THE PRESS, IF NOT THE GOVERNMENT, GETS THE MESSAGE
It would be progress to be able to report that the Government’s mind
has been concentrated wonderfully by the blackout in North Eastern
America, the difficulties experienced on the Continent with electricity
supplies because of the sustained heatwave and drought and a new
disruptive power cut in London . But there is no evidence that it has
got the wind up about the security of our electricity supplies.
Instead, it remains (ironically) besotted with the green tokenism of
wind power and has announced plans for a vast expansion offshore.
It
is true that whatever caused 50m people suddenly to find themselves
without power from New York to Toledo, Ohio, and over the Canadian
border into Ontario, seems to have had more to do with an inadequate
grid than a shortage of generating capacity. Again, on the Continent –
and especially in nuclear France – the supply problems had far more to
do with the consequences of extreme weather than a dearth of
generators. We don’t yet know what paralysed London.
But the press have increasingly begun to warn of the risks the
Government is running with its Energy White Paper approach to energy
supplies. These risks may have eased because of the surge in wholesale
electricity prices. But whether that easing will be sustained when the
weather returns to normal is another matter – as is any reprieve for
threatened power stations such as Drax, reputedly the most efficient
coal-fired plant in Europe.
While we await the usual “wet and windy” forecasts, The Times, The
Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and Daily Mail, among others,
have had a nibble at the issue. At the same time, the anti-nukes have
used the effects of hot weather on power stations to misinform and
alarm the public about nuclear power. All this has made for a busy
silly season for SONE members trying to redress the balance and inject
some facts into the debate. We deal with these activities below.
Meanwhile, we have taken the opportunity to brief the CBI about our
fears for the immediate, medium and long-term security of electricity
supply. We seem to have made such an impact that the Government will
come under increasing pressure from industry when it emerges from the
all-consuming preoccupation with the Hutton inquiry into its alleged
“sexing up” of the case for war with Iraq.
DOUBTS ABOUT SUPPLY
Under the heading “How long till the lights go out here?”, Roland
Gribben in the Daily Telegraph (August 16) revealed that we have a
Joint Energy Security of Supply working party in Whitehall.
Ludicrously, when you think of Government energy policy, it was formed
to try to stop a crisis from developing. It faces the following
situation:
The national grid is urging more large energy users to opt for
interruptible contracts to forestall any threat of blackouts. (Times).
About 7,000MW of generating capacity (nearly 11%) haas been taken out
of service over the past two years as a result of a 40% drop in
wholesale prices under the NETA pricing system (Telegraph and others).
Whereas the security margin before privatisation was 20-25%, the
national grid is looking for a 16% cushion this coming winter, enabling
it to call on 65,000MW peak capacity. It has been telling generators it
is 8,000MW short and has been promised only 3,500MW (Telegraph).
Leave aside the effects of extremely hot weather, the wholesale price
for electricity has been rising and businesses are facing a 10-15%
increase as they rush to renew contracts. Companies are privately
warning that domestic prices could go up 5% (Telegraph and others).
So will the market work sufficiently in the months before the onset of winter to secure supplies? That is the question.
AND WILL BANKS BACK WIND?
Are the Government’s plans for wind power a “pipedream”? That it seems,
is what critics believe because it does not have the backing of the
banks. Things are so bad that the British Wind Energy Association has
been having talks with City financiers, according to the Sunday Times.
Next month it will present its findings to the Government.
The problem stems from the City’s wariness of the electricity sector
since, according to Citigroup, 26 banks have been left with £5bn debts
as a result of the Ofgem-engineered collapse in wholesale electricity
prices which is bringing the risk of power cuts. Even though the
Government requires power companies to buy “green” electricity and has
opened up tenders for a second round of offshore wind farm development,
the banks are sitting on their hands.
And why not? After all, power companies will be fined if they don’t
take enough “green” electricity (which is in short supply since nuclear
is excluded). There are no targets for renewable energy beyond 2010,
just aspirations – which is what many think the 2010 target will prove
to be. And offshore development is expensive, while onshore the pesky
public object to having their environment wrecked by turbines.
In other words, as the Danes put it, wind power is political electricity. Who would trust a British politician these days?
“HEIGHT OF COMPLACENCY”
Under the heading “Tilt at windmills”, the Daily Telegraph reflected
SONE’s thinking in an August 15 editorial stemming from news of an oil
strike on a farm near Winchester.
It said the “obstinately high” oil prices because of international
uncertainty and the International Energy Agency’s upward revision of
oil demand because of the growth of the Chinese and Indian economies
were not good news for the developed world. It needed an economic
fillip that cheaper oil would deliver. Nor was the fact that the
favourite search areas for new oil and gas resources are “potentially
problematic”.
