VIENNA, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- All green power sources are part of the solution to the global climate change, said Alexey Likhachev, head of the Russian delegation to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s 61th General Conference held here on Sept. 18-22.
"Solar, wind, water, and nuclear power complement and reinforce each other to form this green square to become a base of the world's future carbon-free balance", Likhachev, also Director General of Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
The energy poverty and global inequality in terms of access to electricity, as well as a threat of irreversible damage to the ecosystem at the global scale, posed two "strategic challenges" that were badly-needed to be addressed, he said.
"These two challenges can only be handled through growth and simultaneous change in the world's electricity generation balance", he said, reiterating Russia's willingness to share its affluent experiences in nuclear power sector with other countries.
At the IAEA Ministerial Conference held in St. Petersburg in 2013, Russia stated that nuclear power was a proven and tested, clean, safe, and financially appealing technology for many countries.
Now Russia plans to "make another step forward and shift from the understanding of the public acceptance of nuclear power to making it demanded in the community", he added.
Likhachev expressed Russia's eagerness to support the efforts by IAEA on toughening requirements regarding nuclear safety with the country's competencies and resources.
"We must assure the public, governments, scientific and expert communities that nuclear power is clean, safe, and financially appealing", he said, adding that "Russia regularly makes efforts to raise the public acceptance of nuclear power in the countries where we build nuclear facilities".
The global nuclear industry can and must leverage on its inherent potential of technology leadership and become one of key participants of the 4th Industrial Revolution, according to Likhachev.
"If the entire power of operated Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs), which is 392 Gigawatts(GW), were supplied from coal and gas sources, additional annual air emissions would amount to about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide", he said.
"Forests on earth annually absorb 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide, it means that roughly speaking, the nuclear power generation is comparable to the "environmental capacity" of all forests on our planet", Likhachev said, referring to the alleviation of the mounting pressures on environment.
"That highlights a large current contribution of nuclear companies to the global environment", he said.
According to the forecasts of IAEA, the aggregate share of "clean" generation in the global balance must exceed 80 percent by 2050.
In this sense, the installed NPPs capacity must therefore increase to 930 Gigawatts, Likhachev said, adding that more than 20 Gigawatts of new nuclear generation power have to be annually introduced as soon as in the coming decade, in considering the replacement of decommissioned NPPs energy units.
"We must minimize a hydrocarbon share, it is our commitment to our descendants", Likhachev said, indicating his belief that nuclear power bears promising prospect and immense potential.
In the light of some countries like Germany that announced to shut all of its nuclear power plants by 2022 in the wake of the Fukushima crisis in Japan, Likhachev said Russia respects the choice of each country whether it wants to develop nuclear power or not, while it is important to make sure this choice is "based on science and not on morbid fear".
