THE ENERGY WHITE PAPER EDITION – SONE GOES CRITICAL
It is difficult to judge the impact of the Government’s Energy White
Paper (EWP) on public opinion because its publication was overshadowed
by the approach of war with Iraq. Our guess is that the average person
has picked up no more than that the Government has decided to boost
“renewables” and put nuclear on the shelf. Our problem is that the
average person probably thinks this is sensibly green.
The
EWP has clarified several other matters. First, the Government’s policy
bears a close resemblance to the case argued around the chairman’s
lunch table by Friends of the Earth. The Government evidently prefers
to accommodate a militant “Green” minority rather than ensure Britain’s
electricity supplies. Second, the media remain largely prejudiced
against nuclear power and disinclined to debate the issue.
Third, the determination by the “Greens” to see off nuclear is now
explicit. Bryony Worthington, energy campaigner for the FoE, heard
nuclear’s “death knell” in the EWP. Stephen Tindale, director of
Greenpeace UK, said he clearly saw nuclear as an “industry of the
past”. We should heed these words and take our gloves off. No quarter
should be given to militant “Greens” who reject the one sure way of
reconciling modern man’s need for reliable and continuous electricity
with a cleaner environment. They are a threat to the global future, as
Professor Sir Frederick Holliday, a SONE patron, has suggested.
Fourth, by once again putting nuclear on the shelf, it will now be 2015
at the earliest before we can have a new nuclear power station in
operation in the UK. The Royal Society not only advised the Government
of this but also of the consequences. By 2015 half the existing nuclear
capacity will have closed, thereby eliminating at least 10% of existing
electricity supplies, not counting that disappearing with the closure
of ageing coal-fired power stations. With wind currently accounting for
only about 0.3% of electricity supplies, an electricity shortage is
looming unless we become every more dangerously dependent on half-clean
gas supplies.
Those SONE members who argue that emotion will get us far further than
facts will rejoice in this. We can now legitimately frighten the nation
about the approaching electricity gap. We can also legitimately tar
“Greens”, in their hostility to nuclear, as enemies of the people,
their comfort, convenience, jobs and lifestyle. And we can portray them
as wreckers of the environment. Their hostility to nuclear and their
besottedness with renewables can only mean further pollution of the
planet and immense damage to the countryside.
We have our cause. We have our message. But does the nuclear industry
have the stomach for a fight to prepare for the crash nuclear programme
which is now on the cards circa 2006 or, more likely, 2010? That is the
question.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SONE’S RESPONSE
As expected, the contents of the EWP were selectively leaked to mostly
brainwashed environment correspondents well in advance of publication.
So, your Secretary issued SONE’s condemnation of a “dangerously
irrelevant” EWP in advance, too. He also issued successive statements
as publication unfolded to keep our critical view of it before
journalists and the public. The statement in advance of publication was
instrumental in securing interviews for the Secretary on Radio 5 Live
and BBC Radio Wales and some other local radio stations. It may also
have helped to get a hearing on other broadcast outlets for other
members. All the statements in total served only to win a few press
lines about SONE’s dismissive view of the EWP. If the publication
confirmed anything, it is that the national media are disinclined to
give the nuclear case much of a hearing.
Success nationally
The correspondence columns of national newspapers have not opened
themselves up to much argument on the EWP. Our members have found it
virtually impossible to get their letters printed. Professor Jack
Simmons, Emeritus Professor of Radiation Biophysics at the University
of Westminster and a member of SONE’s committee, did however appear in
the
Financial Times.
He wrote: “It saddens me, as a scientist, that crucial questions such
as future energy supplies should have been resolved not on scientific
grounds but purely on irrational, emotional ones. In particular, it
dismays me that the only safe, reliable and ‘greenhouse-gas-free’
method of generating electricity – nuclear power plants – should be in
danger of being phased out completely. “The contrast between the
statement of a year ago ‘The option of new investment in nuclear power
needs to be kept, and practical measures taken to ensure this’ and the
comment in the EWP ‘Its current economics make it an unnattractive
option for new carbon-free generating capacity’ creates the impression
that any pretence of logical thinking has been totalled abandoned. “No
energy policy can be credible in a world beset by global warming and
steep increases in oil and gas prices without a substantial
greenhouse-gas-free nuclear contribution to electricity supplies. The
proposal that ‘renewables’ can fill the gap has on numerous occasions
been shown to be totally fallacious”.
Success in Scotland
Steuart Campbell (Edinburgh) got the lead letter in the Scotsman. He
wrote: “Faced with a divided Cabinet and a confused public, it was
inevitable that the EWP would be a fudge. What a pity that the Prime
Minister’s attention was elsewhere that he could not knock heads
together. In an attempt to please everyone, the result is one which
pleases no one. The Greens get no targets for renewable energy, the
nuclear industry gets an unsatisfactory amber light and the public will
get less reliable electricity at greater cost... “Without substantial
change in the USA and other large industrialised countries, we are all
doomed to the effects of global warming. It would be sad if we ruin our
landscape with renewable energy schemes, jeopardise energy supplies by
relying on imported gas and run short of electricity all to no effect.
