most cars can already run on E10, while only specially adapted engines (so-called flex-fuel) can run on E85. This blending is often mandated by countries, to support internal production and pursue energy independence.

Brazil and the US are the largest world producers of biofuels, with a combined 85% of global production. We can safely say that this was “mandated” by the respective governments, both to reduce oil imports, but also, as in the US case, to support the agriculture sector.

Solid Biomass

Solid biomass, and wood pellets in particular, are used as a replacement of coal in thermal power plants, or in burners for residential use to heat water and air. They can be derived from forest waste (e.g. sawmills) as well as forests planted and managed specifically for pellet production.

As an example of use at scale, the British power generation company Drax has transformed 2.5 GW of its massive 4 GW power plant in North Yorkshire from coal to wood pellets, which come from renewable sources. The remaining coal burners are about to cease operation, so this plant will soon be completely fuelled from renewable sources, to provide around 6% of the country’s electricity.

In addition to this, they are installing Carbon Capture and Storage, which essentially makes it a “negative carbon” power plant: the carbon absorbed by the trees used for the pellets during their lifetime is never released to the atmosphere, as it is re-captured straight after combustion in the power plant. So as long as the forests that feed this massive generator are managed sustainably, every complete cycle from trees to pellets to energy and back to new trees will remove massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Biogas

The use of biogas as a direct replacement of methane or natural gas for residential and industrial use. Biogas is extracted from the processing of agricultural, residential or industrial waste (e.g. from sewage, animal manure or food scraps). After a process of purification it can be injected in natural gas grids. It can also be used in certain vehicle engines and industrial processes to generate heat or electricity. The win-win is that we avoid the greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution from waste sources, while we also create a valuable output for energy or heat production.

As another useful application, many cities have sewage treatment plants and enough sun to be able to introduce an anaerobic digester in their process. In this way they could extract enough biogas to make these plants much cheaper and less polluting for communities.

Biomass is renewable, but not clean, not cheap, and sometimes a disaster

The use of biofuels is controversial, for four main reasons: the use of land, the cost of production, the pollution that they create and the other greenhouse emissions that can be generated in their life cycle.

LAND USE

Crops dedicated to energy production detract from food production for human use
When forests are removed to make space for biofuel crops, they create environmental damage and CO2 emissions from change of land use. Brazil and the Amazon forest is an example of this
Crops for biofuels have, by far, the lowest energy density per area of all clean and renewable energies, at around 470 km2 per TWh. Wind and solar are in the 10–40 km2 / TWh range and nuclear is under 1 km2 / TWh
Wind and solar can use land with little or no agricultural value, such as deserts, oceans, mountain peaks, while biomass requires fertile land

PRODUCTION COST

Electricity from biomass costs more than from solar and wind. The cost of biofuels is higher than the equivalent oil products, and they require heavy subsidies from governments that mandate their use in blended fuels
Subsidies for renewable energy should be welcomed, but mandating the production of large quantities of biofuels has increased demand for crops like sugarcane, corn, soybeans and rapeseed, increasing the price of food for people as well, and creating a push for deforestation, which caused more GHG emissions. All unintended consequences that go against sustainability

OTHER EMISSIONS

Crops dedicated to biomass energy require in most cases fertilizers, processing and transportation to end users, which will create additional emissions.
This is a relatively small amount respect to the equivalent fossil fuels emissions, but large enough to be significant in the life cycle of biomass

POLLUTION

Burning biofuels, biogas or biomass will release toxic and harmful pollutants into the air, or in general in the environment, similarly to fossil fuels.
So, while in the full lifecycle we can expect a large amount of emitted CO2 to be recaptured by the next growth of crops and forests, other pollutants remain an issue for the health of people and environment.

But Biomass can provide both long term and short term benefits in the energy transformation, so its contribution should be carefully planned and managed:

BENEFITS AND APPLICABILITY OF BIOMASS

In the long term:

When it is extracted from agricultural, residential and industrial waste, it doesn’t require dedicated land and it resolves the problem of reducing waste emissions. It does so at the cost of polluting air, so overall it is still best to reduce waste as much as we can!

In the short term:

It can in many cases replace fossil fuels without major changes from the end user perspective (e.g. in cars, thermal power plants, and heating buildings) which can be a key to reducing emissions
It can provide a solution in the energy transformation, where electricity and other clean forms of energy cannot be applied: such as in heavy transportation (aviation, shipping), cement and steel production
It can also reduce the impact of existing thermal power plants during their useful lifetime. If coal and natural gas plants are switched to sustainable biomass, we can substantially reduce their GHG emissions

Nuclear Fission

When we talk about nuclear power, we generally refer to nuclear fission, which we started to harness from the 1940s, with a focus initially on warfare and atomic bombs. Only after 1945 the focus switched to civilian use and in particular naval propulsion and electricity generation.

