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Written by SONE
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Friday, 01 December 2006 |
WILL THE GOVERNMENT’S WHITE PAPER MAKE IT A HAPPY NEW YEAR?
We wish all our members a happy and successful New Year – and that it
is blessed with real progress towards a new generation of British
nuclear power stations. That depends on the Government’s White Paper
now expected in the Spring.
It seems to us like waiting for Godot such is the need for urgency,
given the threat to our electricity supplies caused by the closure over
the next 10-15 years of 33 per cent of our generating capacity in the
form of ageing coal and nuclear stations. This urgency steadily builds
the longer the delay in knowing not where we are supposed to be going –
after all, the Government sees nuclear making a singular contribution
to energy policy – but how we are going to get there.
This is the significance of the White Paper. What has been done since
the Energy Review in July embraced nuclear power to clear the way for a
new nuclear power station building programme, what still needs to be
done and what timetable is envisaged? If what we hear coming out of
Whitehall is true, the Government seems at last to have recognised that
renewable sources of energy and energy conservation are not going to
take us very far and that we could do with the first new nuclear power
flowing on to the grid within 10 years.
In fact, we could have done with it 10 years ago, but that is by the
way. The truth is that, given the leisurely British way of doing things
– except when a Dunkirk intervenes – this is a very tight timetable,
assuming Government thinking has got as far as schedules.
Reform of the planning system is not the only thing required. Also on
the list are the licensing and pre-licensing of reactors; the carbon
price regime – the European trading scheme is a sick joke- and the
future of the climate change levy; nuclear’s long-term access to the
market, given the deterrent to any power station investment, apart from
wind, represented by the energy regulator, Ofgem; the overall
regulatory regime; the identification of sites for nuclear power
stations; and evidence of a grip on longer-term waste disposal. A sense
of Government nuclear purpose would also not come amiss.
The Government is not helped in pursuing the national interest by the
Conservatives’ nuclear-a-lastresort stance and the Liberal Democrats’
open hostility to the atom. This does not make for the political
continuity the market seeks. Nor does the impending demise of nuclear’s
greatest British political advocate, Tony Blair.
We hope you will have a happy New Year but for all these reasons we shall believe it when we see it.
THE CASE FOR NUCLEAR
In the interregnum in which we find ourselves, it remains necessary
continually to make the case for nuclear. Your Secretary summarised the
case in a speech to the Energy Industries Club in London on December 12.
- Nuclear is safe – not a single death from a British radiation accident in 50 years’ electricity generation. Beat that.
- Nuclear is reliable, controllable and economic – the cheapest
generating option with the rise in gas prices; it follows nuclear does
not require a subsidy.
- While heavy upfront costs have to be overcome, nuclear has low and predictable running costs.
- Nuclear has no foreseeable shortage of fuel and the means vastly
to improve the efficiency of uranium use through reprocessing and the
fast reactor.
- Nuclear has neither decommissioning nor waste management
problems; the only obstacle to dealing with longer term nuclear waste
is political - a Green-induced reluctance among politicians to
designate the site for a repository.
- Nuclear is clean – the cleanest form of electricity generation, including wind, taking everything into account.
- Nuclear minimises the use of fossil fuels.
- Nuclear contributes cleanly to greater security of energy and
electricity supply at competitive cost – just what a rational energy
policy requires.
- Nuclear discharges a moral obligation on the developed nations to
maximise their use of high technology, especially when it is clean, to
help the developing world improve its lot.
- Nuclear power stations are growing in number across the globe and
other countries are not going to stop exploiting this resource,
whatever we do.
So how are we going to compete? Any additions to this list of arguments
for the development of nuclear power will be gratefully received.
THE CLIMATE WAR’S BLENHEIM
It is becoming harder for Greens to argue that wind – in practice the
only renewable source of power available (intermittently) in commercial
bulk – is the answer to all our climate change prayers after two recent
reports.
This has not, of course, stopped the Government from approving plans to
build “the largest offshore wind farm” in the Thames Estuary at a cost
of £1.5bn and another, costing £500m, off North Foreland on the Kent
coast. It is said the larger could generate 1,000MW but probably in
practice only about a third of that, given wind’s unreliability.
As previously noted, ABS Energy Research has revealed some pretty
devastating figures: while German wind power will reach 48GW by 2020,
it is so intermittent that it is equivalent to only 2GW of stable
fossil fuel capacity; and while wind accounted for 20% of Danish
electricity generation, it supplied only six per cent – 84% had to be
exported at a loss to Norway, thereby nullifying CO2 savings because
Norwegian hydro-power is carbon free.
