SOONER OR LATER THE PENNY WILL DROP – NUCLEAR IS CHEAPEST
The Times tells us that 59 per cent of the population think it would be
irresponsible to build more nuclear power stations while problems
remain in disposing of nuclear waste. Its Populus poll early in the
month found half the people think nuclear is unsafe and 79 per cent
back renewables to replace imported energy. Only 18 per cent believe
nuclear should replace imports.
This snapshot of public opinion is useful only as an index of
ignorance. Would half the population think nuclear unsafe if they were
told that there has not been a single death in the UK from a radiation
accident in 50 years of nuclear generation? A few days after the poll
123 coal miners were missing in a flooded Chinese pit. Would 59 per
cent turn their noses up at nuclear if they knew that only the
Government stands in the way of a “solution” to the longer-term storage
of nuclear waste.
Would 79 per cent have faith in renewables to replace energy imports if
they knew how marginal they are and will remain? And what do you think
the average Briton would say if he discovered that nuclear power is the
only way to secure our electricity supplies at competitive cost? Which
side do you think he would come down on if he found it was nuclear v
expensive blackouts?
Like computer projections of climate change, the value of polls depends
on their input – ie ask rubbishy questions, you get rubbishy answers.
They seldom ask the real questions presumably because those
commissioning them either don’t know what they are or don’t want to air
them.
But with oil at a record $66 a barrel, as we write, and the price of
gas far from decoupled from that of oil, one question screams out to be
asked in future polls on nuclear power: would you wish to continuing
paying through the nose for electricity if you discovered that nuclear
is the cheapest, cleanest, safest and most secure source of power?
CHEAPEST…CLEANEST…SAFEST – and BEST SECURES THE NATIONAL INTEREST
That’s nuclear power. If we confidently proclaim nuclear’s virtues, the
Government will soon have to explain why it is still sitting on its
hands after eight years.
TIMES SLAPS “POLITICAL DITHERING”
The Populus poll brought The Times off the fence in a big way on August
8. Its leader deplored Governmental silence, saying “the main reason
appears to be Labour’s extreme reluctance to say where it stands on
nuclear power”. After rehearsing many of SONE’s arguments, it added:
“In France, Japan, China and meticulously cautious Finland, debate has
been joined and the public convinced…But all the British public has to
go by is an unsatisfactorily ambiguous 2003 White Paper that, without
ruling out nuclear energy, led people to believe, mistakenly, that
energy saving combined with renewable energy could plug the yawning gap
between supply and demand. This greatly overstates their potential.
“Instead of being challenged, and funded, to surmount cost and waste
disposal problems, Britain’s nuclear industry is being left to wither.
This is against the national interest. And it does not, as our poll
shows, win politicians any credit with the public”.
PROSPECT UNION RESTIVE
Paul Noon, general secretary of the trade union, Prospect, which has
many members in the nuclear industry, has called for “action not
options” from the Government on energy policy. He told a seminar with
delegates from seven power companies, Government departments and the
nuclear industry that the London bombings had shown the importance of
security of supply. Britain needed a balanced energy policy, including
nuclear power.
For the autumn, Prospect is planning to support a joint nuclear seminar
with the TUC and CBI, a motion at the TUC Congress and written
submissions. It is encouraging to know that SONE is not the only one
putting the pressure on.
BARRING MISHAPS, NOT BEFORE 2009?
Whether this pressure will bring results is another matter. Buried away
in The Times’ article on the Populus poll was this paragraph: “No
decision [on nuclear’s expansion] is expected to be taken, or even
discussed, until a report on how to handle existing nuclear waste has
been completed”. It also quoted the DTI as saying: “No decision will be
taken without the fullest consultation. We realise the importance of
having public opinion on our side”.
If these two statements accurately represent the Government’s position,
it means that another Parliament could well go by without a clear-cut
decision on nuclear power – unless we have a severe winter and the
Government is panicked by power cuts or soaring prices.
After the flurry of speculation around the general election, the
Government’s mantra remains: “The nuclear option remains open”. But the
Government is doing nothing to explain the nuclear facts, still less
put nuclear power in perspective. It remains preoccupied with promoting
wind power and importing gas as gas prices rise towards wind’s
exorbitant cost. It has not yet appointed the much rumoured inquiry
into nuclear power by the retired Cabinet secretary, Sir Andrew
Turnbull, though internal DTI working parties on the nuclear option and
emissions reduction burrow away.
