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Welwyn Hatfield Environmental Network Nuclear Debate |
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Written by Sir Bernard Ingham
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Wednesday, 12 April 2006 |
Thank you for inviting me to argue the case for nuclear power. It is
not often that those who call themselves environmentalists are so
enlightened. Normally, like pro-nuclear people, they only talk to
themselves.
It is even more decent of you to invite someone who has been described by that ray of environmental sunshine, The Independent, as a mound of poisoned suet.
My case for the development of nuclear power in the UK rests on one solid pillar: it achieves the prime objective of a respectable energy policy - long-term security of supply of electricity at competitive cost. Nuclear also comes with a bonus: its ability to combat global warming because it produces next to no greenhouse gases.
I myself am sceptical about the unproven theory of man-made global warming. But the evidence so far brought forward suggests we would be prudent to avoid carbon production wherever possible.
And before we go any further, I want you to know that I think I am at least as green as anybody else in this room.
To start with, I object to litter and seek to minimise it. I also find it inconceivable that anybody who prides themselves on Britain’s environment – or anybody else’s - could contemplate alien wind farms on our unspoiled hills and fells. They would be the first to object to industrialising those hills with coal, oil, gas or nuclear-fired stations. So why permit wind to industrialise them when, because of its unreliable nature, it does not even serve its sole justification – reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. It is not serving that purpose when coal, oil or gas power stations are forced to chip in when the wind does not blow or blows so hard wind farms have to be shut down. And everybody knows – or should know – that the average wind turbine in Britain generates only a quarter of its rated capacity.
I regard wind turbines as green tokenism of the most hypocritical kind. Subsidy farming, not wind farming. I do not regard them as competitors of nuclear power. As Sir Jonathon Porritt, the immensely prejudiced chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission says, they won’t close a single nuclear power station – or for that matter a coal, oil or gas fired power station.
So let me come to the nub of my challenge to you tonight. I do not accept it is up to me to make the case for nuclear power – though I shall do so – when it has been generating reliable, economic, safe and clean electricity in the UK for 50 years. We know what the earliest prototype nuclear power stations, now progressively closing on grounds of age, have done over those 50 years - and not a single death in the UK from a radiation accident. Contrast that with the death troll from coal mining and in the North Sea over that half-century.
Instead, I consider the onus is entirely on environmentalists to prove that the Government’s 2003 Energy White Paper strategy of renewables, energy conservation and presumably greenhouse gas-rich natural gas can serve the national interest. In doing so you have a certain burden to carry: not even the Government thinks its 2003 energy policy is worth having, otherwise it would not now be reviewing it, which is why we are here this evening.
That policy is failing on all counts – as I said it would on its publication in 2003 when I described it as irrelevant, incompetent and inimical to the national interest. It is arguably one of the most ridiculous and risible policies ever brought forth by any government in the history of Whitehall. And that is saying something.
In fact, that policy is not an energy policy but an environmental policy, aiming at a 60% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050. It subjugates energy – and electricity which is crucial to a modern economy - to an environmental objective.
Yet without reliable, continuous, competitive electricity we have no economy, no prosperity, no jobs, no security – and in the end no environment because you need money to safeguard the environment.
So what we are discussing tonight is an issue fundamental to civilised life in Britain – our lifeblood: electricity.
I want first to explain to you why I see the justification for nuclear primarily lies in longer-term security of supply at competitive cost.
At present, the breakdown of electricity generation in this country is gas 40%; coal 33%; nuclear 20%; renewables, mainly fully developed hydro-electricity; 4%; imports of nuclear electricity from France 2%; and oil 1%.
Coal and nuclear thus produce more than half our electricity. But both coal and nuclear power stations are ageing and closing, with coal’s decline accelerated by EU environmental pressure because it is the dirtiest fuel, apart from peat. All nuclear stations bar Sizewell B will have closed by 2023. Over the next 15 years we could easily lose 25% of our existing generating capacity.
And how are we going to replace it as things stand? By reducing demand through energy conservation and renewables – wind, waves, tides, solar, geothermal, photovoltaics and all sorts of bio-fuels which are not clean, presumably with the help of natural gas.
