SUNS  4355 Tuesday 19 January 1999

Washington, Jan 13 (IPS/Danielle Knight) -- Harnessing energy from wind turbines is much cheaper and safer than using nuclear plants to generate power, says a new study in which the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research advocates a switch to wind.

"Recent advances in technology, such as larger, more reliable turbines and offshore wind power platforms, have made electricity from wind far more economical in the near-term and much more promising in the long-term than plutonium," says Marc Fioravanti, a consultant engineer with the Maryland-based institute.

As industrialised nations seek to reduce their emission of the heat-trapping greenhouse gases caused by the burning of fossil fuels like gas, coal and oil, the nuclear industry has been trying anxiously to paint nuclear power plants as a clean way to produce electricity.

Environmentalists have pointed out the potential environmental and health dangers of storing radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, and instead have advocated the development of wind and solar power. But these alternative energy sources have often been dismissed as too
expensive to be viable on a large scale.

However, by analysing wind power costs and comparing them with the costs for similar quantities of energy produced in plutonium-  fuelled nuclear reactors, the new study demonstrates how recent
technological advances, including offshore wind power generation, enable wind to replace plutonium at a lower cost.

"It is time to leave plutonium behind in the century in which it was created and stop throwing good money after the enormous amount of public resources that have already been wasted on it," says Arjun Makhijani, president of the institute.

Using Japan as a case study, the institute shows how even a nation with one of the most ambitious nuclear energy programmes in the world could save money by switching to wind power given developments in offshore wind technology.

Investing in wind would be cheaper than the light water reactors Japan plans to install starting this year, and which use a mixture of plutonium dioxide and uranium dioxide, known as MOX fuel. This type of fuel is more expensive than the uranium fuel generally used in Japan's nuclear power plants.

The justification for the higher costs is that MOX use will help develop technologies for breeder reactors, which are key to Japan's long-term energy strategy. Japan plans to use MOX in two reactors in 1999 and 16 to 18 reactors in the year 2010.

The report says that a little more than 12,000 megawatts (mw) of wind capacity installed over the next 10 years could generate as much electricity as Japanese power companies expect to obtain by using MOX fuel. Replacing this nuclear fuel with wind electricity could save Japan anywhere between hundreds of millions and two billion dollars, says the report.

The breeder nuclear reactors Japan and other countries expect to use as part of their long-term nuclear energy plans cost billions of dollars. The estimated cost of electricity from such reactors is about 11 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to the study. In comparison, offshore wind energy costs are projected to be less than six cents per kilowatt-hour.

The study also points out the downward trend of costs for wind energy as the technology improves, while no such trend exists for breeder reactor technology.

"Japan has spent huge sums of money on developing plutonium as an energy source - 11 billion dollars on the reprocessing plant in Rokassho alone," says Makhijani. "But development of wind power is far better economically, environmentally, and for promoting non-proliferation of nuclear weapons."

While Japan does not have significant plans to develop its wind resources, wind power is growing at record rates at the global level, according to the study.

In 1998, the world added 2,100 mw of new wind energy generating capacity. This increased total world capacity by more than 25 % compared to 1997 - which makes wind the world's fastest growing energy source.

The 1998 boom in wind energy was led by Germany, which added 800 mw, pushing its wind energy capacity to more than 2,800 mw, according to Chris Flavin, senior vice president of the Washington- based Worldwatch Institute.

Similar strides were made in Denmark, eight percent of whose annual electricity needs are now met by wind power. The Danish government recently announced plans to have wind energy supply a quarter of the country's demand by the year 2030, as part of a programme to halve carbon dioxide emissions in 1988-2030.

Spain has also emerged as a major player, adding 395 mw of wind power in 1998, which pushed the country's overall capacity up 86 percent to 850 megawatts.

However, renewable energy sources including the wind have received a far smaller share of public resources for technology development than nuclear power. Misguided government policies that favour fossil fuels and nuclear energy are the main obstacles to the further growth of wind power, says the report.

Most government incentives to develop wind power have been short-sighted, adds the report. Many countries have focused only on tax credits for initial investments in wind power which in turn has not
provided long-term support for the renewable energy resource.

Instead, the report recommends a system whereby, each year, public authorities or utilities would purchase a set amount of wind power capacity in given areas. Private parties could then bid on access to these sites to supply electricity at prices set in advance. Such bids would require guaranteed performance over a specified period of time, in return for long-term contracts.

"The competitive bidding process would encourage private investment in research and development and produce better performance at lower costs," says Makhijani.