Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Hi, everybody, and welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. I'm Judah Grunstein, WPR's editor-in-chief. 0:14 Not very long ago, with oil at record highs and amid concern over greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear energy was portrayed as a clean and increasingly safe alternative source of energy. 0:25 Countries in Asia and the Middle East rushed to sign deals to build fleets of nuclear reactors, and the industry even seemed poised for a comeback in the US and other developed economies. 0:35 Today, the outlook for nuclear energy is considerably darker, and Miles Pomper will join Peter Dury a little later to discuss what happened to the so-called nuclear renaissance. 0:45 But first, I'll be talking with WPR senior editor Freddy Deknatel about this week's top stories in international affairs. Hi, Freddy. How you doing today? Hey, Judah. I'm doing well. How about you? I'm feeling great. 0:56 So a- at the risk of exacerbating what, uh, for most of us is a little bit of Trump burnout, I thought we would talk about Trump's telephone call this week with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, which generated a huge amount of, uh, attention, surprise, shock, dismay, and as well as, uh, some cautious approval, uh, from various, uh, observers. 1:21 It's obviously gotten quite a bit of attention, and so I thought that we could look at it from a couple angles that I thought were interesting and, and could be explored a little more. 1:31 The first has to do with what seems will be a mark of Trump's presidency, this question of is he crazy? Is he crazy like a fox? 1:41 Or is he being essentially manipulated by people who are, uh, have a, an ideological agenda, uh, in his inner circle? 1:51 Uh, the reporting on the Taiwan call seems to be that, uh, there was really a developed plan among his advisors to send a signal, a strong signal, to Beijing that, uh, Trump was really looking to change the terms of the conversation. 2:09 Uh, and so I thought that might be an interesting thing to look out, be- look at because we've talked a lot about how uncertainty is, uh, really going to characterize the Trump presidency. 2:20 And it seems like there will be not just uncertain- uncertainty over what his policy direction will be but even what his actual intentions are. 2:28 Yeah, I think that this is, uh, the constant tension with reporting on Trump, analyzing Trump, s- and we're barely a month after the election. He hasn't even taken office yet. 2:40 But certainly, I think the, after the phone call, for example, um, to Taiwan, which obviously broke decades of American diplomatic protocol, uh, some op-eds, including one in Foreign Policy a month ago by two prominent Trump foreign policy advisors who are quite hawkish on China, uh, that op-ed sort of took on some new meaning because they had mentioned, uh, in the piece that Taiwan was a beacon of democracy in Asia. 3:06 They had said that the Obama administration's policy toward Taiwan had been terrible. 3:12 Um, and like you said, the reporting made it seem like this in fact wasn't after all a sort of haphazard phone call which at least initially it seemed like it had been. 3:23 And I think that's probably, that in itself is, is one of the, uh, problems in, in, in covering Trump is that he probably wants people to think on the, on, on the one hand that, oh, you know, he just took a phone call and this wasn't any great gesture. 3:37 But then of course he's very quick to then follow up and say, you know, "Well, why, why is it okay for the Obama administration to sell weapons to Taiwan but I can't take a phone call?" 3:47 Which, you know, that in itself reveals a stunning lack of understanding of US-China policy and the various delicate features of that relationship, the fact that weapons sales are one thing but diplomatic recognition is another. 4:02 Um, and I think that Trump really in, in his own way feeds off of this because it keeps the, you know, journalists and foreign policy community on edge. Their, the target is constantly moving. 4:13 Does Trump really believe the things he's talking about? 4:16 Um, I mean, I, I'm a little worried increasingly that if you believe the fact that he is being manipulated or at least pushed by some hawkish people, uh, in Washington and elsewhere on China, in a way it's almost reminiscent of George W. 4:30 Bush after 9/11, uh, and neocons like Dick Cheney and many others who we know for years were pushing the idea of a war in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. And George W. Bush was no neocon really. 4:44 And so I, uh, you know, Trump's ideological flexibility or his lack of ideology or his lack of knowledge, what seems to be clear on a lot of foreign policy issues, 4:54 you know, that's my, my main worry now is that it can lead him to be manipulated by John Bolton, who is a arch-neocon, is still apparently holding meetings with Trump and might have played a role in this Taiwan phone call. 5:07 At the same time, uh, and something that I've tried to point out, uh, even since during the, the Republican primary campaign, uh, some of the positions that Trump adopts, uh, even though they're not terribly informed or one can assume they're not terribly informed by the casual way he, he sort of declares them, are positions that have been argued for by pretty respected international affairs experts and analysts and that in a more sort of considered, uh, formulation represent a, a valid framework for pursuing American interests. 