This being so, we can virtually guarantee blackouts by 2020, as the Institution of Civil Engineers has warned.
For two years in the 1970s I had responsibility for energy conservation and renewables policy in the Department of Energy. Energy conservation has enormous potential but the difficulties in realising are just as great.
Of course, you can slash demand in a crisis through the price mechanism and restrictions. But we know what happens when those crises last: the public rebels. You can also reduce demand by securing the more efficient use of energy which our scientists, engineers and technologists are continually doing by building efficiency into products, machinery, appliances and buildings. We get far more bangs for our energy input now than we did in the late 1970s when I was promoting energy saving.
But the fact remains that electricity demand rises inexorably by 1-1.5% a year. That makes it all the more difficult to bridge the gap between supply and rising demand when we are steadily losing supply through coal and nuclear closures.
Of course, we are wasteful. Of course, we could reduce demand. But from personal experience it is extremely difficult to do so in a sustained way. Those who put their faith in energy conservation to avoid the need for building power stations are frankly naïve, especially when democratic governments find it difficult to sustain the high prices needed to maintain pressure on consumers to cut consumption.
We then come to other renewables since wind is, frankly, a busted flush – and a horribly expensive busted flush - both onshore and offshore. So what else is there? Like wind and energy conservation, the potential of wave, tidal, solar, photovoltaics and bio-fuels is enormous – until you try to realise it. In practice, only wind is available in commercial quantities – or is likely to be in the foreseeable future. So, the Government’s only chance of achieving its renewables targets are by massaging the figures, at which it is a past master.
Of course, we must have more R&D into those renewables which promise reasonably continuous and economic power. But don’t expect the earth. Leave aside the cost, there are also severe limitations in the land available.
To fuel a 1000MW power station, wind (when it is blowing) requires an area the size of Dartmoor; solar half as much again (and what do you get at night?); biomass – wood – a forest the size of N Wales when you have grown it; bio-oil - a rapeseed field the size of the Highlands of Scotland; bio-alcohol – Devon given over to sugar beet or Yorkshire to corn; and bio-gas – 800m chickens with regular digestions on a farm a third the size of Dartmoor.
But we need not just one 1000MW power station but 55-60 to meet peak demand. Renewables are only marginally relevant. Nuclear can produce 1000MW per hour on 10 soccer pitches. Those who seek to preserve the countryside and minimise land use should go for nuclear power.
As for carbon sequestration, I am all in favour of more R&D because it would be a bonus if we could achieve clean coal, instead of, as at present, merely scrubbing out sulphur, the cause of acid rain. Injecting CO2 into strata is one way of getting more oil and gas out of the North Sea – to produce more carbon. But we have no idea whether it is practical to dump all CO2 from coal, gas, oil and bio-fuelled power stations under the North Sea or at what cost, though the earliest estimates suggest it would double the price of electricity.
And even if it were possible, it would not sequestrate the 70% of our UK CO2 emissions that come from wider industry, the domestic sector or transport. Once again, we are asked to rely on unproven, uncosted technology inadequate for the overall task.
So what are we left with in the Government’s present scheme of things? Why, just gas. This will in future have to be imported from mainly unstable parts of the world such as Russia, the Middle East, Algeria and Nigeria. We are contemplating importing 80-90% of our energy needs in this form.
But anybody who would put their trust in gas given Mr Putin’s willingness to use energy for political reasons and the fanaticism of Islam is off their rocker. Especially when its price can only soar upwards with China and India demanding ever more of all forms of energy.
No wonder the Government has got the wind up and that Mr Blair at least seems to recognise the need for nuclear power.
So what does nuclear have going for it? Well, let’s be clear what it cannot do. Unless the lives of existing nuclear power stations are extended, it cannot do much more short-term to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It would have been able to do so if ten or more years ago governments had been serious about global warming. But if the global warmers are right, CO2 reduction is a long term need and nuclear can do much to eliminate it from future electricity generation.
Similarly, short of extending the lives of existing nuclear stations, nuclear cannot do much about the insecurity of our short-term electricity supplies. That is entirely the result of government policy. But nuclear can bring greater medium to long term security to our vital electricity supplies.