“We have depended for years on unstable countries for much of our oil”,
it added. “But...[that] underlines the importance of ensuring that,
where energy policy is concerned, we don’t add domestic uncertainties
to the imported variety. Hence the disquiet over Labour’s announcement
that Britain should look for new electricity capacity, not from
established technologies such as nuclear and coal generation, but from
a new breed of giant offshore windmills. It would be extraordinarily
expensive and, even if the technology works, useless when the wind
drops.
“Stable supplies of reasonably priced energy are a prerequisite of
decent economic growth. When the outlook for all forms of fuel is so
uncertain, it is the height of complacency to put our faith in
windmills”. As SONE had said – repeatedly.
“GRID LOCKED IN IDEOLOGY”
While America was gridlocked, we have a grid locked in ideology. That
was how Neil Collins, City editor of the Daily Telegraph, put it on
August 16. He said that whereas the problems in America were largely
the result of political infighting, protection of local power fiefdoms
and the federal nature of the country, ours stemmed from the
Government’s inability to face the consequences of its ideology.
“Most of its members are instinctively against nuclear power and not
much interested in the arguments”, he said – a fact to which SONE can
testify now that its hospitality has been rebuffed by five Energy
Ministers. “The result is that the industry is being allowed to rot
away figuratively and literally...Coal fired generation, too, is being
discouraged...At the same time, the demand for energy is rising. Into
the gap will come more gasfired capacity, powered from Algeria and
Russia, and – don’t laugh – wind power.
“The economics of wind power don’t stack up (even if the country is
covered in windmills) and probably never will. The last fortnight of
heatwave, during which there was barely a breath across the whole
country just when demand was high, has exposed the notion for the
fantasy that it is.
“There are a few, small signs that the Government is starting to see
that the energy ‘policy’ in the last white paper was little more than
an exercise in wishful thinking. The response from the DTI to the
‘Could it happen here?’ question was to point to the sharp rise in
wholesale electricity prices. It is rare indeed to hear a Government
department sounding pleased about a price rise.
“Nobody is building new generating plant because the future is too
uncertain to make the business case for such long term investments.
They cannot see ahead, thanks to the fog of Government policy. The
foolhardy promises given by John Prescott in Kyoto on CO2 emissions
gave him a warm glow in the heady days of 1997, but six years on they
cannot be reconciled with the likely demand for power.
“The market will indeed produce its own solution, as it always does,
but if that solution is much lower demand as a result of much higher
prices, it may not be one we much care for”.
Surely, the point is that with a substantial nuclear contribution we could avoid significantly higher prices.
RIGHTING WRONGS
Alan Shaw, a Norfolk member, has been heavily occupied as a retired
electrical engineer with correcting the media’s impression – largely
born of ignorance, it seems – that heatwaves and warm rivers are
another reason why we should not go nuclear.
He has been at pains to point out to The Times and others that France’s
problems are not nuclear-made. Instead, when water needed to cool
turbine condensers becomes warm – eg due to hot weather – the overall
efficiency of the steam cycle falls and therefore so does the maximum
electricity output capability. In extremely hot weather this can cause
a nationwide shortfall of electricity at peak periods and that is what
was being demonstrated in France. And it affects all steam power
stations, not just nuclear.
Britain is protected by cooler rivers, estuaries and coastal waters.
And in any case Britain’s nuclear stations rely on coastal water not
warmer rivers or lakes.
All this did not prevent Polly Toynbee, in The Guardian (August 22),
from saying that French power stations had “discharged nuclear hot
water straight into rivers for fear of meltdown in the heat”. Your
Secretary pointed out to her and her editor that they have not
discharged any nuclear hot water and there has been no risk of
meltdown. The cooling water discharged (at temporarily higher
temperatures than normally permitted) was no more irradiated than that
from coal, oil or gas-fired power stations.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
Toynbee’s anti-nuclear and pro-wind article was, by any standards, one
of remarkably concentrated ignorance. Your Secretary’s e-mail to her
was by way of a corrective tutorial. It ended with a suggestion that
before she exhibits her “ignorance along with political correctness and
so attracts ridicule, you consult with people who know what they are
talking about – not such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace or, in
energy matters, the Government”.
More seriously, she implied that Country Guardian, the organisation
formed in 1991 to prevent the wrecking of the countryside by wind
farms, is pronuclear. She wrote: “Country Guardian’s vice president is
Sir Bernard Ingham, former Thatcher press spokesman, former consultant
to BNFL and current secretary of Supporters of Nuclear Energy (SONE),
He has boasted that he personally is responsible for stopping 66% of
wind farm planning applications”.