5:43 Uh, I'm thinking in particular of, uh, the suggestion that as alarming as it might be to a, a, a lot of people that, uh, Japan and South Korea become nuclear-armed states. 5:54 There are respected analysts that, that consider that would be a more stable deterrent, uh, and security architecture in Asia. And the same holds true with the, the relationship with Taiwan. 6:05 There are people who think that this arrangement is in, in need of an update. 6:10 And the, the danger for, that I see in, in terms of foreign policy experts and the sort of exr- expert reaction is that in a lot of ways these kind of status quo arrangements which are, are designed to push conflict down the road over issues that neither side is willing to, uh, formally compromise on don't make a whole lot of sense to laypeople who are sort of Being introduced to the issue for the first time. 6:38 So to say to a, a layperson, "Well, we can have informal contacts with Taiwan, but pretend like it doesn't exist in terms of recognizing Beijing as the, uh, only representative of the Chinese nation," doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 6:54 It's very scholastic. 6:55 So the expert reaction to begin with ignores the fact that there are some people who believe that we should be doing a little more for Taiwan, and it also risks alienating the kind of audience that, that Trump really does a great job communicating with, which is people who don't necessarily follow all the arcane, uh, details of these kinds of arrangements. 7:16 The, the other thing that I wanted to just get into is this, uh, what seems to me the fundamental assumption of, of his call with, uh, the Taiwanese president, which has to do with the idea of resetting the terms of the US-China, uh, engagement and dialogue. 7:33 And the assumption being that the US has a much stronger bargaining position in that relationship than the consensus among the, the foreign policy establishment and over the last few presidential administrations. 7:46 Yeah, I think that, uh, on the one hand, yeah, the, the challenging assumptions is certainly valuable, and I think that especially the contrast with the Obama administration, um, that, that they were, in a sense, uh... 8:01 They didn't wanna maintain a status quo, but they were certainly conflict averse. 8:05 And I, I don't think that that means that, uh, that's on the one hand, the only way that any administration should operate, but also, you know, the risk that, uh, Trump inadvertently or intentionally, uh, wants to stoke at least the appearance of conflict or at least the appearance of there's a new administration in Washington. 8:24 They don't mind rattling the cages. They don't mind breaking diplomatic protocol. And I think that, you know, to your question, though, the... 8:32 I think there's certainly value in, you know, changing some of the assumptions about perhaps the US can push China on certain things that at least among foreign policy analysts and, and the sort of Beltway community or... 8:44 Though, although neither of us are in the Beltway, that, you know, there are certain things that the US can't push China on, um, or that you, the US has to react to more, and I think those are valid. 8:54 A- again, I think the worry, and this comes back to the, to the sort of unknowables about Trump, is, you know, that's assuming an element of rationality and an element of there, here, there are, you know, concrete steps that we will take to pursue this, you know, new policy, and there may be people advising Trump who wanna do that. 9:13 But Trump himself, uh, has shown little interest, whether in China or in dealing with, you know, jobs in the United States already, where anything moves with any kind of rationality or order. 9:24 Um, and I think the other wildcard, too, is that, you know, there's a strong indication that the phone call to Taiwan also, like anything having to do with Trump, had a business connection and that there was potential conflicts of interest there, in, in, in this case, a hotel, uh, that the Trump organization is trying to build in Taiwan. 9:42 So it's sort of hard to unravel, and I think that the very obvious and, and, you know, on their merits, good foreign policy argument about this gets lost in all the, all of the sort of swamp that comes with Donald Trump. 9:55 The danger obviously is that, uh, testing those assumptions is pretty difficult in practice because you never really know when you are going to cross the other party's red lines and back them up against a wall that, uh, that, uh, in, in a kind of situation that they can't accept, and that becomes even more complicated when it's hard to know what's intended and what's unintended, uh, in terms of whatever sig- signals are coming out from the, uh, Trump transition team and eventually from the Trump White House. 10:26 I think that just about wraps it up for us. Uh, before we pass it over to Peter, did you wanna mention any articles that we ran this week that, uh, caught your attention? Yeah. 10:35 Uh, another election story in Africa, in Gambia, where Alex Thurston, a regular contributor, wrote a briefing on the very surprising loss of Gambia's longtime dictator, Yah- Yahya Jammeh, and it looks at the perplexing decision to accept the election results there. 