GREENPEACE’S HYPOCRITICAL ANTI-NUCLEAR WAR IN THE COURTS
Things are warming up. A welter of news over the last month brought
another scary UN report on the climate, British Energy seeking nuclear
partners, Ofgem dubbing wind-avoided carbon emissions as too expensive
and the EU setting new carbon reduction targets, even though it has no
chance of achieving existing ones.
But the most sensational – at least in media eyes – was a judge’s ruling in favour of Greenpeace that the Government’s consultation on new nuclear build was “seriously flawed” and “procedurally unfair”. This was presented as a serious reverse for the Government and another delaying obstacle for nuclear to overcome.
We need to keep things in proportion. First, you have to be deaf, blind and daft to claim that there has been no consultation on a nuclear future. The Government received more than 5,000 representations, including from SONE and Greenpeace, before it produced its July 11 statement last year recognising nuclear could make a “significant” contribution to energy policy goals. It’s been inundated with comments since. Nobody can be in any doubt about others’ views.
Second, if the next generation of nuclear power stations is to be built by private enterprise, the question of nuclear economics is surely for the companies and their shareholders. What is of legitimate public interest is the financial framework within which nuclear profits will be made. We have not yet had that. In fact, SONE has been loud in seeking clarification. We hope we find them in a new energy policy White Paper, now expected in May. No doubt there will then be extensive public discussion of the proposals.
Third, we are told that the new planning regime (still to be clarified) is to rule out endless challenge to the economics and safety of a licensed reactor. This perhaps explains Greenpeace’s resort to the courts. It has lost the argument and now has only the guerrilla warfare of legal nicety to play with. As a result it can expect more charges of hypocrisy for spurning the one technology that could combat global warming.
As for delay, let us not forget that we are probably still three years away from the licensing of reactor for building in the UK. In these circumstances, the appearance of the White Paper in May, a delay of two months, seems neither here nor there.
DTI CALM AND CONSIDERED
The official response to Mr Justice Sullivan’s judgement was encouraging. The DTI stated: “This judgement is about the process of consultation, not the principle of nuclear power.
We will, of course, consult further.
“Tackling climate change takes leadership, taking on tough long-term choices. This is why we continue to believe nuclear power has a role to play in cutting emissions and helping to give this country the energy security it needs. This is why we will press on with publication of the Energy White Paper and why we are confident in the strength of our arguments to engage in further consultation “Over the next two decades the UK is likely to need around 25GW of new electricity generation capacity. We need as much of this as possible to be low carbon. Everyone involved in this debate needs to answer how we do that. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away.”
Get with it, Greens
In earlier interventions, the Greens got it in the neck for their rejection of nuclear power. David Miliband, Environment Secretary, said environmentalists would have to reconsider their position on the subject. There would be tough choices for politicians, businessmen and environmentalists if environmental goals were to be reached.
Patrick Moore, co-founder and for 15 years leader of Greenpeace, said “the only significant obstacle facing a greater reliance on nuclear energy is the wrong-headed opposition by activist groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. These groups use misinformation to scare the public into believing nuclear energy is unsafe. They want fossil fuel and nuclear plants phased out, falsely claiming that conservation, efficiency and renewables alone will provide sufficient energy to power the UK’s cities and manufacturing sectors.
“Once people see nuclear energy for what it truly is – safe, reliable, baseload power with no greenhouse gas emissions – they will wholeheartedly support their Government’s forward-thinking policy. Then the engineers and scientists can get on with their job of building an energy infrastructure that makes it possible to reduce the use of fossil fuels and the threat of climate change”.
Finally, Tony Blair told the World Economic Forum in Davos that nuclear power had to be part of the future energy mix - “I don’t think we will tackle climate change and energy security effectively unless nuclear power is part of it”.
WIND TOO EXPENSIVE
Wind power, the mainstay of the greens’ lowcarbon strategy, suffered a severe blow towards the end of January from Ofgem, the energy regulator. In a memo to the Government, now reviewing its support regime – the Renewables Obligation - it said the existing scheme was too expensive. It was already adding £7 a year to household electricity bills and would cost domestic consumers about £20 a year by 2015.
Over 25 years it would cost them about £32bn.