This is because it has proved itself over 50 years. Because, contrary to anti-nuke assertions, there is no foreseeable shortage of uranium. Not even this Government accepts the notion of a shortage short, medium or long term. Uranium is about as prevalent as tin in the earth’s crust and we have been exploring for it only a limited amount of time.
We can achieve greater security of electricity supply because uranium comes predominantly from stable countries such as Australia and Canada. And because uranium fuel costs represent only a small proportion of total nuclear costs. Nuclear offers a certain price stability, unlike gas.
As for economics, it is no more realistic to judge nuclear’s future costs on the basis of existing Magnox or AGR stations – all in effect prototypes – than it is to claim that the cost of a family car in relation to average family income was set by a Model T Ford in the 1920s.
Nuclear is a big investment for safety reasons. But the new generation of power stations now being built are safer, smaller and therefore more powerful and designed to produce a tenth of the waste generated by old reactors still in use. Indeed, unlike the old, they have been designed with decommissioning and waste management in mind.
We have still to reap the benefits of research over the last 20 years. In the meantime, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the OECD have demonstrated that even existing reactors were virtually competitive with gas, even before the recent huge gas price increases. That makes nuclear the most competitive commercial source of electricity.
I do not intend to allow you to lump on to civil nuclear power stations the costs of decommissioning plants associated with the military, research, medical or industrial sectors or the handling of their waste.
The cost of meeting nuclear power’s waste handling and the decommissioning of its plants has UNIQUELY already been met or is UNIQUELY being met in the price charged for nuclear electricity. About 4% of the price has been and is being set aside for these purposes. When BE was privatised the accumulated fund went into the maw of the Treasury. We need to know what it amounts to and where it is.
The only waste problem we have is in acquiring a government with the guts to designate a site for its longer term disposal. And logic tells you it should be at Sellafield where most of the waste is. If Finland and Sweden can solve the long-term disposal of waste, so can we.
Meanwhile, all this Green talk about nuclear risks is bunkum. Medical science puts 140 times more radioactivity into the atmosphere than nuclear power. But I have never heard of a Green calling for the closure of X-ray or cancer treatment departments.
All this Green talk about waste remaining radioactive for millions of years just reveals their ignorance or malevolence. After 500-600 years the radioactivity in even the high level wastes will have decayed to harmless levels found in nature. The fact that there might be radioactivity 1m years hence in any long-term nuclear store is neither here nor there because radioactivity is there now; it is one of the earth’s properties. And it isn’t the existence of radioactivity that matters; it’s how much and of what kind.
And all this Green talk about nuclear power being a proliferation risk carries no weight even with our Government – as its current energy review consultative document shows.
So, my message to you tonight is that you have to choose. You can follow what is currently the Government’s – and the Sustainable Development Commission’s - route with the certainty that we shall have no security of supply at competitive cost or reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
Or you can go my route which would give you the lot longer term. The issue tonight is whether the Government – and anti-nuclear campaigners – wish to run the country into trouble or do the right thing by the people.
I find it illuminating that Jonathon Porritt’s commission is afraid that going nuclear will reduce the pressure to develop renewables and energy efficiency and make it more difficult to turn every house into a mini-power station with, a la Cameron, a wind turbine and solar panel on the roof.
Porritt and, it seems, Cameron have no idea that converting every building into a mini power station would make it impossible to run a national grid since those responsible for it, those whose job it is to balance supply and demand second by second, would not know where supply is coming from.
Alternatively, Porritt may know this simple fact only too well because he – and many other so-called Greens – want to kill the national grid, with all its economies and efficiencies of scale, and break down supply, even down as far as individual homes.
We have to ask why they want to do this. It can only be because they are determined to force a poorer, less secure, less comfortable lifestyle on the people in the name of the environment or some warped ideology. They are the hair-shirted enemies of the people. And, mark my words, when the public wake up to the risks they are insisting we run with our economy and jobs, enemies of the people will seem a very mild term indeed.
It is time we awoke to the dangerous risks being run in the name of the environment and embraced nuclear power. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 20 April 2006 )
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