10:52 Something of an outlier, uh, in West Africa these days. 10:56 And I thought I'd mention our in-depth article from this week by Matthew Gibney on the refugee protection regime and, uh, the impact of the Syrian crisis on that and, uh, the, the questions it raises about, uh, how effective and how sustainable that regime is. 11:16 Okay. Let's pass it over to Peter for the report. [upbeat music] From early morning, thousands of people have been arriving to witness an historic event in the industrial life of Britain and indeed of the world. 11:31 Today, Her Majesty The Queen is coming to Calder Hall to open Britain's first atomic power station. 11:38 And Calder Hall is only the beginning of a great program of nuclear power stations which will in time give us all the electricity we need without the use of coal or oil. 11:47 There has been a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union, and the Soviets have admitted that it happened. 11:52 One of the atomic reactors at the Chernobyl atomic power plant near the city of Kiev was damaged, and there is speculation in Moscow that people were injured and may have died. 12:01 And at the end of the day, nuclear power at this point is the only zero carbon, reliable, base load generation, uh, source we have. 12:09 Japan's nuclear safety agency will raise the crisis level at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant from five to seven, the worst on the international scale. The entire 12:22 concept of a nuclear renaissance is pretty well out the window. 12:29 When the first commercial nuclear power plant went online in Great Britain in 1956, proponents of the technology heralded the coming of a nuclear age, dreaming of an essentially limitless supply of cheap and clean energy. 12:46 The reality turned out to be quite different, of course, with nuclear's high upfront costs and high profile accidents putting a damper on its adoption. 12:56 Still, the challenges of climate change led some observers to predict a nuclear renaissance during the mid-aughts. 13:03 Again, the predictions have turned out to be overly optimistic, and today I'm joined by Miles Pomper, Senior Fellow at the James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies, to talk about the challenges facing nuclear power today and in the future. 13:19 Nuclear power is quite expensive. It's proven to be, uh, even more expensive than people thought beforehand. 13:25 I mean, we've had, uh, plants in the United Kingdom, plants in other places that have far exceeded their initial cost estimates. This is in an environment where some other forms of energy have appeared, 13:38 uh, at lower costs than people expected. Uh, for instance, uh, the price of natural gas has declined in a number of places, thanks to the revolution, 13:48 uh, in, uh, fracking in, in terms of new forms of finding natural gas, uh, increased shipments of things like liquified natural gas around the world. So you have the sort of supply challenges of, of nuclear power. 14:03 Uh, at the same time, some of the demand for electricity, while still growing in some developing countries, is not quite as much as people expected. 14:12 Uh, and in more developed countries, uh, between, uh, events like economic, uh, slowdowns in various, uh, developed countries in Europe and the United States, 14:23 uh, and more efficiency, uh, you, you don't have the same demand for, uh, electricity, uh, in general. So the supply and demand, 14:32 uh, curves for, uh, that would've helped nuclear power are not helping as much as people had anticipated. Nuclear power now is roughly, uh, ten percent of global, uh, electricity, uh, generation. 14:47 Uh, it was about twice that much a few decades ago, and the factors that have been contributing to that are partly this revolution in gas and the, the availability of, uh, other, uh, forms of energy. 15:02 Uh, also the growth of alternative energies like solar, uh, and wind. People expected the competitiveness of nuclear to benefit a lot from various forms of, uh, carbon pricing, whether they were carbon taxes or others. 15:17 Um, but those have not been, uh, sufficiently strong or int- been introduced sufficiently widely to have the advantage that people foresaw. 15:27 A handful of catastrophic accidents have irrevocably shaped the history and perception of nuclear power. 15:34 When a tsunami hit the Fukushima power plant in March 2011, the latest of these disasters began to take shape, leading to a reevaluation of the technology in parts of the world. 15:47 Fukushima had both, uh, direct and, uh, indirect impacts. I mean, the, the direct impact is Japan had close to 50 nuclear reactors. Uh, virtually all of those are offline right now, 16:01 and it's not clear, uh, if many of those will ever come back online. 16:06 And, um, given that there's only about 350, uh, uh, reactors operating now, uh, having another 50 offline, uh, is a significant chunk of the nuclear reactor fleet that's not online. 