Professor Jacob Ostergaard, leader of a new Centre for Electricity
Technology in Denmark, is pressing for research to develop what has
been described as an intelligent generation system in which
decentralised units can help maintain balance and quality in the
distribution system.
ABS has led Power Management Design to comment in its e-mail newsletter
that its research “shows how essential proper analysis is to establish
what renewable energy can and cannot deliver and how it must be
accommodated within a total electricity generation system. Objective
analysis is essential. Nearly every one of the points described in the
ABS study has been labelled a ‘myth’ by a lobby group”.
Wind efficiency Then a Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) study, based
on Ofgem data, came up with the following average UK efficiencies –
i.e. how well wind power stations performed against their rated
capacity – Cornwall 24.1%; mid-Wales 23.8%; Yorkshire Dales 24.9%;
Cumbria 25.9%; Southern Scotland 31.5%; Caithness, Orkney and Shetland
32.9%; and offshore (North Hoyle and Scroby Sands) 32.6%.
The figures for lowland England (where probably most B&Q domestic
rooftop systems will go, as with Tory leader, David Cameron’s turbine)
are much lower – Herts. 7.7%; Barnard Castle, Co Durham 8.8%.
All this prompted Max Hastings, president of the Council for the
Protection of Rural England, to explode in The Guardian: “It does not
seem fanciful to me, a military historian, to compare the current
passion for erecting wind turbines with the building of RAF Blenheim
bombers in 1939, A few of you may have forgotten that the Blenheim was
a disastrous military aircraft, known to be so at the time. Yet it was
built in its hundreds and rushed into deployments which conveyed
‘planes and their hapless pilots almost seamlessly to extinction at the
hands of the Luftwaffe.
“The rationale for this folly was simple: it was ‘better to build
something than nothing’. The erection of wind farms in England costs no
lives, but represents the same mindset”.
“REAL MESSAGES” OF REF
Commenting on the REF’s study, Christopher Booker, in the Sunday
Telegraph, said it conveyed two messages: 1 – wind is so unreliable
that we would have to build up to a dozen new conventional power
stations just to provide backup for all the intended turbines when the
wind is not blowing; and 2 – the more we depend on the unpredictable
wind, the more this will destabilise the grid, threatening its
breakdown “Yet our own Government (supported by the EU) is locked into
the idea that by 2015 15% of our electricity must come from renewable
sources, mostly wind farms which currently supply only 0.5%”, he wrote.
“No proper planning has been done to take into account the problems
this will create for the national grid”.
And so say all of us. Nuclear power has nothing to fear from the
development of renewables – they can and never will be competitors –
but as nuclear supporters we have much to fear from the consequences of
politically-driven instead of scientifically-based electricity
generation and distribution systems.
EUROPE’S BLACKOUT
The interim report on the recent widespread Saturday night blackout
across Europe has shown how renewables and CHP, so beloved of
microgeneration enthusiasts, complicated recovery.
According to a simplified translation of the Union for the
Co-ordination of Transmission of Energy (UCTE) inquiry, we understand
that the original cause was the disconnection of a line to allow a
cruise liner down the River Ems. That led to a cascade of failure
fragmenting the European system into three power islands.
Two – in the west and south east – were “under frequency” because of
power overload. This was quickly rectified by load shedding and reserve
generation. But the third “central island” was “over frequency” and
correction of the fault was slower because of the number of wind and
CHP that tripped out. Some 40% of the generation units that tripped
were wind and about 30% CHP.
These problems got in the way of attempts to resynchronise the European system.
This should be a warning to all those who espouse Green causes without getting engineering advice.
A CASE IN POINT
Talking of espousing micro-generation (and renewables), we noticed that
the latest convert is Charles Clarke MP, former Home Secretary. We have
accordingly written to him urgently advising him to seek expert advice
and sending him SONE’s briefing on micro-generation, prepared in
consultation with electrical engineers.
Alan Shaw, an engineer and Norfolk member, also wrote to Mr Clarke
saying that wind, solar and tidal power’s natural availability took no
account of the electricity supply industry’s demand pattern, as was now
beginning to be realised by the public.
We hope Mr Clarke has a long heart-to-heart talk with an engineer.
CONSUMERS REBEL
The National Consumer Council and Energywatch, the gas and electricity
consumers’ watchdog, are getting restive about “green tariffs”. They
have asked Ofgem to make sure all environmental claims by suppliers are
independently audited. It is too easy, the NCC says, for consumers to
be misled.
In return for signing up to a “green tariff” energy plan, with costs
varying from nothing to £20 a year, the supplier promises to plant a
tree or obtain energy from renewable sources.