What price an energy policy then?”
Success in Oxford
John Sandalls (Oxford) got his disappointment over the EWP into the
Oxford Mail. He made the point that nuclear is the safest, potentially
the cheapest, is not going to run out, is available in limitless supply
and from politically stable countries and is by far the cleanest source
of electricity. He added: “As an environmental scientist my main
concern is the anti-nuclear policy of the media and the Government. I
was pleased to hear Patricia Hewitt [Industry Secretary] expressing her
views on energy. I can now appreciate how poorly informed some of our
decision makers are”.
Success in Whitehaven
Roy Sumerling (Seascale) got a substantial letter into the
Whitehaven News
explaining that plans to cut 60% of greenhouse gas output by 2050 will
only be effective if the rest of the world is similarly committed.
Nuclear power could help to save our civilisation from climate changes
and energy shortages.
Success in the Church
Derek Smith (Wilmslow), in a letter to the
Church Times,
has taken to task a reader for welcoming the EWP when it relies heavily
on unproven renewable sources of energy, on optimistic expectations of
improvements in energy efficiency and dangerously contemplates
importing more and more energy in the form of natural gas from
politically volatile states. “In truth”, he adds, “the Government has
run away from the issue of securing reliable and continuous supplies of
electricity”.
Hoping
Derek Limbert (Beaconsfield) is hoping EMAP’s construction press will
publish his “go” at EWP. He contrasts the EWP statement that the
construction of 1,250MW of renewables is required every year until 2010
and beyond with the existing 500MW. “How”, he adds, “can a responsible
Government publish such drivel? Much simpler, more reliable, more
economic and more environmentally friendly to replace our nuclear power
stations (10 of 1,000MW each) before we have to invest in woolly
jumpers and candles and descend to third world status.”
Ignored
Others were ignored. Your Secretary wrote to the
Independent on Sunday
pointing out they deserved not to be able to publish for want of
electricity for naively backing unreliable wind. Dr P D Wilson
(Seascale) complained to the
Daily Telegraph
of a “mouse of an EWP...a cow’rin, tim’rous beastie that tip toes round
the vital issues of secure supply and environmental degradation with
only a dismissive glance at the one fully established way of making a
substantial impact on both...
“How long are we to be baulked by the prejudices of the so-called
environmentalists whose attachment to anti-nuclear causes has evidently
outweighed more realistic fears of global warming...That nuclear power
appears uneconomic is partly the Government’s own doing and a first,
simple and obvious step would be to exempt it from the climate change
levy that penalises it in defiance of all logic. How about some
leadership that our Prime Minister claims to show?”
In another letter to the
Daily Telegraph,
David Evans (Holmrook, Cumbria) tackled the leadership head on. He
found it “hard to understand how a Prime Minister with the courage to
do the right thing with Iraq in the face of considerable opposition can
give in so readily to Greenpeace and the environmental lobby in the
formulation of energy policy”.
Donald Avery (Peterborough) wrote to
The Times
complaining that on radio Patricia Hewitt “appeared to accept that an
electricity supply shortage is looming with the retirement of older
power stations. But then to describe a series of aspirations as a
policy is to follow Mr Micawber. To allow the 20% nuclear component to
wither away whilst increasing reliance on necessarily intermittent wind
energy and hoping for something better to turn up is simply folly.To
ensure electricity supplies and to care for the environment requires
not aspirations but decisions – and decisions now”.
Thanks
We are also indebted to Graham Brightman (St Bees, Cumbria) and E O
Maxwell (Bramhall, Cheshire) for issuing statements on the EWP. Mr
Brightman said that if this was to be our energy future then all our
grandchildren’s prospects are dire indeed. The Government had clearly
been listening to extremely bad advice. Mr Maxwell said the EWP was but
“a pipe dream” (on renewables) and “playing with big toys” (wind
turbines). “To me”, he added, “it seems absolutely incredible that so
called intelligent people are so dumb concerning the use of nuclear
energy”.
SINGEING THEIR BEARDS
While all this media effort was going on, the Secretary spoke for SONE
at three events: the Electricity Association’s annual dinner (March 5),
a QMW Public Policy Seminars event on the EWP (March 20) and with Alan
Shaw, an Aylsham, Norfolk, member, at the ICE’s East Anglia debate on
renewable energy at Ipswich on March 28.
The Electrical Association speech was in the presence of the Minister
for Energy, Brian Wilson whom the Secretary pointedly absolved from any
blame for the EWP. At the QMW seminar (into whose programme the
Secretary forced himself), he was the only one of eight speakers in
favour of nuclear and severely critical of the EWP.