16:20 In fact, fewer reactors are operating today than there were a decade ago, in part because of the fact that those reactors are offline. The, uh, the follow-on effect has also been in two ways. 16:34 One is, uh, the actual accident at the time convinced some countries, most notably Germany, to decide to phase out nuclear power. 16:44 "Fukushima demonstrated that even a high technology country like Japan cannot master the risks associated with nuclear power," German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who holds a PhD in physics, told the German parliament shortly after the meltdown in Japan. 17:06 Her decision to phase out nuclear power in Germany after the Fukushima disaster was a shock to the international nuclear industry. Those plants are starting to phase out. 17:25 Uh, other countries that were thinking about going forward with nuclear power decided not to do it. Uh, and then you have some slower phase outs in some other countries. 17:34 Uh, it also raised the, the cost of safety regulation. I mean, new safety regulations were adopted in a lot of countries. Uh, this has made it, uh, more expensive to operate a nuclear plant. 17:46 Uh, it's been an important contributor to, uh, this, uh, slowdown or s- or lack of the growth that was projected in nuclear power. But nuclear is not only struggling because of its unique risk profile. 18:01 Its economics are also quite special and not well suited to the current environment. Even if Fukushima hadn't happened, I think you would still have, 18:11 uh, if some of the other changes that I said, uh, had still occurred, uh, you'd still have a, a challenge for nuclear power because, uh, just basic supply and demand, uh, economics are really not working in favor of nuclear power right now. 18:25 It's, uh, one thing to keep in mind with nuclear power is that unlike with a, uh, other forms of electricity generation, it is a very expensive proposition. 18:37 You're talking many billions of dollars to build a nuclear plant. Uh, and its economics are quite different from that of your other kinds of power plants. 18:46 You basically, with nuclear power, you pay most of the cost in building the plant itself. And the fuel, which is uranium and so on, doesn't really cost very much. 18:57 Other power plants, the ratios are, are much lit more in the other direction. 19:03 Uh, and at a time when, uh, the fuel costs are low for those kinds of facilities, whether it's coal or, or gas or so on, uh, that makes a huge difference. Uh, and nuclear plants also take a long time to build. 19:17 Generally, you don't get, uh, any revenue or any coverage during the time you're building the plant, uh, especially some of these plants that have taken a very long time to build. So you have to finance that, 19:29 borrow that money during that time, so you're running up all those financial costs before the plant is completed. For instance, the French, uh, built a reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland, which is a... 19:39 run at least three times the original cost, now is more than around twelve billion dollars and still not finished. One of the things the nuclear power industry is trying to do and trying to, uh, get 19:53 its cost down is talking about this idea of, uh, what are called modular reactors. These would be smaller reactors where you could build a lot of the parts, uh, in a factory, 20:05 uh, maybe just do the final assembly kind of at the construction site and build them in batches. Uh, that's still an untested proposition, uh, and it, it also would require 20:19 all sorts of regulatory approvals, uh, to get, uh, that kind of power plant, uh, in general operation. 20:26 That's sort of one of the hopes of the nuclear industry, but there's no guarantee that that's, uh, ever gonna, uh, take place. Uh, and the fact is, I mean, part of it is nuclear is unique. 20:36 Because of, uh, people's safety and fears about radiation and so on, the level of regulation that you have in, in nuclear industry is far higher than you have in, in some of the other industries, uh, and that adds cost and time. 20:52 There's only a couple of places which-- a couple of countries which really seem to be on the verge of having their own final repository for the spent fuel that comes out of a nuclear plant, the, the nuclear waste. 21:06 Uh, that's Finland and Sweden. Uh, and they went through very extended public consultations and processes. 21:14 Uh, but the-- I mean, you know, almost every other country in the world, it's just a very tricky political problem to get, uh, anyone to take the nuclear waste. 21:24 No one-- People say, "Oh, I don't want it to be a nuclear waste dump." 21:28 You know, in the United States, for instance, you know, we've had this whole debate going back for years over the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada, which was kind of chosen as a repository for US nuclear fuel, 21:40 and then got tied up a lot in politics, and nothing's ever been sent there. Uh, so what's happened is the, the fuel, the spent fuel is basically being kept on site at reactor sites, 21:55 uh, which costs money, but also doesn't give you a final solution, uh, to the problem. You can hold it there for quite a number of years, uh, but it, it's a, it's a challenge and, and it certainly 22:08 is one of the, one of the additional complications that anyone who's considering, uh, nuclear power plants, uh, has to think about. 