In spite of this, it said the scheme had not met renewable electricity generation targets, was an expensive way of cutting carbon emissions and had yet to encourage the development of new technologies.
The Government wants to give different levels of support to different renewables technologies, but Ofgem wants a scheme where companies bid for long-term contracts with fixed rates of return and the level of support linked to the wholesale price of electricity.
Miserly return
That was not the end of it. The New Civil Engineer reported on February 8 that in the first three weeks of operation an £11,500 wind turbine had generated a mere 27p-worth of electricity for Large and Associates, London-based engineering consultants.
John Large, a director, calculated it would take his firm 2,457 years to break even on his investment.
He refuted the idea that his site was not windy enough. “I’ve had my roof blown off twice”, he said “so I know how good the wind is here”.
Prophecy fulfilled
The Union for the Co-ordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE) in Europe, has just reported on the November 4 grid crash that blacked out 15m consumers from Portugal to the Balkans – Europe’s worst ever electricity failure.
It attributes a great deal of blame to wind power for reasons long predicted by British engineers.
It stated: “Tripping of wind generation with an estimated value of 6200MW (approximately 5,400 located in North Germany and 800 in Austria) played the crucial role in decreasing frequency during the first seconds of the disturbance. The negative role of wind generation performance was evident. Due to uncontrolled behaviour of wind generation, it was not possible to maintain a sufficient power exchange balance in some German control areas…”
Danish coup de gras
To underline all these points Dong Energy, one of Denmark’s energy companies, says: “Wind energy can’t solve the energy problem in the near future because it’s too unstable and possibly too expensive”. Denmark, reputedly getting 20% of its power from wind, has the highest electricity prices in Europe and is unlikely to meet its Kyoto targets.
All this begs the question: who does the British Government represent – misguided Greens, the wind subsidy farming industry or the wretched consumer? We hope soon to find the answer. AMBITION GONE MAD
The ambition to be seen as world environment leader creates quite ridiculous posturing. We have seen a lot of it in the UK, and not least is Scotland, but perhaps the European Union takes the biscuit.
If it’s fortunate, only two of its 27 member-states will achieve their Kyoto targets – Sweden and the UK - and any success we have will be due more to luck than good management. Let us leave aside the calculation that, even if every nation in the world met its Kyoto obligations, it would prevent a rise in temperature over the next 50 years of only 0.07degC.
Instead, just marvel at the EU’s determination unilaterally to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 and by 30 per cent if it can secure the agreement of other non-European developed nations. It flies in the face of established performance. It ignores the sick joke that the European carbon trading system has become. And it brushes aside the futility of it all if the developing world, including China and India, are left out.
Ever heard of government by gesture? Of course, you have. That’s what most Western energy/ environmental policies add up to these days.
CREDIBILITY UNDERMINED
On a wider scale, the UN Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change has done little to increase its credibility. Its fourth report, issued on February 2, was preceded by an epidemic of media doom-mongering that is becoming quite ridiculous, even though it narrowed and lowered the ranges of postulated temperature increases and sea level rises over the 21stC.
For a fourth report, aided by the passage time and more research, these revisions would have tended to raise the credibility of the exercise.
Unfortunately, the IPCC did not publish its full report, only a Summary.for Policy Makers. The full report will not appear until May to allow time, we were told, for it to be brought into line with the summary.
This played completely into the hands of those who rubbish the idea of man-made global warming. Here, they said (and we translate), we have a political document, concocted by international civil servants, instead of the Full Monty, which can’t be issued until it has been brought into line with the politically correct summary.
New dissent
All this brought on a wave of global warming scepticism in which two new voices – or new to us – were heard. The first was a joint book The Chilling Stars (Icon), by Nigel Calder, former editor of the New Scientist, and Henrik Svensmark, of the Danish National Space Centre, subtitled “A new theory of climate change”.
It does not rule out some influence by greenhouse gases but points to a much more powerful mechanism – variations in cloud caused by variations in cosmic rays. Fewer cosmic rays (batted away by the sun’s magnetic field) means fewer clouds and a warmer world. More cosmic rays due to a “lazy” sun means more cloud, less warmth.
Svensmark claims to have validated the theory by showing that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water – the building blocks of cloud condensation.
