Assessing the future of nuclear power

Nuclear power is here to stay for at least another 60 years, Valery Yazev, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Energy, Transport and Communications, told a video meeting held by the Russian News Agency on Thursday.

Despite doubts about the safety of nuclear power, gas and nuclear will continue as the mainstays of the world energy supply until the 2070s, said Yazev, who is also president of the Russian Natural Gas Society.

New technologies, such as solar and wind energy, require large spaces, which make them impractical for densely populated Asian countries, he added. And although people in Europe oppose nuclear energy, there is no mature technology that can replace it, he said.

As people commemorate the first anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Japan's Fukushima power plant, doubts about the future of nuclear remain unanswered.

In Japan, tens of thousands rallied near the damaged plant, demanding an end to nuclear power.

In Australia, hundreds of anti-nuclear demonstrators converged on the headquarters of global mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, calling for an end to uranium mining in Australia, which supplied Fukushima, according to Agence France-Presse.

Demonstrators in France's Rhone valley, where Europe's highest concentration of nuclear reactors is located, formed a human chain that organizers said stretched for 230 kilometers and consisted of about 60,000 people, AFP said.

Similar protests were held in Germany, Britain, Switzerland, and Belgium.

However, considering employment and the need to reduce carbon emissions, the case against nuclear is far from clear.

"We're worried about nuclear energy, but at the same time we're worried about losing it," said one resident of Mihama, Fukui Prefecture in Japan, which is located one kilometer from Kansai Electric Power Co's Mihama nuclear plant, according to The Mainichi Daily News.

"Mihama's farms earn very little income, and about 30 percent of farming family members work at the plants. So we hope very much that the reactors will go back online."

Despite the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, US president Barack Obama last month announced $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees for the first new US nuclear power plant to be built since the early 1980s.

Last year, Poland decided to build the country's first nuclear power plant to lower its high reliance on polluting coal for nearly all its energy needs.

"The trend of nuclear power revival is irreversible", said Yazerv. There is no technical barrier to renewing nuclear energy generation in Japan, he said, but it will take time for the Japanese people to accept nuclear energy again.

More attention must be paid to measures to ensure the safety of nuclear power plants, he added. Russian nuclear power plants have redundant electrical systems to make sure the cooling systems work, he said; engineers are now trying to make the containment shell of the plants strong enough to withstand a terrorists attack.