Roland Kupers: It's not radiation risk that's wrong with nuclear power. It's the cost

THE nuclear crisis in Japan, and the 25th anniversary of the meltdown at Chernobyl, have incited heated discussions about the desirability of nuclear power.

The stealth-like nature of radiation taps into deep-seated human anxieties. But, however well-founded those fears might be, they are probably the wrong reason to oppose nuclear energy.

The price of nuclear power has been escalating steadily for decades. Since 1970, the cost of new nuclear generating capacity has increased nine-fold, as additional safety features make plant designs more expensive.

We have also lost economies of scale, because we build so few nuclear plants. Globally, the median age of nuclear power stations is 27 years, so much of the learning from building the early buildings has gone.

The opposite is occurring with renewables. We are learning quickly, and costs are plummeting through the sheer volume of construction: 40,000 wind turbines over the past decade in Europe alone. As the price of nuclear power steadily rises and that of renewables falls, the cost curves inevitably will cross. The only question is when - and it is likely to occur well within the decade that it will take for the next nuclear plant to come online in the industrialised world.

Most advocates of nuclear energy now endorse solar and wind, but in the same breath claim that renewables alone are not a practicable solution for the necessary reduction of carbon emissions.

In 2010, the European Climate Foundation (ECF) published a much-noted report called Roadmap 2050, which modelled in great detail the cost and technical feasibility of various scenarios for a carbon-free power system in Europe by 2050. It describes a scenario of 80 per cent renewable power.

In a nutshell, the ECF's conclusion was that a continent-wide renewable power system is both technically possible and economically affordable. The much-maligned and very real intermittency of supplies of renewable power is addressed through additional back-up generation capacity and, crucially, a new direct-current supergrid that enables load balancing across the European continent.

The evidence of the link between carbon reduction, economic growth and job creation is also mounting. Recent studies project the creation of millions of job before 2020.

What we are witnessing is a watershed in the debate on greenhouse-gas emissions. A low-carbon growth path requires neither coal nor new nuclear power. The way forward is to pursue more ambitious and consistent climate and energy policies, that drive the massive deployment of renewables, install new load-balancing electricity grids and ensure large-scale adoption of energy-efficiency measures.

This agenda promises to boost investments, stimulate economic growth and create jobs while increasing competitiveness and energy security. In both economic and ethical terms, nuclear power merits no role.

• Roland Kupers is a visiting Fellow at Oxford University and a former executive at Royal Dutch Shell.