This is a combined December/January issue and it comes with the
committee’s best wishes to all members for a happy, healthy and
successful New Year. We wish the same for the nuclear industry. It is,
however, difficult to be optimistic about it when its two leading
companies - British Energy and BNFL - are being dismantled as
international forces on the leading edge of technology. Talk about
deindustrialisation!
Leave aside the risks being run by the Government over the next
few years with electricity and gas supplies, we can detect progress. No
longer is wind power regarded uncritically. The limitations of
renewables as a whole are being appreciated. Energy conservation, that
other great White Paper driver of our economy, is scarcely mentioned.
With coal and oil-fired power stations being regulated out of the
equation, sooner or later people will get the wind up about the basis
of our prosperity - our electricity and indeed energy supplies.
Ideally, they will do so before our currently precarious gas supplies
are reinforced. Otherwise, we shall simply see another dash for gas. We
need to use the year 2004 to persuade Britain that the official
cold-shouldering of nuclear is a fundamental mistake with incalculable
consequences for jobs.
SONE website re-launched
SONE starts the New Year with a newly revamped website (www.sone.org.uk). It has been professionally designed and we think it is an excellent advertisement for SONE and our cause.
It contains a great deal of information about SONE, including how to
join, the case for nuclear power, contributions by members to the
energy debate and links with the websites of a large number of
likeminded organisations. We have dropped the previous password-only
access to some information. All you need to do now is to log on to www.sone.org.uk and you have full access to all the material on the site.
Back numbers of SONE’s Newsletter will be progressively fed into the
website so that there is a complete archive of Newsletters and the
accompanying Nuclear Issues.
Your committee wants to encourage members continually to update the
website with their views, whether expressed exclusively for the website
or in the form of letters to the media. If we can establish a website
file of letters sent to the press and broadcasters, we shall have a
more accurate impression of how many are - and are not - published.
In order that members may feed in their contributions to the
website, we have arranged for the Secretary to be the central clearing
house. All you need to do is e-mail your thoughts, article, speech,
letter etc to The Secretary will then process your contribution on to the website.
Your committee would like to pay tribute to the work of three of its
members - Jim Corner, Keith Parker and initially Ken Jackson - for
exploring ways of revamping the website economically. In addition, we
are grateful to Simon Rippon, of Nuclear Issues, for helping us to make
the SONE website a Newsletter and Nuclear Issues archive.
We are also enormously indebted to the Nuclear Industry Association
which has made its website advisers, StickyMedia, available to SONE,
and to Phil Owen, of StickyMedia, for giving unsparingly of his time to
put SONE properly on the internet.
Remember: just e-mail with your contribution to the website and your thoughts will be posted as quickly as possible for all the world to see.
Is Kyoto dead?
Russia’s refusal, along with that of the USA, to sign up to the Kyoto
protocol on measures to combat global warming has led to pronouncements
that it is a dead letter.
The European Union is certainly not assiduously keeping it alive.
Margot Wallström, Environment Commissioner, says its efforts to cut
greenhouse gas emissions are in crisis. Only Sweden and the UK are on
track to deliver a cut (on 1990 levels) of 8% by 2010. The rest - 13
out of 15 Member States - would easily miss that goal. But, so what? If
Russia won’t ratify Kyoto, it won’t be legally binding.
Pronouncing the death of Kyoto, however, sounds as premature as was
Mark Twain’s first obituary. Rio, of which Kyoto is a direct
descendant, has spawned a vast bureaucracy, a massive infrastructure of
non-governmental organisations and much academic dependency. This lot
won’t easily give up their caravanning and junketing across the world
in the interests, they claim, of its salvation.
We know only too well from other international crusades what
politically correct fervour such movements generate, even if they are
fundamentally flawed - as is Kyoto - by the exclusion of major
polluters such as China. Yet why should the West or Russia impoverish
themselves to no purpose?
Daft idea
One of the dafter ideas canvassed as a recent follow up meeting in
Milan is to allot each world citizen a tradeable right to emit the same
amount of greenhouse gases. If we or the Americans want to use more
than our quota we shall have to buy the right to do so from the poor of
the world “who wish to live a more authentic lifestyle”.
God only knows what this notion would do to advanced (and unauthentic)
economies if Governments tried to make it work by trading in bundles of
individual quotas. But you can be sure that the world would be a darker
and more uncomfortable place. And, of course, the elite theorists who
dream up these ideas would soon discover that the poor would spend the
money transferred under the scheme on more energy - and to hell with
“authentic lifestyles”.