2006 the starting point
Professor Gordon McKerron, chairman of CORWM, has promised his already
somewhat devalued report on how, but not where, to dispose of long term
nuclear waste by July 2006. So, if The Times accurately sets out the
position, we cannot expect the action to start for well over another 12
months. Presumably, the Government will then be in a position to take
reports from its several active and canvassed reviews into account and
produce a White Paper as a basis for preparing public opinion.
Unfortunately, the Populus poll said that only one per cent of those
polled thought Ministers or MPs would speak the truth about nuclear
safety. So where does that leave us?
Well, if the Cabinet can disappear on holiday with London under siege
from terrorists, it is hardly likely to pick up the nuclear threads
until the late autumn of 2006. And, hey presto, we are then moving into
mid-term paralysis and conceivably a new Prime Minister. We appreciate
that Tony Blair has said there will be a nuclear decision in this
Parliament. But what if he is no longer in No 10?
We don’t expect miracles, only procrastination – that is, unless the
lights go out and chaos ensues. It’s the Dunkirk Syndrome. The British
never do anything until they have virtually lost it.
HYPERBOLE McKERRON-STYLE
You will recall that the Secretary recently wrote to Prof. McKerron
after he had said that there was enough radioactive waste lying around
“with no long term management strategy” to fill the Royal Albert Hall
five times over. We could not find enough intermediate and high-level
waste to fill even one Royal Albert Hall. His figure is 470,000 cubic
metres and our estimate is 74,500 cubic metres, of which the high level
waste would fit into a 30 metre cube.
Prof. McKennon has not himself condescended to reply and his minion in
the CORWM secretariat has not deigned to itemise the 470,000 cubic
metres, instead referring us to CORWM’s “Preliminary report on the
Inventory”. This is a classic bureaucratic cover-up tactic.
However, a table on page 27 showing the proportions by volume of each
type of material and higher activity waste in the form in which they
could be packaged runs to 473,207 cubic metres. It includes spent fuel,
uranium and plutonium and low level waste not at Drigg (Drigg is
excluded) as well as intermediate and high level waste.
Another table shows that 95% of the radioactivity comes from high level
waste and five per cent from intermediate which is much the more
voluminous. The low level waste – the most voluminous – thus accounts
for next to nothing – around 0.001 per cent of radioactivity.
But, according to the secretariat, all the figures given include not
only existing waste but that which “will continue to arise,
unavoidably, in the future – including from the decommissioning of
nuclear sites”. That future stretches over the next 100 years, again
according to the Secretariat. This explains how Prof. McKerron comes up
with 349,000 cubic metres of ILW, representing nearly three quarters of
his 470,000 total.
In other words, to exaggerate the sums, Prof. McKerron includes spent
fuel which could be reprocessed, uranium and plutonium fuel and 33,000
cubic metres of low level waste which his report admits could be halved
in volume by treatment for disposal at Drigg.
And then he adds in all the waste he expects to arise over the next 100 years knowing two things:
1 – his own committee is due within the year to propose a method, if not a site, for the longer term disposal of ILW and HLW;
2 – The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority was preparing a waste management strategy for early publication.
Naughty professor.
BIG QUESTION FOR THE NDA The NDA
consultative strategy duly appeared on August 11 and is suitably
single-minded about decommissioning and clean up. It pledges to
encourage the Government to reach an early decision on CORWM’s
recommendation for longer term disposal.
It says its draft strategy is largely dependent on the outcome of
Government reviews, including CORWM’s. “Any delay by the Government in
taking these decisions”, it adds, “would have significant implications
for accelerated decommissioning and ILW interim storage as well as
ability to achieve early site closure and reduce overall costs”.
One of its objectives is to accelerate the decommissioning timescales
for the 11 Magnox reactor sites - “and have them available for
alternative uses” - from 125 years to 25. But one of their unmentioned
alternative uses is to host a new generation of nuclear power stations.
How is this preoccupation with decommissioning and clean up to be
reconciled with the nation’s need for reliable, competitive and clean
electricity? Developing a national strategy for dealing with nuclear
waste is an important step forward.
This, combined with the decision the NDA seeks from the Government on a
long term store, would remove one argument against nuclear development
by the anti-nukes. But, given there is no insuperable scientific,
technological or engineering problem in the way of dealing with wastes,
the nation’s prime need is to secure its electricity supplies. The
current emphasis is entirely on decommissioning. We need to change it
to commissioning. And commissioning would help the NDA to fulfil its
pledge to have regard to the socio-economic consequences of its
programme.
Decommissioning, like coal mining, is an extractive industry that
exhausts itself. We need to be very clear before the consultation
process ends on November 11 whether decommissioning plans will be
allowed to get in the way of commissioning.