CO2 emissions explained
The other new voice is Dr Halibullo Abdussamatov, head of St Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. He claims that Mars, without a greenhouse created by Martians, has global warming and, together with that on Planet Earth, can only be “a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor – a long-time change in solar irradiance”.
He asserts: “The sun’s increased irradiance over the last century, not CO2 emissions, is responsible for the global warming we’re seeing. And this solar irradiance also explains the great volume of CO2 emissions. Increased solar irradiance warms Earth’s oceans which then triggers the emission of large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. So, the common view that man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations”.
Given the vast expenditures – trillions of pounds – advocated for remedial measures for man-made global warming, you might reasonably think that the Treasuries of the world would unite to try to sort out this divisive global conundrum.
NUCLEAR ENGINEERS UNITE
No entrepreneur is quite as brash as Sir Richard Branson or as addicted to the great publicity event. His latest, with (An inconvenient Truth) Al Gore at his side, has been to offer $25m to anyone who can come up with a way to blunt climate change by removing at least a billion tonnes of CO2 a year from the Earth’s atmosphere.
We earnestly hope that nuclear engineers of the world will unite to claim the prize. According to Patrick Moore, former leader of Greenpeace, writing in the Independent on February 15, the world’s 442 operating nuclear reactors avoid the release of not one but three billion tonnes of CO2 emissions a year.
Sir Richard may not know this. After all, nuclear power is politically incorrect. We suspect he might soon be wiser. One of his judges is Professor James Lovelock, a SONE patron. THE PROPHET RETIRES
For five years, Lord Tombs, a SONE patron, has promoted a prophetic winter debate on electricity supply in the House of Lords. He did so for the last time on February 8 - again to show what the absence of any clear strategy for a fragmented electricity supply industry has done since privatisation.
In the process he pointed to the threat to the security of our electricity supplies because of our dependence on overseas gas, the limitations and cost of wind and other renewables, and the current fad for “distributed generation”. We needed, he said, to move as quickly as possible to other energy sources capable of high load factors and reliable production – coal and nuclear power.
But coal could be regarded only as a mediumterm contributor because it depends on carbon sequestration and storage on a scale not yet achieved. To rely upon an early and affordable solution would be to take unnecessary additional risks. “It follows, therefore”, he said “that we need to pursue the introduction of new nuclear power on an urgent basis”.
We would have to do so in competition with the rest of a world that was rapidly reaching the same conclusion. And the best we could hope for, “given a real sense of urgency”, would be for the first station to come on line in 10 years from now, followed by one a year for perhaps five years and then two annually.
But over and above this he called for: 1 – power strategy to be placed in the hands of a statutory body to avoid the discontinuities of Government 2 – one company to champion and deliver the programme – British Energy (BE) 3 – cash flow incentives similar to Renewable Obligation Certificates, though when the Government ceased to cream off most of BE’s cash reserves, substantial internal financing would be possible.
BE’S INVITIATION
Announcing improved nine-month results on February 13, British Energy launched a process to invite partners for new nuclear generation projects in the UK. It said new stations were critical to meeting security of supply and climate change objectives. As the major UK nuclear generator, it had capabilities and assets to provide the electricity needed and could make a valuable contribution to the country through a new nuclear power programme.
TO CULHAM IN JUNE
This year the annual gathering for members outside London will go to JET Culham on Tuesday. June 19. Our hosts are to lay on a talk to bring us up to date on the fusion project and to give us a conducted tour. There will be a buffet lunch between the talk and the tour.
For catering and security reasons, would all members wishing to attend please inform the Secretary on T 020-8660-8970; or by e-mail –
NEW BRIEFING MATERIAL
We hope that all members have by now received two new briefings notes on renewable sources of energy and the hydrogen economy. A third addition to our portfolio of briefing papers – on nuclear waste – is due out shortly.
These notes join our earlier material on “The Looming Energy Crisis”, a general briefing of nuclear power, the availability of uranium and micro-generation. More briefings are in course of preparation.
Members wishing to order additional copies – they are intended for wide circulation – should get in touch with the Secretary through the contact number or address set out in the previous item. We hope members will use the briefings as an educational tool.
CHAIRMAN’S APPEAL
Our thanks go to the 136 members who have so far contributed £6,842 to SONE funds. These donations have given SONE new lease of life in an important year for nuclear power’s development.