We can be sure that 2004 will bring more attempts to shame us into
confessing our energy sins and more loopy schemes to reform us. They
will all fail because rational human beings are not going to vote to
return to the Middle Ages. And those who are stuck in feudal, medieval
societies want to escape from them.
This waste of time, money and resources when there is a tried and
tested solution -nuclear power - is amazing. Is it too much to hope
that this thought will occur not only to the UK (1.4% ahead of target)
and Sweden (3.3% ahead), both virtuous nuclear states, but also to the
failing - Germany 1.3% behind target; Luxembourg 5.6%; Italy 10.2%;
Greece 10.7%; Netherlands 12.2%; Portugal 14%; Belgium 22.9%; Austria
24.5%; Ireland 26.8%; Spain 33.3%; and wind-powered Denmark 37.8%?
France and Finland, both committed to nuclear expansion, are behind
target by 9.5% and 16.5% respectively. Car and truck emissions, rising
at an alarming rate, are said to be the main culprit. Kyoto may not be
dead but not many are treating as if it were alive and kicking.
France - land of doubters
Even though France generates nearly 80% of its electricity by nuclear
means, its people are certainly not sold on nuclear power. Areva, its
major nuclear company, has just intensively surveyed public opinion
with remarkable results.
Over 90% think it is essential that France remains independent in
energy terms amid widespread international tensions and pressures and
97.1% agree the cost of energy should be controlled. But that’s about
as decisive as they come. While 58.9% agree France hasn’t any choice -
it needs nuclear power - 41.1% disagree.
Whereas 57.4% are inclined to agree nuclear is the cheapest form of
continuous, bulk electricity, 42.6% are not. What’s more, they don’t
take future costs for granted - 32% may think it likely that nuclear
power is the only form of energy that won’t increase in price but 68%
do not.
More are against nuclear energy than for it - 23.8% against 20.4%; 59%
don’t know. But fractionally more are in favour of developing it
(26.6%) than pulling out (26%); 47.7% are in favour maintaining
existing plants - ie ready to wait and see. But 58.9% say France hasn’t
any choice - it needs nuclear power - whereas 41.1% disagree. It seems
likely that if there were a referendum on nuclear power a majority
would vote for it but without enthusiasm.
There is the usual ignorance about nuclear power. It is virtually total about radioactivity. More think nuclear power emits CO2
(55.5%) than says it doesn’t (44.5%). Some 65% think it contributes to
global warming and only 35% say it doesn’t. Even more (68%) think it
attacks the ozone layer against 32% who disagree.
The less well-educated the French are the more they think there is a
high risk of a serious nuclear accident. Overall 56% take this view.
Chernobyl frightened nearly half the population, but it most worries
only 7.9%. Violence in the suburbs is a much greater concern (33.1%)
closely followed by unemployment (30.4%). Environmental pollution is
the fourth most worrying issue (22.2%) but obviously few see nuclear as
a means of combating it.
Most people (70%) are willing to accept nuclear energy if “all waste
can be managed safely”. Curiously young people are mostly (70%)
uncertain about it.
Faced with this ambivalence, anxiety and ignorance, Areva concludes “we
have a lot of work ahead of us”. So have we in Britain - probably more.
How’s this for confidence?
Professor Robert Cahn, a Cambridge member, has drawn our attention to a
tremendously bullish article by Dr Placid Rodriguez, former director of
the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research near Madras, on the fast
breeder reactor.
Dr Rodriguez, a nuclear metallurgist, wrote: “When I was director I was
often asked: ‘Why is India working on a technology that all the leading
countries have given up or at least slowed down?’ My reply was: ‘The
return of nuclear power is inevitable and this would include breeders.
When that happens we can, for a change, be sellers of technology rather
than buyers.”
Have you ever felt what an incompetent lot we British are, chucking away our assets?
The EWP said: it’s uneconomic
Finland may be falling behind in suppressing greenhouse gas emissions,
but it is to build a fifth nuclear power station. The Finnish utility,
TVO, has signed a contract with Areva and Siemens to build a 1,600MW
European PWR at Olkiluoto for commercial operation in 2009, just
outside the Kyoto target’s first deadline.
Meanwhile, France claims that nuclear wins hands down on price. Its
Industry Department, comparing costs for baseload production of more
than 330 days a year over the years 2007-15, finds nuclear comes out at
€28.4 per MWh compared with coal at €32-33.7 and gas at €35.
What’s more, it says that nuclear’s competitiveness increases when the
hypothetical costs of gas emissions - anything from €1.5 to 15 per MWh
- are taken into account. It adds: “The cost of nuclear production is
more stable than that of coal and much more stable than that of gas”.