The facts are that your Secretary knows of only one other member of
Country Guardian who is pronuclear. It is the British Wind Energy
Association which claims that your he has blocked two-thirds of onshore
wind farm planning applications. He has repeatedly retorted: “If only
it were true, I would regard it as my greatest achievement in life. The
truth is that the planning applications have been fought and defeated
by Country Guardian and other groups formed across the country to
protect their environment”.
THE TIMES A CATALYST
On August 18 The Times printed an interview with Sir Alec Broers,
president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, saying that nuclear
power is critical to Britain – as the headline stated – and that
renewables would not stop global warming or blackouts.
The article was a refreshing change from what SONE has come to expect,
though its summary of the industry, headed “A steady source with
dangerous drawbacks”, included the persistent claim that “approximately
5,000 dead as a result of Chernobyl”. Your Secretary sent the usual
corrective letter to the Editor.
So did Sir Ian Lloyd, a SONE patron, who, in his published missive,
also said Sir Alec’s analysis confirmed what many had long suspected:
the facts are too often distorted by those who simply will not face the
energy requirements of the modern industrial state. “What is abundantly
clear is that whatever the merits, costs and environmental implications
of wind power may be, the closure of Britain’s nuclear plants will make
it impossible for the country to meet its Kyoto obligations”.
John Sandalls, a Wantage member, in the same Times edition, attacked
the notion that nuclear installations are attractive targets for
terrorists. “Terrorists”, he said, “ would have little or no chance of
damaging the enormous block of concrete which contains the nuclear
fuel. If somehow they managed to remove the fuel rods from the core, or
get hold of used fuel rods, are they likely to walk out with them
tucked inside a trouser leg?
“Why should terrorists wish to obtain unmanageable nuclear materials
when they can easily obtain unlimited supplies of guns, petrol,
hydrogen, potassium cyanide, phosphorous, explosives, arsenic, highly
toxic herbicides etc.”
LET’S LEVEL ANOTHER FIELD
In The Times of August 22, Paul Spare, a Cheshire member, used the
electrocution of an eight-year-old boy on the railway at Bootle to make
a plea for a more sensible approach to safety hazards. He pointed out
that the HSE has required the nuclear sector to spend millions of
pounds on safety improvements “so marginal as to generally produce no
discernible benefit to the employees or the public.”
Yet in the year to July 55 railway trespassers were killed. That toll
could be reduced considerably if only a fraction of the millions spent
on nuclear safety were expended on improved security fencing and
patrols. “I am not clear why accidents in the traditional industries
such as rail should appear less terrifying than those resulting from
science-age technology,” he added. “However, we should not accept such
a contrast in safety measures and expenditure”.
And so say all of us.
FINLAND’S NUCLEAR SURPRISE
We are reliably informed that members of the All Party Parliamentary
Group on Nuclear Energy, in a recent visit to the Finnish nuclear
industry, repeatedly contrasted the emotion and confrontation which
dominate the UK nuclear debate with the “well modulated and broadly
consensual approach” that prevails in Finland.
Finland provides no guarantees or subsidies to the nuclear operators
and regards their projected new reactor as an industrial project, not a
policy issue. The question of public attitudes and gaining public and
political support for a new reactor is a matter for the company, not
for government.
Our Parliamentarians were told the case for a fifth reactor, ratified
by Parliament last year, was based on economics as a lower cost option
than increasing gas use to reduce coal burn. A decision on a final
waste repository helped to influence the vote.
R V MOORE GC CBE
A celebration meeting for the life of R V (Dick) Moore, who has died,
aged 88, is to be held in the North West on October 23. Mr Moore
invented the concept of the gas cooled reactor system at Harwell in
1950. This led to Calder Hall, for which he was chief design engineer,
and the Magnox system. He was later responsible for the switch to AGR.
Those wishing to attend the event should get in touch with Ian Currie –
T: 01565-843706; F – 01565-843220; e-mail:
DIARY NOTE
The SONE AGM will be held on Wednesday, October 22 at the offices of
our chairman, Sir William McAlpine at 40 Bernard Street London WC1,
12noon to 3pm.The special topic for discussion will be public opinion
led by David Wild, head of corporate affairs at NIREX, and Rick Wylie,
of the Westlakes Institute, Cumbria.
Published by: Supporters of Nuclear Energy, c/o BNES, 7 Great George Street, PO Box 25124, London SW1P 3ZS.
Tel: 020-7665-2046, Fax: 020-7665-2269
Web site: www.sone.org.uk