22:15 Despite these drawbacks, a handful of countries are still investing heavily in nuclear power. About seventy reactors are currently under construction worldwide according to the International Energy Agency. 22:28 And the list of countries looking to preserve or increase their nuclear potential is quite diverse, featuring the likes of France, Iran, India, and China. Some countries have historic reasons. 22:40 Um, I mean, the French made a decision in, in the nineteen seventies to invest heavily in nuclear power, uh, as a way, you know, at the time of the Arab oil embargoes and so on, as a way to provide, 22:53 uh, some energy security for their country and not make them so reliant on Middle East energy. 22:59 You've got in, in some of the developing countries like China especially, India to a certain extent, the need for, uh, energy is so vast, 23:08 uh, you know, looking at some of these developing countries trying to triple their electricity supply, that they're basically buying all forms of power, whether it's, you know, they may... 23:18 I mean, China's had vast increases in solar and wind and even, you know, coal and, and gas and so on. Uh, so nuclear is just one more, uh, form of electricity. 23:30 And especially when they start looking at issues like, uh, climate change, they do ha-- it does have the advantage of largely, uh, you know, being free of, uh, carbon emissions, uh, and providing, uh, you know, what's called base load power. 23:43 That is power that's, uh, available, uh, twenty-four hours a day. So it's, you know, different countries 23:52 have different reasons for their s- their mix of energy, and they have different attributes that they, you know, have to trade off. Some of these are environmental, 24:01 some of these are, uh, energy security, some of these are economic in terms of price, uh, and it kinda depends on what that individual country needs in terms of energy and what kind of attributes it wants. 24:14 So what is the future of nuclear power? That will depend largely on the alternatives, says Miles. You know, there's a number of factors that will determine where it's going. 24:26 You know, one of th- one of them is gonna be, you know, what are the price and availability of alternatives? 24:31 You know, as I said, one of the challenges for alternatives is been this question about twenty-four-hour generation. 24:39 Uh, and that, you know, they're never g-- The sun's not gonna shine twenty-four hours a day, and the wind's not gonna blow twenty-four hours a day. Uh, so that means can you have sufficient battery storage so 24:52 when those technologies are not operating, you can r- still use the electricity? uh, from the sun or from the wind, uh, to keep them operating. 25:03 Uh, another, uh, is gonna be what's the level of electricity demand in develo- developing countries? Uh, is it gonna increase as much as people think? Are our countries gonna get more efficient? 25:16 I would think on the whole, um, you know, there, the, the, if there are gonna be positive steps for nuclear power, it's gonna have to be in the developing countries because, uh, in developed countries, 25:34 I think the economics are very challenging, and I think it's gonna, it's, you know, if you look at a place like the United States, the industry's having real problems right now, um, because it's essentially a, a free market, 25:48 and they're losing out at auction to some other technologies. Now, that could change, uh, in developed countries if, if, uh, carbon pricing makes up for it. 25:57 I mean, that's sort of the great other hope for the nuclear industry. Um, although I would, you know, I think those hopes, 26:05 uh, certainly saw a setback when, uh, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States and, and talked about, 26:11 uh, you know, global warming being a hoax and, and, and efforts at the Paris Convention and so on not being kind of worth it. 26:18 You know, what other, you know, it depends sort of on a country-by-country level what other countries do on carbon pricing, but there's that, and then there's the question of whether the nuclear industry can use these kind of technologies, uh, like the s- the modular reactors or smaller reactors, 26:34 uh, to be able to penetrate, uh, developing countries which do have this need for electricity. It's certainly a challenging environment for nuclear power. It's not impossible, but I would... 26:45 The idea that there was a few years ago that there would be a nuclear renaissance, I think, is, uh, certainly been proven to be overly optimistic, uh, for the short and probably medium term. 26:56 Well, I guess we'll have to see in terms of the longer term, uh, how things evolve. [Instrumental music] Many thanks to Miles Pomper for joining us this week. 27:06 If you'd like to read more about the rise and fall of nuclear energy, you can find his briefing on worldpoliticsreview.com. 27:13 If you like what you hear on Trendlines, go ahead and subscribe to it in the podcast app of your choice. That will save you the trouble of downloading each new episode. 27:21 Trendlines is produced and edited by Peter Dury, who also conducts the report interviews. 27:26 You can follow him and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 27:35 Have a great weekend, and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines. [Instrumental music]