Nuclear fission for energy generation uses enriched uranium or plutonium, and captures the energy released by the splitting of the nucleus of atoms in chain reactions, in the form of heat that, with water, generates steam and spins turbines to produce electricity, like in most thermal plants. The first successful tests were completed in the US in the early 1950s, but the first nuclear plant to be connected to the grid was launched in the Soviet Union in 1954. The US, UK, France and Italy followed soon after with their own plants.

The scale of new reactors reached 1 GW in the 1970s. From the late 1980s to the early 2000s the nuclear industry suffered a stagnation due to mounting costs, extremely large and long-running projects, and the impact on public perception after the Chernobyl incident of 1986. Nuclear energy effectively stopped attracting new investments and growth slowed considerably.

In the early 2000s, while nuclear energy continued to stagnate or even decline in western countries, there was a resurgence of projects in Asia, where Japan, and more recently China and India, have implemented and plan to implement new capacity. The Fukushima incident of 2011 caused a widespread reaction globally, with a sudden drop in energy generation, while several countries reconsidered their position on nuclear altogether.

Nuclear power today represents just over 10% in the electricity generation mix (around 1.8% of global primary energy) while at its peak, in 1996, it represented 17.6%.

Without renewed and more substantial investments the nuclear share is going to quickly decline as more and more reactors come to their end of life, and the electricity production from renewables increases exponentially over the next decade.

Safety and Public Opinion

One of the elements affecting the duration and cost of new nuclear plant projects is the safety requirements: it took decades for technologies to evolve and include increasingly safer designs. And still, major incidents like Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) massively affected the public opinion and caused a knee-jerk reaction from politicians in several countries.

Italy held a public referendum in 1987, after Chernobyl, and subsequently stopped producing nuclear energy in 1990. Germany, after Fukushima, decided to phase out all existing plants, with a plan to halt production completely by 2022. In addition to the lost power capacity, this will cost Germany EUR 2.5bn in compensation to plant operating companies.

Japan reacted pragmatically by halting nuclear energy production and reviewing its regulations, so it went from 30% of internal electricity production with nuclear (pre-incident) to zero in 14 months, but since then, a number of reactors have cleared the new regulations and have restarted operations, providing around 7.5% of its electricity in 2019. Japan will continue to invest in nuclear, as a key ingredient to clean energy production.

A notable exception was France, which decided to scale nuclear production to cover most of its electricity needs, as part of its energy security policy, to reduce imports and rely on a predictable cost base. Today 75% of France’s electricity production is from nuclear power (and a large quantity exported), and France is one of the lowest GHG emitters among the developed countries.

The Cost of Nuclear

Large Projects and Plants, Uninterruptible Production

Traditionally, with nuclear plants we think large scale: expensive projects (in the $10-$15bn scale) that can span 5 years or longer, and produce large, basically uninterruptible plants, with non-tunable massive electricity production. This is both a constraint (“all-or-none” inflexibility) but also a value for the large base production that can be offered by individual plants. Taking a reactor offline for maintenance or refuelling can be an issue, but grid operations are largely simplified by the dependability of energy from these workhorses.

There are nuclear plants with capacities of 4–8 GW that could power a small country.

An Exclusive Club

30 countries today produce nuclear power, but only 14 operate uranium enrichment facilities, making uranium imports a requirement for most.

Five of these (US, Russia, UK, France and China) have nuclear weapons and are signatories of the nuclear non proliferation treaty (NPT).

The NPT is primarily concerned with disarmament and the danger of nuclear weapons but it also regulates access to uranium enrichment for energy use, to make sure countries develop the required capabilities for civilian use only.

Three other countries, India, Pakistan and North Korea, are not signatories of the NPT but have developed their nuclear weapons. In addition to these, Israel has not publicly disclosed its capabilities but it is known to be part of the same club of nuclear weapon states.

Although the required knowledge and engineering are similar, the uranium enriched for energy use (enriched at 3–5%) is substantially different than the military-grade one (enriched at 90+%).

Cost of Nuclear Energy Production

The cost of nuclear energy production is hard to calculate, given the large upfront capital investments required, the initial cost uncertainties, the full cycle of fuel, including disposal of waste, and finally the dismantling of reactors at end of life. Many calculation models exist, and with the technology that can be used today to build new reactors, the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is competitive with renewable energy sources, especially when considering the value delivered, the dispatchability (which adds energy storage costs to solar and wind sources). If only the technology was available to more countries in the world.