IS WESTINGHOUSE THE CLUE?
It is surely germane to ask whether commissioning is being taken
seriously when part of the Government’s dismantling of BNFL is the sale
of its profitable Westinghouse nuclear power station building arm just
when the international action is starting after a 20 year lull
following Chernobyl. Westinghouse’s AP-1000 reactor is licensed for use
in the USA and, as we revealed in the June Newsletter, President Bush
wants more nuclear power stations for “a cleaner, safer nation”.
Looking on the “bright” side, it could, of course, be that the
Government has decided to repatriate Westinghouse to America and
eventually throw in its lot with the Franco-German European reactor
(EPR) now being built in Finland. But whichever way you look at that,
it adds up to the deindustrialisation of Britain - and leading edge
industry in the bargain.
Electricite de France has announced it plans to build at least one EPR
a year starting in 2020 to replace its existing nuclear park. It has 58
commercial reactors. Consultation on the construction of a
demonstration EPR at Flamanville will start in October.
EVENTS, DEAR BOY, EVENTS…
The past month has conspired to provide plenty of news stories
supporting the clamour for nuclear action that this Newsletter
represents. No sooner had President Bush effectively switched the
emphasis of the G8 summit’s approach to climate change from uncosted
mandatory Kyoto limits to technology and adaptation than he staged a
Far East coup. He launched with Russia, Australia, China, India, Japan
and South Korea the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and
Climate to “try to find practical solutions rather than don
hairshirts”, as the Daily Telegraph put it. Professor Philip Stott, of
London, saw the new pact as part of the sidelining of Europe and the
rising power of the Pacific. “By 2020, Britain will represent less than
1.5% of world energy demand”, he wrote to the Daily Telegraph. “We are
increasingly irrelevant despite Mr Blair’s G8 bluster”.
Bush also finally persuaded Congress to pass a comprehensive energy
bill to reduce dependence on Middle East oil and to make it easier to
build new nuclear power plants. Two new nuclear plants are planned. The
industry will receive subsidies and low interest loans as well as
R&D grants.
Emissions rising
The Guardian forecast that UK CO2 emissions would rise this year for
the third year running and would reach their highest level since 1992.
It said they were expected to rise by more than 2% this year – in top
of last year’s 1.5% - because oil and coal burning have risen during
the first half of the year and a fall in nuclear output.
The Digest of UK Energy Statistics 2005 shows that last year indigenous
energy production fell by 8.5% while primary energy consumption rose by
one per cent. For the first time since 1992 the UK became a net
importer of fuel. Imports of coal were up 13% to provide 59% of
supplies. Electricity from renewable sources represented 3.6% of total
UK generation.
Oil price soaring
Meanwhile, the oil industry was in a tizz as prices soared to record
levels. It was prompted by fears of terrorist atrocities in Saudi
Arabia and alarm from the US Energy Information Administration of the
risk petrol shortages. Exxon-Mobil has also said that non-OPEC oil will
reach its peak in five years. And Chevron, the second largest US energy
group, asserts that the era of easy oil is over. Its spokesman said:
“We call upon scientists and educators, politicians and policymakers,
environmentalists, leaders of industry and each one of you to be part
of reshaping the next era of energy. Inaction is not an option”.
Is the British Government listening? As the union, Prospect, said: “We want action, not options.”
IS THIS PROGRESS?
The House of Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee is launching an
inquiry into options for investment in future UK electricity capacity,
including nuclear and renewables. The title of its study is “Keeping
the lights on: nuclear, renewables and climate change”. We are told it
will focus on the investment required, relative costs of different
technologies and the contributions they can make.
The committee lists as its “top achievement” encouraging greater
consideration of environmental issues at Ministerial level. That is not
necessarily an asset in nuclear terms but the logic of the nuclear case
should make the inquiry helpful, provided the Government does not use
it as an excuse for further delay.
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Please note that SONE’s annual general meeting is to be held at the
Royal Academy of Engineering in Great Peter Street, London SW1, on
Wednesday, October 26, 2005 from 12 noon to 3pm, with a buffet lunch.
We are indebted to British Energy for their hospitality.
The speaker for the last hour of the meeting from 2pm will be Professor
Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, director of UKAEA, Culham, who will brief us
on the great hope for the future – nuclear fusion. The big question,
especially in the light of the siting of the new international fusion
project in France, is whether fusion is still 30 years away from
commercial reality.
All those wishing to attend please let the Secretary know by e-mail
, fax 020-8668- 4357; or phone (from September 4) 020-8660- 8970.
