Corrigé du CB Mars 2023 Nulcear Power

 

                                            The revival of nuclear power

 

       As climate deadlines loom, governments are struggling to find clean, reliable sources of energy to meet growing needs. Could nuclear power be their silver bullet ? The question is raised in the dossier composed of an article from The Independent, published in October 2021, two opinion pieces from the The Guardian and the Conversation dated August and June 2021- and a cartoon by Martin Ferran for the 10th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster. Nuclear power is making a comeback. For some, it is the best solution to curb climate change, but for others, it remains a technology that could cause more harm than good.

 

         Ten years after Fukushima, governments are realising they need nuclear energy to achieve a net-zero world by 2050. Countries like Germany phasing out for health and safety reasons are struggling without it. To meet their transitional electricty needs, they have had to reopen coal plants, sending carbon emissions soaring according to document 2. Meanwhile, other countries are going nuclear. After announcing the end of ICE cars by 2030, Britain plans a complete switch to renewable energy by 2035, with fossil energy gradually replaced by wind, solar and nuclear as explained in document 1.

            

                Nuclear power has many advantages, when it comes to facing the climate challenge. As indicated in document 2, its output does not vary with the elements - unlike solar and wind energy. It can make a country like the UK mentioned in document 1 independent from foreign oil and gas and their fluctuating prices. The Guardian columnist claims that past fears are unjustified.  The cold war is over, disasters like Chernobyl could not happen now, technologically speaking. The amount of nuclear waste has plummeted through recycling, while nuclear production generates no more destructive mining or more polluting waste than renewables do according to document 2. In sharp contrast, the three-eyed or two-legged Fukushima fish from the cartoon paint a different picture.

 

          Indeed, nuclear enthusiasts fail to convince environmentalists who are still wary of the technology. They deplore its reliance on costly large-scale reactors when the future lies in flexible, decentralised storage solutions described in document 1. Besides, they raise the alarm  about new safety climate-related issues. With sea rising and more extreme weather, many plants are at risk of serious incidents, and likely to be closed temporarily or permanently to prevent disasters that could affect millions of people as outlined in document3. As shown in the cartoon, nobody knows the long-term consequences of a nuclear disaster on ecosystems.

 

             According to the dossier there is no magical solution to climate change as so-called clean energy sources pose numerous challenges.