Fuelling Nuclear

The Big “U” — High Density Energy

The other dimension to consider is the fuel required: enriched uranium. The process to mine, process, enrich and prepare the fuel for nuclear plants is quite complex. Once this is completed, uranium ready to be used by a traditional nuclear plant (typically at around 4.5% enrichment) can generate around 317 MWh per kg (that’s a cube with a side length of 3.7cm).

This is an incredibly high energy density: consider for instance that it would take around 39,000 kg of coal to generate the same energy.

Bearing in mind that the concentrations of uranium extracted from mined material can be around 0.1%, this means that we will need to extract around 1,000 kg of mined ore to produce 1 kg of fuel. So in terms of digging material out of the earth, it’s still significant.

If we do a bit of math, in a realistic case, a large nuclear plant with a 1 GW capacity running at around 90% capacity will generate 7,900,000 MWh in one year, and hence it will require around 25,000 kg of enriched uranium (7,900,000 MWh / 317 MWh/kg).

Assuming you spent a bit of time double checking these calculations and finally getting to grips with these Kilograms and Megawatts, we will now throw in a few more figures for those of you more confident with feet, gallons and… finger tips.

A Finite Resource

Using uranium with the current technologies, which are quite wasteful, and at the current rate of consumption, the known global uranium reserves that can be extracted at reasonable cost, would be exhausted within 80–130 years, according to different estimates, which adds questions to our ability to scale nuclear power production over the next decades. As we will see, technological advances in nuclear reactors, in the enrichment and reuse processes, and even extraction, could change this quite dramatically.

Spent Fuel Disposal

This spent fuel is still very dangerous due to its radioactivity, and while a part of it can be reprocessed and reused as fuel (not many countries do it, due to its economics) a large part will need to be disposed of, which means securely enclosed, transported and hidden away from any future exposure to humans. This adds to the operational costs (end hence to the levelized cost of electricity) and to the risks of running a nuclear energy program.

The US alone produces around 2,000 tons of spent fuel per year from its 95 active reactors, and in 60 years of nuclear power generation it has produced and disposed of around 83,000 tons of this. With a density 19 times larger than water, all this historical mass to dispose could fit in a cube with a 16.3m side, about the size of a 5 storey building.

The Real and Perceived Danger of Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy comes with this aura of risk and contamination, which, all stats considered, is an unfair position: air pollution from burning fossil fuels causes an estimated 8.7 million deaths per year, globally, while the deaths from nuclear incidents are in the worst-case estimates in the low thousands over the whole history of nuclear plants (more than 60 years).

But clearly slow death by day-to-day smog intoxication doesn’t worry so many of us (developing lung cancer, heart diseases and other respiratory and cardio circulatory problems) while the risk of a single event like Fukushima keeps us awake and generates massive protests, even when it officially only caused one death from the effects of radiation (note: the earthquake and the tsunami killed an estimated 18,500 people, but this has nothing to do with nuclear radiation).

Chernobyl, which was a much less controlled disaster, from various estimates, caused around 50 deaths in the immediate aftermath, and might cause, over many years, up to 4,000 deaths that can be attributed to the radiation exposure. Horrible, but it’s different orders of magnitude.

And yet, public sentiment is so important that in the aftermath of Fukushima both Japan and Germany immediately switched off a good part of their nuclear plants and fired up the most polluting coal plants.

For like-for-like comparison, Recent statistics show that coal causes 25–33 deaths per generated TWh of energy, while nuclear causes 0.07 per TWh. These are all deaths from pollution and incidents, and there is a 400-fold difference.

So, while safety of nuclear plants is a concern, we should admit that it’s been managed pretty well, given the scale of development and production. If there are reasons to look at other sources of energy, these figures suggest that it should not be because of its long term impact on health.

Advanced Nuclear Fission

We identified a number of key issues with nuclear energy production, including large upfront and ongoing costs coming from security requirements and a complex fuel life cycle, the uncertainty coming from the sheer size of new reactor projects, the issue of limited resource availability and the disposal of spent fuel. And finally there’s also an issue with perception of safety and health risk.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are refining their design of a 3D-printed nuclear reactor core, scaling up the additive manufacturing process necessary to build it, and developing methods to confirm the consistency and reliability of its printed components

Many Advanced Nuclear technologies are in development stage to address these issues:

Making reactors inherently safer, by using coolants different from water, that would automatically shut down the reactor in case of adverse events (using passive physics as opposed to active engineered systems). This would also reduce costs significantly, by eliminating the requirement for many of the costly safety systems
Creating smaller, modular reactors, implemented by using simpler, standard designs, that can be largely “factory built”, to simplify and shorten implementation:
Small reactors, up to 300 MW power, would make nuclear energy accessible to many countries who can’t afford the $15bn upfront bill required for a large reactor
When scaled down to “micro reactor” level (2 MW — 50 MW) these reactors could be entirely factory built and transportable, including their fuel, to power remote or isolated locations continuously for years
Allowing for continuous fuelling, that would allow reactors to operate non-stop
Allowing for adjustable electricity generation output
Introducing energy storage, e.g. in the form of stored molten salt, to provide even higher flexibility in the electrical output through the day
Reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation, due to different fuelling requirements
Increasing the availability of fuel, by increasing the efficiency of reactors (e.g. in so-called Fast Breeder Reactors) or by allowing for reuse of spent material. This would both make better use of the uranium reserves, resolving long term availability, and reduce the amount of waste generated

As new reactors start to use the new technologies, regulations will also need to adapt, to support the more cost effective designs, so they can complete development and come online bringing cost reductions, additional safety and more flexibility.

While many companies are working on dozens of different designs of Advanced Nuclear Reactors, and especially the US, Russia and China are very active, it is useful to remark the recent efforts from a company called TerraPower, started and fully owned by Bill Gates.

They have introduced a number of revolutionary designs, also thanks to government funding and international collaborations, including Natrium, that incorporates:

A Sodium Fast Reactor with 345 MW power
Molten salt energy storage, that can boost power to 500 MW and make electricity production very flexible with no waste during high or low demand

https://youtu.be/T43Od94e3HM

The plan is to deliver commercial applications from these designs before the end of the decade.

If promises were maintained, these types of reactors could be simpler and cheaper to build, more flexible in their operations and output and, most importantly, safer.

Nuclear Fusion

Nuclear fusion has been a dream for scientists for decades, given its potential to offer an unlimited, totally clean, stable, scalable and safe source of energy. The main principle is to inject a large amount of energy into fusion plasma, to make it reach extremely high temperatures (in the region of 50 million degrees Celsius). This would start a reaction where the plasma would generate much more heat than what is injected, and produce net new energy, which could be partly reused to continue the fusion cycle, and the rest delivered to the electricity grid. The same principle is what fires the stars and our sun, and where essentially hydrogen atoms fuse together to generate helium and, as a result of this, matter is converted into energy.

The main difficulty is to contain the fuel at such high temperatures, so it doesn’t come into contact with the reactor, and the key technology used to achieve this, is magnetic confinement, where very large magnets keep the plasma isolated. The most effective magnetic confinements are of toroidal (donut) form, including tokamaks and stellators.

The other difficulty is that, given the relatively lower density of energy release of nuclear fusion matter, these type of reactors have to be much larger than nuclear fission ones, which adds to the engineering challenges.

Given the current state of research and available engineering, it will probably take another 20 years or more, before the technological challenges are overcome, and fusion is commercially viable. For this reason this is not seen as a key element to fight climate change, but rather a longer term hope for the sustainability of our planet.

The largest research experiment to date is the result of a global collaboration and a $25bn investment, which is producing the ITER tokamak nuclear fusion reactor in France. If all goes to plan, the construction should complete in 2025, when initial plasma experiments would start. ITER is considered the most expensive scientific endeavour in history, with work started in the 1980s through a cross-country collaboration across Europe, Russia, Japan and the USA.

It should for the first time demonstrate net production of energy from fusion at a large scale (input of 50 MW, output of 500 MW) but it will remain an experiment to test the required technologies and proof inherent safety, in preparation for real power plants, which would only come in the following decades.

Wrapping Up

Modern Biomass and Nuclear energy can offer unique solutions to our energy transformation challenges as a direct replacement for some fossil fuel cases, and as a reliable base load for our electrical grids.

With biomass we must avoid the damaging side effects from excessive land use, deforestation and pollution, and for nuclear we should allow for safe, modular and cost effective creation of new nuclear energy capacity.

Biofuels can play a role in replacing fossil fuels at relatively low cost, as they are often compatible with existing technologies in transport and residential sectors. But while they are predicted to grow significantly in the energy mix over the next decade, contributing to renewable energy targets, this source should be played carefully to make sure they are produced sustainably, avoiding any increase in land utilization and deforestation, and primarily making use all sorts of waste, so not to detract from natural carbon sinks and land that will be more and more required for food production.

Nuclear power must be well regulated, and not ditched, given the unique value it can provide, especially as the most promising of the new advanced nuclear technologies will go from prototype to full production over the next 5–10 years.

Governments would be wise to at least maintain the current share of electricity production from nuclear plants, and not allow for a decrease, as older plants reach end of life.

Renewable sources like solar and wind should replace fossil fuels, not nuclear…