The burden of his case was that the EWP was dangerously irrelevant to
Britain’s needs. To go for an “all gas and wind” strategy was
irresponsible. It was madness to rely heavily on imported gas, largely
undeveloped, unavailable, unproven or unreliable renewable technologies
and the pipe dream of energy conservation. Indeed, he argued that
anyone who did that was unfit to be in charge of the world’s fourth
largest economy. The Government was running unacceptable risks with
people’s livelihoods, jobs and lifestyles.
At the QMW seminar the DTI official in charge of energy policy claimed
that the EWP was grounded in “solid evidence and analysis” after
extensive consultation. This scarcely holds water when it has
cavalierly ignored the evidence or advice of the Royal Society, the
Royal Academy of Engineering and the Government’s very own Chief
Scientist.
BLOWING IN THE WIND
While nuclear is dismissed or ignored, wind power has come in for a
bashing. The West Country seems to be up in arms about it and the
Daily Telegraph
and the
Sunday Telegraph
have reported several attacks upon it.
For example, the
Daily Telegraph
says 40 action groups have sprung up to combat noise and visual
pollution; Swansea fishermen are furious because a wind farm will
prevent fishing over 2,500 acres of Scarweather Sands; work on the
first offshore wind farm at Scroby Sands, Norfolk, has stalled because
Powergen and the Abbott Group have failed to agree a price; and
Torridge district council has turned down three applications for wind
farm sites in Devon on visual and noise grounds.
The Western Morning News, reporting on the “raging” argument in
the West Country over wind power and growing fears of bigger and more
powerful turbines, linked it with the countryside revolt against the
Government. It said “They [the people] know, through bitter experience,
that Ministers are perfectly capable of sacrificing the countryside
once again, this time in order to meet targets on renewable energy and
provide power for Britain’s towns and cities”.
ALL PARLIAMENTARY GROUP
Keith Parker (BNIF), a member of SONE’s committee, reports that 17
Parliamentarians attended the inaugural meeting of the All-Party
Parliamentary Group on Nuclear Energy in the Commons on February 27.
Another 50 who were unable to attend pledged their support and
interest. The meeting heard presentations on the nuclear industry’s
response to the EWP from two SONE members, Robert Armour (BE), a member
of SONE’s committee, and Adrian Ham, chief executive of BNIF.
Officers elected were: chairman: Bill Tynan MP for Hamilton South;
vice-chairmen: Lord Christopher, Lord Jenkin (a SONE member) and Lord
McNally; secretary: David Drew MP for Stroud; and treasurer: Jimmy Hood
MP for Clydesdale.
The purpose of the group is to encourage discussion among MPs and peers
from across the political spectrum with an interest in nuclear issues
and to provide a forum for the exchange of information and views
between Parliamentarians and representatives of the nuclear and energy
industries.
I DO NOT BELIEVE IT.......
We have just read an EU-wide survey to find out what the public thinks
about energy. The results are calculated to make Victor Meldrews of us
all. For example, a majority of Europeans think nuclear power
contributes significantly to global warming and climate change. Ye
gods! In fact, nuclear power avoids the production in Europe of some
500m tonnes of CO2.
RENDER UNTO CAESAR
John Button, a Maidenhead member, reports potential progress on meeting
the Greens’ objections to nuclear power technologies – the
proliferation risks associated with uranium-235 and nuclear waste. He
says the Centre for Advanced Energy Concepts at the University of
Maryland has come up with a solution called CAESAR – the clean and
environmentally safe advanced reactor.
It uses steam to regulate the speed at which neutrons flow in the
reactor and should be able to achieve a self-sustaining reaction using
only uranium-238. Initial experiments and computer simulations are
looking good. The problem is finance. More information:
www.caesar.umd.edu
WE THANK YOU
So far the chairman’s appeal for funds has resulted in a response from
33 members and realised £1,975. The committee is very grateful. The
money will be extremely useful in rising to the challenge left by the
EWP. We shall try to use your money effectively.
Lewis Myrddin Davies
We regret to announce the tragic death on March 11 of Lewis Myrddin
Davies, a life member in Oxford, who had a long association with the
electricity supply industry and worked closely with the late Lord
Marshall. Mr Myrddin Davies was struck and killed by a car while
walking back with colleagues to his hotel in Warrington where he was
attending a conference.
Conference
Terry Jackson, a Bangor, NI, member, and chairman of the Institute of
Physics’ energy management group, is organising a conference on nuclear
power in London on May 27. Dr Richard Mayson (BNFL) and Bernard Barre
(COGEMA) will speak on new build and waste management. Inquiries to Mr
Jackson on 02891-457538 or e-mail:
