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Written by SONE
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Sunday, 01 July 2007 |
NUCLEAR IS THE POSITIVE, ECONOMICAL APPROACH TO 21stC LIFE
Opponents of nuclear power have entered their Micawber phase. They are
waiting for something to turn up before the Government’s consultation
ends in October that will give them new arguments to delay the
inevitable.
No one can argue that the Government is denying them an opportunity to come up with a killer point. Most of its 18 questions on its 207-page consultative document include the words: “Do you agree or disagree with the Government’s views? What are your reasons? Are there any significant considerations that you believe are missing? If so, what are they?” It is very open-ended.
The difficulty for nuclear opponents is that no rational person believes that their combination of renewables, energy efficiency and economy, unproven carbon sequestration and a vast extension of micro-generation, to the exclusion of nuclear energy, can power Britain. Instead, their recipe for the future seems likely to make energy supply less reliable and increase carbon emissions from coal and gas.
This in turn raises the question as to whether they are serious about reducing carbon emissions or, if they are, whether their aim is to achieve it by ruining the economy, thereby reducing economic activity and impoverishing the people.
Certainly, theirs is negative, restrictive approach that seeks to deprive people of cars and air travel and no doubt gadgetry (see below), and to impose on them the costs and uncertainties, for example, of wind power, micro-generation and carbon sequestration. On the other hand, while not the total answer, given our heavy reliance on fossil fuels, nuclear is a positive, liberating and economical approach to 21st Century life and longer term could eliminate domestic and transport carbon through all-electric homes and cars.
The Government’s consultation is really about the kind of life we want to lead – a future more secure in terms of power supply, progressively less carbon intensive and one which allows us to keep more of our hard earned money because, taking everything into account, nuclear electricity is the cheapest option. Nuclear offers us the long term means to spread prosperity without damaging the planet.
Anti-nukes would have their work cut out to frustrate such a future if we were more ebullient about what nuclear has to offer. Its advantages are not something the ordinary citizen can lightly turn down. Once the consultative process is over, we hope the Government will start to redress the balance of the argument after several decades of abdicating the field to hostile Greens.
THE “CRUCIAL” SIX MONTHS
One of the welcome consequences of the change of Prime Minister is that Gordon Brown has reinstated Malcolm Wicks as Energy Minister.
After a spell as Science Minister, he is the right man in the right place at the right time since he piloted the 2006 Energy Review. He has also immediately recognised the high stakes involved in the current “crucial” consultative process In an interview with the Guardian on July 19, he said the ability to meet the challenge of climate change and the geopolitics of energy supply will be as important to national security as the Armed Forces. “No one wants the lights to be going out
in 20 years’ time”, he added. “I am not saying they will. They won’t. But they won’t because of the decisions we will be taking over the rest of this year”.
This is a big statement since it is going to be touch and go over the next decade whether we have enough power or whether, if supply looks particularly grim, we shall reduce carbon emissions. But it seems reasonable to suppose that, for all his efforts to present himself as openminded in consulting the public, Mr Wicks, the first of seven Labour Energy Ministers to meet SONE and address our AGM, knows which side his bread is buttered.
Gordon Brown pro nuclear
In fact, Gordon Brown buttered it for him when he answered questions for the first time as Prime Minister on July 4. Asked by Sir Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat leader, whether the Government would abandon its “headlong rush” towards a new generation of nuclear power stations, he said: “Surely the events of the past year (when Russia cut off gas supplies to, among others, the Ukraine) should make it clear to everyone that we cannot rely on an energy policy that makes us wholly dependent on one or two countries or regions. That is why we have made the decision to continue with nuclear power and why the security of our energy supply is best safeguarded by building a new generation of nuclear power stations”.
DODGY WORLD OUTLOOK
Mr Brown will be all the more wary of Russian intentions after the London/Moscow tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats over Moscow’s refusal to extradite a former KGB agent, wanted by our police in connection with the polonium poisoning of a Russian in London. Mr Putin also withdrew some official visa facilities and co-operation against terrorism.
If this is not quite a return to the Cold War, relations are more frigid and Mr Putin is inclined to throw his energy weight about for political reasons. He looks less and less like a man we can rely on for a substantial fraction of our gas supplies and is one reason why replacing old nuclear power stations makes eminent good sense.
Oil/gas shortage by 2015?
There are two other reasons: oil and gas. Six years ago the oil price averaged about $23 a barrel. This month it climbed to the higher $70s after falling back a year ago to $65 - $15-20 more than forecast. Of course, these figures might not be sustained. High prices stimulate prospecting and development which, together with any reduction in economic activity, bring prices down. But, as some economists point out, each new platform since the 1970s has led to higher prices which have endured – and now China and India, with 2.3bn citizens between them, are economically on the march, and a quick march at that.
The other is a 420-page report, Facing the Hard Truths about Energy, from the National Petroleum Council that reports to the US Government. It has reinforced earlier warnings by the International Energy Agency by reporting that “the global supply of oil and natural gas from the conventional sources is unlike to meet growth in demand over the next 25 years” and that oil supply could possibly be a “significant challenge as early as 2015”.
AND GADGETRY TOO……
As if all this were not enough, we have just read a summary of an Energy Saving Trust study, The Ampere Strikes Back, about the consequences of the boom in new home entertainment technology.
Within three years, it says consumer electronics will become the biggest single user of domestic electricity in Britain and by 2020 will overtake lighting and “white goods”, such as fridges, freezers and washing machines, in home energy use. It will then account for 45% of UK domestic use of electricity, requiring 14 power stations to keep us entertained.
This growth, it says, is undermining efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. Worse still, more sophisticated equipment tends to consume more power and in some cases is left on stand-by because the only way of switching it off is at the wall socket.
Against this international and domestic background, the anti-nukes look ever more eccentric – and perverse.
THE GREAT OFGEM U-TURN
Five years ago, Ofgem the gas and electricity regulator, was preoccupied with the short term. It could not slash electricity prices fast enough. It cut wholesale prices by 40%, though with little benefit for the domestic consumer. It brought generators – coal, gas, oil and nuclear – to the verge of bankruptcy and British Energy, the nuclear generator with no domestic consumers to milk, had to be rescued by the Government on confiscatory terms.
Now it has written to power companies announcing it wants to provide “a longer term strategic contribution to the sector”. In other words, it has at last discovered the limitation of markets in securing supplies longer term – as concerns about an energy gap by 2015 underline. It says it “will not prescribe strategies for companies” and that what it wants are “initial thoughts” looking significantly further into the future than required for existing five-year price reviews.
To some commentators, this looks like a crabwise move towards bringing some strategic direction to the market, starting with asking the gas and power suppliers what would be possible and acceptable.
There is a long way to go yet, but perhaps we are beginning to see a dawning realisation that as a nation we are in a dangerous no-man’s-land when it comes to reconciling the market with a Government’s responsibility to make sure that the lights stay on.
LACKADAISICAL
If this is evidence of the Government belatedly gearing itself up for the nuclear age, we can only still report a shockingly lackadaisical approach to providing the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate with the tools to do the reactor licensing job.
In the Commons on July 6, John Hutton, the new Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory reform – it used to be the DTI – revealed he hadn’t a clue about licensing staffing or recruitment, presumably because the NII is the responsibility of the Ministry of Work and Pensions. But since licensing is so crucial to nuclear’s development, we would have expected the Industry Minister to know of any hold up.
As Alan Duncan, his Tory Shadow, put it: “Potential investors are dismayed that very few people in the NII are allocated to the licensing process. We can see now there will be delays in building new power stations because, right from the start, there will be a licensing bottleneck” Mr Hutton promised to look into the Treasury’s 10-month delay in authorising money for inspector recruitment. Let us hope he releases the log jam immediately because the Government revealed on July 5 that four reactors are eligible for generic design assessment (GDA). They are from Atomic Energy of Canada, Areva, GEHitachi and Toshiba-Westinghouse.
The Government said that, if the reactors passed the “detailed and lengthy” first phase of the GDA, involving an assessment of the safety case, they would proceed to a more detailed examination, but the number of designs examined would be likely to be reduced to three because of resource constraints.
FUEL FOR THOUGHT
Britain has enough uranium and plutonium in store – 60,000 tonnes – to fuel three 1,000MW reactors for their scheduled life of 60 years. This is the conclusion of a study for the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency.
It says the materials could be declared as waste, stored or processed for re-use. Any failure to reuse them, assuming existing power stations are replaced, would go down as one of the greatest acts of Governmental profligacy in history, denying the nation the benefits of a multi-billion pound asset at just the time they were needed.
We have to ask ourselves why a Government addicted to spin has not been proclaiming a windfall for the people with a value measured in telephone numbers. The answer, of course, is that the body politic is as yet incapable of displaying the slightest enthusiasm about nuclear power. At best it is still seen as a necessary evil, however intrinsically valuable it is in terms of economic power, security of supply and carbon reduction.
Given the dismantling of the nuclear industry over the last 10 years – and the possibility that Westinghouse under Japanese control will pick up orders in the land that once owned it – we had better make sure those 60,000 tons of uranium and plutonium are not dumped.
THE ANTIS ARE TRYING
This month has brought two examples of efforts to put a damper on the gathering pace of nuclear development.
First, the New Scientist drew attention to the 18- month delay in the construction of the Finnish European reactor – the Areva design – as evidence that the “much-touted resurgence of the European nuclear industry is already running into trouble”. So we went to horse’s mouth at Olkiluoto for information.
Yes, delays in construction, started in 2005, and manufacture of the main coolant lines had put back the estimated commercial operation back from 2009 to 2010-11. But that estimate, made last December, had not changed this month.
The site’s labour force now numbers 1,700 (45% Finnish), working two shifts, and 1,600 subcontractors from 28 countries are involved. The manufacture of all large-scale components for both the reactor and turbine islands is in progress and factory acceptance tests have started. Speed tests for the turbines’ rotors and the balancing of the rotors have been completed. Large components for the turbine plant will be delivered this autumn and the reactor coolant system next summer.
The two parts of the reactor containment steel liner have been welded together and erected in place. Preparations are being made for the installation of three condensers in the turbine building. Cabling is about to start in the switchgear building and building of the power lines is in progress.
Nuclear renaissance “myth”
Then the Oxford Research Group produced a paper for the Joseph Rowntree trust that said the worldwide nuclear “renaissance” is a myth. It had little chance of reducing carbon emissions but would add dangerously to proliferation and terrorist risks.
For nuclear power to make any significant contribution to reducing global carbon emissions over the next two generations the Group said nearly 3,000 new reactors would be required – one a week for the next 60 years. Only 25 are currently being built, with 76 planned and 162 proposed, many of which, it claimed, are unlikely to be constructed.
Describing nuclear as a “flawed and dangerously counter-productive” element in energy policy, it added: “The question is whether in the 21stC the security risks associated with civil nuclear power can be managed or not? Society has to decide whether or not the risks of proliferation and nuclear terrorism in a world with many nuclear power reactors are acceptable?” So we are back to scaremongering and the red flag syndrome of the early railways.
PORRITT PEEVED
We can reliably report that we have seriously annoyed a persistent opponent of nuclear power.
In a letter on June 11 your Secretary, on behalf of the committee, invited the Sustainable Development Commission, through its chairman, Sir Jonathon Porritt, to consider its position since twice within 12 months the Government has rejected its anti-nuclear line.
“This does not seem to be a viable basis for the Commission’s continued operation as an adviser to the Government at a cost of more than £3m a year”, we said. “It is clear that the Government does not believe the Commission’s contention that there is ‘widespread agreement by respected analysts that a viable energy future is possible in the UK without new nuclear power’”.
Your Secretary also sent Sir Jonathon copies of SONE briefing on renewable sources of energy and micro-generation in both of which we conclude that his Commission does not know what it is talking about. He added: “You may therefore feel that now is the time to wrap up its operations before it suffers further humiliation, not to mention posing a continuing threat to Britain’s economic future”.
Sir Jonathon replied: “One always hopes that people of your standing in society have rather better things to do than to write such utterly pathetic letters. But just to say that this has been duly noted and duly disregarded.” Oh dear. Another sensitive plant.
FoE FINANCING
Have you ever wondered where another nuclear opponent, the Friends of the Earth, get their money from? Like Sir Jonathon, it is from the public purse.
Last year they got euros 635,000 from the European Commission. That, together with funds from the German, Austrian and Dutch Environment Ministries and from the UN Environment Programme, meant that they are primarily a taxpayer-funded operation since those contributions represent more than half their income.
Perhaps the taxpayer should be asked if he or she thinks this is money well spent, given the FoE’s espousal of most daft ideas current in the energy field.
AGM
Again for your diary – the SONE AGM will be held at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London SW1, on Tuesday, October 23 12noon to 3pm.
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