representatives from 30 countries, including a few heads of state. This day-long meeting on March 21 was the latest in a series of efforts being made in the last few years to pitch nuclear energy as an important solution to global problems like climate change and energy security. HOSTED BY: International Atomic Energy Agency. (IAEA) WERE ANY DECISIONS TAKEN AT THIS MEETING? The meeting was not meant to produce any decisions or finalise any agreement. Rather, it was another attempt to build momentum for a greater acceptance of nuclear energy which many countries continue to have apprehensions about.

WHAT ARE THE APPREHENSIONS?

  • Such apprehensions were aggravated by the Fukushima accident in 2011.
  • The continuing crisis at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the first nuclear facility to have been caught in a dangerous armed conflict, has also been a source of grave concern.
But global nuclear advocates, led by the IAEA, an intergovernmental organisation that works for the safe and peaceful use of nuclear science and technology, have been very active in the last few years in highlighting the potential of nuclear power to accelerate the clean energy transition that the world so desperately needs to achieve its climate change goals. The IAEA has launched an ‘Atoms4Climate’ initiative to talk about this and has begun an engagement with the climate community, especially at the COPs or the annual year-ending climate conferences. IS POWER GENERATION FROM NUCLEAR FUEL REALLY CLEAN? It is a clean source of energy with a minimal carbon footprint. There is negligible release of emissions during the electricity generation process. Even when the entire life cycle is considered – accounting for activities like reactor construction, uranium mining and enrichment, waste disposal and storage, and other processes – greenhouse gas emissions are only in the range of 5 to 6 grams per kilowatt hour, according to IAEA. This is more than 100 times lower than coal-fired electricity, and about half the average of solar and wind generation. Nuclear power plants are known to have substantially lower carbon footprint than solar or wind projects over their entire life cycle. INDIA’S POSITION ON NUCLEAR ENERGY India, which currently has 23 operational nuclear reactors, does acknowledge the role of nuclear energy in its decarbonisation plan and is planning for a rapid expansion in the coming years, even though the share of nuclear energy in electricity generation is likely to remain extremely modest in the foreseeable future. The currently operational reactors have a combined installed electricity generating capacity of 7,480 MW (about 7.5 GW). At least ten more reactors are under construction, and the capacity is supposed to triple to 22,480 MW by 2031-32. The share of nuclear energy in total electricity generation capacity is just about 3.1 per cent, among the lowest in countries that do use nuclear energy.