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Written by Sir Bernard Ingham
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Tuesday, 03 October 2006 |
Tony Blair says nuclear power is “back on the agenda with a vengeance”.
It certainly ought to be, given the parlous state of British energy
supply over the foreseeable future. But talking up nuclear is one
thing; actually going ahead with a new nuclear power station programme
is another matter. The first confirms the Prime Minister for the
spinmeister he is.
The latter would give him some right to be called a statesman because
he would then truly be looking after the longer-term interests of the
nation.
To understand why we need a new nuclear power programme
PDQ, we must examine why we are having an energy review only three
years after the last energy policy was published. I described that
policy as irrelevant, incompetent and inimical to the interests of a
nation that, with the decline of the coal industry and North Sea oil
and gas, has become a net importer of energy for the first time in its
history.
It comes as no surprise that the policy is failing
heroically on all counts. It is not giving us energy supply security.
It is not delivering competitive energy supplies. It is not reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. They are now higher than they were when the
government came to office and it is touch and go whether Britain will
meet its Kyoto obligations.
In fact, we do not have an energy
policy. The 2003 White Paper was dominated by an environmental goal – a
60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (on the 1990 level) by 2050.
The fundamentals of any self-respecting energy policy – security of
supply at competitive cost – were subjugated by political correctness,
which also required energy policy to eliminate what is called ‘fuel
poverty’. Fuel poverty is for social, not energy, policy, and neither
renewables nor energy conservation, two planks in the 2003 policy, are
delivering.
Indeed, energy policy is as riddled with
inconsistencies as failure. First, the government had set its energy
regulator, Ofgem, to slash prices, which is not exactly conducive to
saving energy. It cut wholesale electricity prices by 40%, though the
benefit was never felt by the voters – domestic consumers. We consumers
kept those generators who had large blocs of us to milk afloat when
coal, oil, gas and nuclear generation became uneconomic.
There
were three results: First, British Energy (BE), the nuclear generator,
was driven to the edge of bankruptcy because it had no domestic
distribution arm. It had to be rescued by the government on
confiscatory terms because it dare not lose 20% of the nation’s
electricity supply. Now that electricity prices have soared (because of
the rising price of gas which generates 40% of our electricity) BE is
immensely profitable and is pouring £billions into the Treasury.
Second,
spare capacity for use, especially in a bad winter, was shut down. Now
the National Grid is scratching around to find enough spare capacity to
get us (just) through successive winters without blackouts. This threat
is compounded by inadequate supplies of gas because North Sea gas is
declining sharply and we do not have enough storage or pipelines from
the Continent. Nor, on the evidence of last winter, are our so-called
partners in Europe willing to send us gas through the pipelines if they
might run short. This reluctance gave British customers the highest gas
prices in the world, costing them an extra £1 billion, according to
Ofgem, and caused some heavy users to shut down.
The cost could be £3 billion this winter if the performance is repeated.
Third,
the legacy of governmental/Ofgem shorttermism is that no generator is
inclined to build a power station, whether fired by coal, oil, gas or
nuclear. How can you blame them when they do not know whether their
investment will be rendered nugatory by political whim? So, we have
short-term insecurity and the new Secretary for Industry, Alastair
Darling, has said this coming winter will be ‘tight’ – and no doubt for
a few winters after that.
But it gets worse. When the government
produced its 2003 policy it knew that over the next 15–20 years we
could lose 25–33% of our electricity supply. It was staring this fact
in the face because our coal and nuclear power stations are ageing.
Coal’s demise will be hastened by EU environmental directives because
it is the dirtiest fuel, apart from peat. By 2023 all bar one of the
UK’s nuclear power station will have closed.
The government had
a splendid – and politically correct – wheeze. It would fill the gap
with renewables – wind, waves, tides, solar, geothermal, waste and all
kinds of bio-fuels – and by reducing demand through energy
conservation. If they had consulted me, as one responsible for energy
conservation and renewables policy in the Department of Energy from
1978–1979, I could have told them not to be so daft.
At present,
we get about 4% of our electricity from renewables. Most of that is
from large-scale hydro, which is more or less at its limit of
development.
After 15 years, unreliable wind power contributes a
mere 0.5% (when the wind blows) and every proposed wind farm produces a
local revolt. And what else is there?. A tiny bit of power from waste
and from rubbish tips (in the form of methane) and biomass (wood).
Solar is not really for our climate.
What is more, it is no good
at night. Geothermal is always likely to be insignificant in Britain.
They have been experimenting for years with waves and if we take French
advice we will not go in for uneconomic tidal barrages.
In
short, renewables, with their massive theoretical potential, are always
likely to be marginal. So is that other huge theoretical potential –
energy conservation. Through the centuries, scientists and engineers
have been getting more useful power out of energy input. They will
continue to do so. They will also continue to devise new ways of our
using energy. And, in spite of 30 years of effort to improve the energy
efficiency of our homes and buildings, electricity demand rises
inexorably by 1–1.5% a year.
Add that rising demand to the
impending loss of 25–30% of our electricity supply and you see what a
hole mis-government in this country has dug for us. Like the foolish
virgins, we have squandered our energy riches. We have also bowed the
knee to politically correct theorists and idealists called
environmentalists.
