NUCLEAR POWER: IS THERE NO TURNING BACK?

The above graphic is taken from an article on the Aljazeera website this week - http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/04/antagonising-iran-strategic-mis-201442161724450258.html - by Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a professor of North American Studies and dean of the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran. This came to my attention, incidentally, via Iranian Vice President Massoumeh Ebtekar's "Persian Paradox" blog yesterday (please see my earlier post). Aside from offering an interesting back story to the present controversy surrounding Iran's civil nuclear programme, the article has a wider relevance for international energy policy in an age of so-called transition to sustainable development.

Professor Marandi's article opens as follows:

"Even though it was a major exporter of crude oil and held some of the world's largest natural gas reserves, Iran made a compelling case over half-a-century ago that it needed, almost immediately, to produce an additional 20,000 megawatts of electricity by constructing 23 nuclear power plants. At the same time, Iran's government made the case that the country needed to acquire the capacity to enrich uranium in order to fabricate the reactor fuel for such an ambitious programme.

Western governments eagerly endorsed these arguments, praising Iran's then Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's ambition to rapidly modernise Iran while overlooking the reality that he was presiding over a ruthless dictatorship and diverting much needed capital to purchase massive amounts of weapons from the US and other Western countries. And so, during the 1960s and 1970s, billions of dollars were invested in establishing an Iranian nuclear programme and training thousands of Iranian nuclear experts in the West - until Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution replaced the monarchy with an Islamic Republic..."

In short, Iran's energy pathway has very much reflected that of Western nations, although a number of these, including the United States and, most recently, Germany, have moved away from civil nuclear power in the period since the 1980s for reasons of cost and safety associated with both generation and waste disposal. Meanwhile, other countries, notably Russia and China, have forged ahead with nuclear development programmes notwithstanding major accidents at Chernobyl in the Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) during 1986 and Fukushima in Japan following the earthquake and Tsunami of 2011. It should be noted that Iran is also located in a major earthquake zone:  http://www.ibtimes.com/iran-earthquake-strikes-near-bushehr-nuclear-power-plant-1489402

The current popularity of nuclear power has much to do with the need to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide that are the major contributor to the green house effect associated with global warming. However, the nuclear option also offers the prospect of national energy security for countries increasingly concerned about their dependency on foreign gas supplies. Whilst Iran, "with the world's second-largest proven reserves of natural gas", as Professor Marandi notes in his article, does not have such concerns, much of Europe is reliant upon Russian supplies, and this is a key factor in the current Ukrainian crisis.

Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the accident at Ukraine's Chernobyl plant was probably the single most important event in turning the world against nuclear power in the last decade of the twentieth century. Moreover, the former Soviet regime's attempt to cover up the seriousness of this incident is widely cited as a major contributory factor in its demise only five years later. The problem with nuclear energy is that the conseqeunces can be very serious indeed if things go wrong. Iran, along with the rest of the world, would be wise to remember this.