PARIS, Aug. 13 (UPI) -- Europe's searing heat wave has relaunched a debate over the wisdom of using nuclear power on the continent, especially in France, Western Europe's largest supplier and exporter of nuclear-generated electricity.
Of immediate issue are recent decisions by the French and German governments to temporarily relax temperature rules for discharged water by nuclear power plants into rivers, lakes and oceans. The move is aimed to guarantee stable energy supplies, as the continent bakes in a drought and heat wave of near historic proportions.
But environmentalists have sharply criticized the emergency measures, arguing the warmer water risks killing local fish and plant life, and further undermining an already drought-stressed ecology.
Underlying the summer furor are larger questions about the safety and viability of nuclear power -- at a time when Europe is looking to both meet its future energy needs, and its Kyoto protocol commitments to drastically slash carbon dioxide emissions by roughly 5 percent from 1990s' levels by 2012.
Nuclear power offers among the few, tested large-scale options for delivery greenhouse-gas-free energy. But concerns about possible accidents and the disposal of radioactive waste -- not to mention new fears of nuclear terrorism -- have fostered deep public hostility to nuclear power, and prompted many European countries to seek energy alternatives.
Worldwide, the growth of nuclear power plummeted from 700 percent in the 1970s, to less than 5 percent in the 1990s, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
But not in France. Today, the country's 58 nuclear plants generate more than three-quarters of domestic electricity consumption -- compared to only 20 percent in the United States, and 29 percent in Germany, Europe's other powerhouse.
"I think it's almost impossible to see a reduction of nuclear in the very short term in France," said Peter Wilmer, a nuclear safety expert at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Not only would France pay heavily by cutting its nuclear output, Wilmer believes, but it has few, clean energy alternatives. Indeed, nuclear power is expected to figure prominently in new government legislation outlining France's long-term energy policy, slated for parliamentary debate this fall.
The official defense of nuclear energy also extended to the current flap over the warmer discharge water. Members of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's conservative government argue nuclear safety standards have not slipped, and accuse leftist opponents of making political hay from the sizzling weather.
In a radio interview this week, Francois Roussely, who heads France's electric company, also vowed to apply the relaxed temperature rules sparingly. Already, production at one Paris-area power plant had been temporarily halted, he said, "because its working conditions didn't meet environmental standards."
But critics of nuclear power argue the overheated waste water is only the latest example of the downsides of nuclear power. If global warming is indeed happening -- as many scientists suggest -- France's nuclear plants will be ill-equipped for similar climatic catastrophes in the future, they say.
"The government had a choice to make a gesture for the environment or for nuclear power plants," said Frederic Marillier, a nuclear expert for Greenpeace France. "It chose to protect nuclear plants."
France's nuclear program began in 1943. But it took a pair of Middle East-generated oil crises in the 1970s to fuel a national drive toward energy independence. With no oil and gas reserves of its own -- and renewable energy a still nascent and pricey experiment -- nuclear power seemed an obvious fallback.
Today, French electricity is among the cheapest in Europe, and the nuclear-generated surplus is exported to neighboring countries. Despite widespread criticism that nuclear power is costly and uncompetitive, a recent OECD study suggests that under limited conditions nuclear costs are competitive in five out of 19 member countries. Nuclear companies are aggressively searching for more cost-saving measures, Wilmer said.
That hasn't stopped some prominent experts from suggesting nuclear energy is heading for extinction. "Nuclear energy has no realistic future," wrote Hubert Reeves, a prominent French scientist, in an opinion piece in France's Le Monde newspaper. Nuclear's negatives, he argues -- its expense, its radioactive waste, its ravenous consumption of finite supplies of natural uranium -- are offset by major positives offered by renewable energy.
Many European governments appear to be drawing similar conclusions. Austria and Germany stopped constructing nuclear plants more than a decade ago, and Germany's leftist government is now phasing out the last of its reactors.
Spain has an ongoing moratorium against building new power plants. Last year, Belgium passed a law to become nuclear free. Earlier this year, too, Britain's Labor government published a report setting a national goal to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent over the next 50 years -- and suggesting renewable energy as a key alternative.
"They have not closed the nuclear option," the OECD's Wilmer said of the British government, but it is not currently a serious consideration.
Ordinary French, too, are far from enthusiastic about their country's nuclear program. A 1998 poll found only 7 percent of French citizens thought nuclear power should be a top energy priority, compared to more than 60 percent backing alternative energy. Indeed, a government-commissioned poll last year found 67 percent of French people believed -- wrongly -- that nuclear energy triggered climate change.
"We believe we can both fulfill the Kyoto protocol targets and get out of nuclear energy," said Marillier of Greenpeace. "Both are threats to important to ignore."
But whether wind, solar or other renewable energies can meet all of Europe's energy needs remains uncertain. Solar energy is not a large-scale option for much of northern Europe. Wind energy could be available only about a third of the time on the continent, the OECD's Wilmer said. Harnessing hydrogen remains a distant goal.
But besides France, only Finland, which is building a new nuclear plant, appears seriously committed to a nuclear future in Western Europe. Indeed, the nuclear vs. renewable debate has divided European Union members, who haggled over whether to consider nuclear power a "clean" alternative energy during the Kyoto talks.
Today, the European Commission wants members to power 12 percent of their energy from renewables by 2010. But abandoning nuclear energy entirely, European energy commissioner Loyola de Palacio argued last year, "means we will not be able to respect Kyoto. ... It's as simple as that."
For its part, the French government argues its nuclear plants have cut 700 tons of carbon dioxide emissions that might otherwise have been generated using fossil fuels.
"Phasing out nuclear in France would make Kyoto targets impossible to reach," agreed Wilmer, of the OECD. "It wouldn't be able to meet its energy requirements with renewables. So it would have to burn coal or gas -- from somewhere."