There are signs that Mr Blair has got the
message to get up off his knees as his sun sinks. We need a proper
energy policy that makes security of supply at affordable cost
paramount. This is where nuclear can uniquely deliver – with the bonus
that it emits next to no greenhouse gases.
Let us also be clear
what nuclear cannot do. It is no answer to immediate and short-term
shortages of energy, except in so far as the lives of ageing nuclear
power stations can properly be extended.
Since we should
prudently allow five years to build a modern nuclear power station,
once the contractors can get on to the site after a public inquiry,
procrastination – putting nuclear on the shelf – has limited our
options. However, that is no reason why we should not develop nuclear
power to meet our medium and longer-term supply problem. Instead, it
explains why we need a new nuclear programme soon.
But hold on a
minute, you may say, How can nuclear help to make our electricity (and
to a lesser extent our energy) supplies more secure at competitive
cost? The answer is simple. We have 50 years of experience of nuclear
power. We know it can deliver huge amounts of electricity reliably,
safely and cleanly.
Nuclear power stations have been a reliable
baseload workhorse for half a century. There is no shortage of uranium
for the foreseeable future, even as the world nuclear industry expands
rapidly beyond its current 443 reactors. The element comes
predominantly from stable countries such as Australia and Canada, is as
prolific as tin in the world’s crust and exploration for it is in its
infancy compared with gold and silver. What is more, uranium represents
only a minor part of nuclear electricity’s costs. Beyond that would
come the commercial development of the already proven fast reactor
which would get 60 times more electricity out of uranium than current
reactors and there is also the option to use a derivative of thorium as
a fuel.
As for safety, there has not been a single recorded
death in Britain through a radiation accident over the past
half-century of nuclear generation. To those who utter the word
“Chernobyl” I would merely say that to hold up a Russian reactor that
could never have been licensed in the West because of its deficiencies
and in which a steam (not a nuclear) explosion was caused by
irresponsible experiment as a reason for avoiding nuclear power is
perverse, foolish and juvenile.
Nuclear can do the job cleanly
because, according to the government’s Energy Technology Support Unit,
it is twice as clean as wind, taking account of all the CO2 emitted in
the mining, processing and transport of uranium ore and the
construction and decommissioning of power stations.
Contrary to
popular myth, the nuclear industry does not have a problem with its
waste. It has been managing it for as long as it has been operating –
i.e. 50 years – but would do better if it could dispose of the
longer-lasting irradiated wastes that have accumulated and to some
extent been treated for disposal. That requires the government to
designate a site for a repository, as they have elsewhere. The rest can
be safely left to scientists and engineers. After 500–600 years the
radioactivity in the waste will have decayed to levels found in nature
– e.g. in uranium deposits.
Furthermore, the consumers are
paying for the cost of decommissioning and waste management since
nuclear, uniquely, sets aside some 4% of its retail price for that
purpose. No other fuel yet meets the cost of its environmental
consequences. If it did, nuclear would be even more competitive.
Which brings me to the most important element in nuclear’s appeal: its ability to compete in the market.
This
has been demonstrated by a number of independent surveys across the
world, including by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International
Energy Agency. Indeed, it is now the cheapest electricity generating
option following the gas price surge. It is likely to remain so, given
the thirst for energy in China and India with a combined population of
at least 2.2 billion. It is calculated that if China were to continue
to grow at 8% a year it would on average be consuming as much energy as
Americans do today. In that event China alone would require 99 million
barrels of oil a day (mbpd) compared with today’s global output of
85mbpd.
Mr Blair has looked into the abyss. He sees himself
being saddled by history with responsibility for wrecking the British
economy unless he does something PDQ. He knows that modern designs of
nuclear reactor are cheaper, more compact, more competitive and even
safer. He knows that, unlike earlier generations of reactor, they have
been designed with decommissioning in mind and in any case produce a
tenth of the waste of existing reactors.
And he most certainly
knows that to rely on importing up to 90% of our energy in the form of
natural gas from, leaving aside Norway, such unstable countries as
Russia, the Middle East, Algeria and Nigeria and elsewhere where Islam
is on the march is tempting fate. Mr Putin did not hesitate to switch
off the gas taps to the Ukraine in mid-winter. This is not to mention
the likely cost of the gas as the scramble for energy ensues in the
21st century.
The big question now is not whether Mr Blair knows
what is required of him. It is whether he can usher us into a new
nuclear age to give us greater security of crucial electricity
supplies, a more competitive economy and minimise the use of fossil
fuels.
He does not need to offer subsidies. What he needs to do
is to cut through the humbug and bureaucracy, demonstrate some
administrative flair and allow the private companies that would like to
build nuclear power stations to get on with it.
Sir Bernard Ingham is secretary of Supporters of Nuclear Energy, a
group of individuals who have been promoting nuclear power in the UK
since 1998. He was trained as a journalist before becoming a civil
servant in 1967. He served as press secretary in the Departments of
Employment and Energy before becoming the first head of the Department
of Energy’s energy conservation division in 1978. After two years in
that post, he was recruited by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as her
chief press secretary and remained with her until her resignation and
his retirement in 1990.
This report is also available as a pdf download
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 03 October 2006 )
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