NCC says the schemes of 10 suppliers it examined were so different and
the claims made for them so complex that it could not rank them in
order of environmental benefit. But no supplier made clear that every
household in Britain was supporting renewable electricity to the tune
of £7 a year through their normal bills.
SEQUESTRATION EXPLAINED
We are indebted to Lord Vinson, a member, for clarifying by way of a
Parliamentary Question in the Lords what has been going on over the
legality of carbon sequestration in the strata under the seabed.
On November 24 Lord Rooker, a DEFRA Minister, told Lord Vinson that the
compatibility of CO2 storage with international law had long been
unclear. Therefore, the Government was a co-sponsor of an Australian
proposal to amend the protocol in the London Convention to clearly
permit the storage of CO2 streams in sub-seabed geological formations.
This amendment was passed at a meeting of the protocol parties, held
from October 28-November 3, and will come into force on February 10,
2007.
Lord Rooker said the provisions of the OSPAR Convention on the same
issue were complex but the UK was supporting an amendment to clearly
permit storage from all likely routes. Along with many contracting
parties, it was seeking to amend that Convention at its next meeting in
June next year.
He added that oil and gas fields and aquifers in the UK sector of the
North Sea were estimated to have a storage potential of anything from
20,000m to 260,000m tonnes of CO2. A number of projects were now being
brought forward to implement carbon capture and storage technologies in
conjunction with enhanced oil recovery.
In other words, at least in the first instance, the dumping of CO2 will create more carbon to burn.
Not exactly in the spirit of the thing, is it?
NUCLEAR CONFIDENCE RISING
Dr Gordon Adam, a former MEP for the North East and a SONE patron,
reports on “the most confident nuclear gathering that I have attended
for some time” – a conference in Berlin on November 22-23 organised by
the Centre for European Energy Strategy.
He says confidence stems from the conviction that nuclear power is the
key to energy security in Europe, that environmental targets in terms
of CO2 emissions cannot be met without it and that its economics are
necessary to underpin the competitiveness of European industry. While
he could not assert that a clear nuclear renaissance had happened in
Europe, there was clearly a confident view that it was on the way.
Dr Adam says that in the last 10 years the 25 EU members have increased
primary energy consumption in every year bar three and overall by about
10%. Oil consumption was up in every year bar two by eight per cent
overall; gas in every year bar one by 40%; and coal down in seven out
of the 10 years and lower by 14% overall.
Those recording a decrease in CO2 emissions had reduced the use of coal
by anything from 20-80% and mainly by switching into gas. Without
nuclear, gas could well becoming the stumbling block to real carbon
reductions.
What comes strongly through Dr Adam’s report are concerns about
security of supply, bearing in mind the investment required not merely
in generation but also in distribution and storage. As various analysts
have made clear, the UK is not alone in worrying about whether it can
keep the lights on.
OUR DUTY DEFINED
Professor James Lovelock, a SONE patron, says that all those
well-informed about the benefits of nuclear energy have a duty to
humanity to speak strongly in its favour.
“We cannot stand aside from the persistent fiction that nuclear energy
is unsafe”, he said, receiving the Institution of Chemical Engineers’
Collier Medal on November 28.
Calling for a change of thinking about environmentalism, he said it was
“an urban belief that encompasses a widespread longing for a more
natural way of life but has little understanding of the natural world
and an irrational fear of almost anything scientific”.
Environmentalists paid lip service to threats to wildlife and
ecosystems but in practice were obsessed by hazards to personal health
such as pesticides, nuclear radiation and GM food.
Not surprisingly, they embraced any alternative energy scheme that
seemed natural and not based on science and technology. But some, such
as biofuels, were positively dangerous and, if exploited on a large
scale, would hasten disaster.
What we needed was a well-planned and sustainable retreat from the polluted and degraded world of today.
“The only way, I think, to do this”, he said, “is to welcome science
and technology and make maximum use of environmentally friendly nuclear
fission energy”.
LORD PEYTON
We regret to record the death of a patron of SONE - Lord Peyton of
Yeovil, a former Minister for Transport. and of Fuel and Power in the
1960s and 1970s.
A MAGNIFICENT RESPONSE
When the SONE committee met on December 12, the Treasurer had some
magnificent news. He informed us that in little more than a month the
chairman’s appeal had raised £5,025 to put the organisation’s finances
on a sounder footing.
Better still, he reported that with only a third of the members having
so far contributed, he expected the total to rise further and was
already confident that the £6,000 mark would be passed.
The committee agreed this was a magnificent response and recorded its
thanks to those who had already contributed and those who intended to
do so. |
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