How come our Energy White Paper said less than a year ago that nuclear is “uneconomic”?
Wind + gas + bribes = target
One of the most frustrating things about the energy scene is the
curious acquiescence of experts in the Government’s willingness to
allow nuclear to wither on the vine. Dan Lewis is the latest example.
In a report for the Economic Research Council (Recharging the nation”,
research paper No 19, 2003, £10) monitoring progress towards the
Government’s renewable electricity targets, he acknowledges that “a
powerful case can be made that reducing the use of fossil fuels and the
by-product of CO2
could more easily be achieved by a nuclear power programme. However,
for the time being, neither the Government nor the Opposition will
attach themselves to that solution”.
Political palsy is, of course, no reason for experts to ignore nuclear
or the powerful case they apparently could make for it. We hope that Mr
Lewis will soon put matters right and that the chairman of the ERC,
Damon de Laszlo, a SONE member, will encourage him to do so.
Meanwhile, he has some pretty ripe things to say about Government
energy policy and most renewables. The Government framework for
achieving 10% of our electricity from renewables by 2010 is “grossly
distorted, bureaucratic and unnecessarily costly. Bureaucracy has
indeed become the policy”.
But, remarkably, he reckons that Britain will just about achieve the
2010 target, thanks to gas and wind, though apparently only if the
Government cuts out its bureaucratic grants system and goes in for tax
credits, a £40 Renewables Obligation Certificate to 2030 (when he wants
all subsidies and intervention to end) and bribery of landowners and
people living near wind farms.
The more we read of energy experts the more we marvel at their ability
to swim around in detail and their inability to see the wood from the
trees. If Mr Lewis had spent more time on nuclear and less on
renewables the ERC might be nearer to a realistic answer to our needs.
Nuclear/wind comparisons
Paul Spare, a Davenham, Cheshire, member, has worked out for the
benefit of those showing an interest in energy policy comparative
tables for wind and nuclear generation costs.
He makes the point that it is not possible to produce two firm figures
because of the variety of assumptions that have to be made – for
example, about series ordering, labour and fuel costs, lifetime
availability, the trend from onshore to more costly offshore wind
farms, spinning reserves, grid protection and possible corrosion of
offshore wind turbines.
With this health warning, he quotes five figures and sources for nuclear and six for wind. They are:
Nuclear (all pence per kWh)
British Energy (for PIU)
2.5-3.0
BNFL (for PIU)
2.5
Prof J Gittus (for five station series)
2.2
WNA (for France)
1.9
WNA (for USA)
2.0
Wind (pence per kWh)
PIU (onshore)
3-4
PIU (offshore)
5-6
BWEA (onshore)
2.5-3.0
BWEA (offshore)
4.5-5.5
Prof Gittus (onshore, long term)
2.2
C E Pugh (onshore 25 yrs, 30% availability)
3.0
NOTES: Prof John Gittus is at Plymouth University; WNA stands for World
Nuclear Organisation; PIU for the Government’s Performance and
Innovation Unit which worked on the Government’s Energy White Paper;
BWEA for British Wind Energy Association; and CE Pugh’s calculations
are quoted from the Professional Engineer periodical.
External costs
Mr Spare reports that the EU has calculated the following external
environmental costs for different sources of energy in Eurocents per
kWh - wind 0.1-0.2; nuclear and hydro each 0.4; natural gas 1.3-2.4;
coal 4.
Conversing with the pm
Don’t forget, the Prime Minister is in listening mode. He is conducting
a conversation exercise with the people. This is our chance to tell him
what we think about energy policy.
Roy Sumerling, a Seascale member, has given a lead by writing to him at
No 10, SW1A 2AA, to express his disappointment that the Energy White
Paper did not include plans for replacing older nuclear power stations.
He points out that new, improved designs of PWRs are now available and
need to be licensed in the UK so that the nuclear option could be
implemented without delay. He adds that building a few of these
reactors on existing nuclear sites could take advantage of existing
infrastructure and benefit industry and local employment.
Mr Sumerling also stresses that what the economy needs is continuous
electricity. Plans to rely on renewables for 10% of our electricity are
“a step too far”.
New patron
Lord Peyton of Yeovil, a former Minister of Transport with Ministerial
experience in the Ministry of Power, has accepted the chairman’s
invitation to become a patron of SONE. He is a former chairman of
British Alcan Aluminium and Texas Instruments and former treasurer of
the Zoological Society of London.
