World scientific
community has acknowledged that nuclear energy is a mitigating one in
the context of climate change threat, but to make it sustainable,
completing the nuclear fuel cycle is a must, a top scientist has said.
"By closing the nuclear fuel cycle with plutonium, the same amount of
uranium can produce 50 times more power and if we close the cycle with
thorium, it is much more," Principal Scientific Advisor to the
Government of India, R Chidambaram has said.
He was delivering a lecture on 'Nuclear Energy: Energy Security &
Climate Change' at the University of Mumbai yesterday.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also endorsed
in an official report entitled, 'Mitigation of Climate Change', that
nuclear energy's status is one of a range of "commercially available
climate change mitigating technologies" that contribute to the fight
against global warming.
The report shows how nuclear energy, as a non-CO2 emitting energy
source plays a key role in bringing down the effects of climate
change. It also says advanced Generation III and Generation IV nuclear
reactors provide long-term technological solutions.
"However, closing the fuel cycle has to be emphasised for a
sustainable mitigation of climate change threats and global warming,"
Chidambaram said.
