SONE’s BUSIEST, MOST PROMISING YEAR SO FAR – AGM REVIEW
We are winning the argument, though there is still a long way to go
before nuclear power is developed. That summarises the consensus of the
46 members who attended SONE’s AGM at the Royal Academy of Engineering
in London on October 27.
The Secretary described it as SONE’s busiest and most promising year
since its formation in 1998. Editors were beginning to ask “Is nuclear
the answer, after all” since Professor James Lovelock, a SONE patron,
came out strongly for nuclear in May followed by Bishop Hugh
Montefiore’s more recent resignation from the trustees of Friends of
the Earth to speak up for nuclear power. SONE was pressing a prudent
four-point action plan, summarised below, if the Government really
meant what it said when it claimed it had not ruled out the nuclear
option.
Reporting a loss on the year of £1,438, compared with an exceptional
profit of £3,780 in 2002-3, the Treasurer, Jim Corner, said that last
year’s profit was due entirely to donations totalling £4,000 in 2003.
Current assets at the bank totalled £8,968.50. The year ended with a
net loss of five members at 274. No changes were proposed to
subscriptions (life member: one payment of £125; ordinary member £25
annually; student £5 annually) but it was hoped members would continue
to help with donations over and above subscriptions.
The chairman, Sir William McAlpine, welcomed Mrs Ann Robinson, former
chairman of Energywatch, the consumer watchdog, as a patron and member
of the committee, and four other new committee members: Dr David
Fishlock, former science editor of the Financial Times; Sir Robert
Malpas, formerly a director of ICI, BP and chairman of Powergen; Martin
Morland, former director of public affairs at BNFL and British
Ambassador to Burma and UN Geneva; and Paul Spare, a retired
professional engineer with the UKAEA, nuclear construction companies
and consultants such as Nuclear Technologies and W S Atkins
The meeting formally re-elected the directors (Sir William, Sir Bernard
Ingham and Jim Corner); the committee – the directors and the five new
members mentioned above plus Robert Armour, Neville Chamberlain, Ken
Jackson, Dr J Dickson Mabon, Keith Parker, Professor J A Simmons and Dr
W L Wilkinson. The auditors, Gary Sargeant and Co, of Swanley, were
also reappointed.
Two members, Lord Jenkin of Roding and Malcolm Grimston, an associate
fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, gave
stimulating talks respectively about the Parliamentary battle to
preserve nuclear as a real option and how SONE might win the public
debate. Their talks are summarised below.
THE YEAR IN RETROSPECT
Commending the annual report and accounts, which were formally adopted,
the Secretary said Professor Lovelock and Bishop Montefiore had
emboldened others to declare for nuclear in letters to the media. The
anti-nukes no longer had it their own way in the public debate and SONE
members across the country maintained a lively correspondence with the
press refuting nonsense about nuclear.
The so-called renewables alternative was looking increasingly
threadbare. While wind power stations were increasing in number there
was widespread opposition, now all the more tenacious since the Deputy
Prime Minister had rigged the planning guidance in favour of wind. Next
to no energy savings seemed to be emanating from whatever the
Government’s energy conservation campaign amounted to; electricity
demand continued to increase at its relentless post-war rate of 1-1.5%
a year.
Since greenhouse gas emissions may well have gone up for the third year
running, the Government were now on the defensive and officials seemed
to recognise that there would have to be a review of energy policy
after the election. Some headway was being made with the parties in
persuading them of the need for a plan to deal with an energy crisis.
It was unrealistic to suppose that any political party, apart from the
largely unknown New Party, would go nuclear before the election. That
could virtually be guaranteed, if there were no power cut through
shortage of generating capacity, since politicians felt Greenpeace
would throw a lot of campaigning money against any party which declared
for nuclear before the election. This reinforced the need for
Greenpeace to come clean about its funding.
A four point plan
SONE believed it was now a case of not whether the Government would
have to embark on a nuclear expansion programme but when. SONE’s job
was to force the pace. In particular, we needed to establish nuclear’s
competitiveness beyond doubt since politicians generally assumed it to
be uneconomic notwithstanding the Royal Academy of Engineering study
which placed it more or less level pegging with gas. The Tories had to
be disabused of the idea that, in seeking meetings with them,
SONE was looking for subsidy instead of fair play.
Not much high profile help could be expected from the nuclear industry
since it was now under the Government’s thumb. We should, however, seek
independent comparative assessments of the costs of different forms of
generation. We needed a body of research establishing nuclear’s
competitiveness.
For nuclear to remain a serious option, it was also necessary to as a matter of prudence to press the Government for:
the licensing of a range of competitive reactor designs for the UK
amendment of the rules governing planning inquiries to prevent
the continuous challenging of a licensed reactor design as a delaying
tactic
an end to the discrimination against nuclear in the form of the climate change levy
the designation of a site (on an existing nuclear site) for a long-term waste repository.
We needed also to help prepare local opinion at existing or recently
abandoned nuclear sites to demand a new reactor immediately after the
election. The trade union movement was likely to be helpful. It would
also be helpful if, after the election, electricity suppliers were to
apply for a licence to build a reactor.
Avoid scaremongering
The Secretary said the threat of interruptions to electricity supply if
Government policy continued on its dangerous course could only
increase. There was an underlying concern among students of supply
about whether there would be enough generating capacity in the event of
a hard winter and it was important that SONE drew attention to the
risks being run without appearing to be scaremongering.
Politicians’ sangfroid on gas
The Secretary added that SONE had made little headway with politicians
of the three main parties over the risks to Britain of relying on gas
for up to 80% of its energy supplies from politically unstable areas.
Their sangfroid in the face of the certain knowledge that if there was
a blackout the incumbent Energy Minister would fall was remarkable.
They were also astonishingly relaxed about the import bill when
Britain’s existing trade deficit was running at £10-12bn per quarter.
Other highlights of the year
1. The House of Lords had emerged as the only Parliamentary forum where common sense could be relied upon in energy policy
2. SONE’s new professionally designed website was a major
improvement and a success, but members’ contributions via the Secretary
(on
) were always needed to keep it fresh.
3. An excellent general meeting for members at Urenco,
Capenhurst, on June 8 brought, after a tour of the plant, a revealing
presentation by Bertrand Barre, of Areva, on the new FrancoGerman
reactor being built in Finland.
4. Relations had been established with the All-Party
Parliamentary Group on Nuclear Power, NationalGridTransco (over the
supply situation), the TUC and the bench of bishops of the Church of
England. SONE also had a continuing and valuable relationship with the
director general of the CBI
5. New promotional leaflets and message cards had been produced
and it was hoped members would distribute them where they were
likely to have an impact. The website also carried “flyers” – pithy
arguments that could be printed out for distribution.
6. On SONE’s behalf, the Secretary had addressed a number of
audiences (Gaia Conference on Global Warming and Climate Change,
Saddleworth anti-wind farm rally, Cirencester Science and Tech Assn;
Energy Renewables and Energy Efficiency Expo);written articles; and
taken part in a number of broadcasts. His objective had been to make
audiences think about nuclear in a different way.
7. Three committee meetings had been held during the year and Sir
William had presided over 11 lunches with CBI, TUC, Labour and
Conservative politicians, NatGridTransco, CofE bishops, journalists,
officers of the All-Party Parliamentary Group and energy experts. Thanks
The Secretary concluded by proposing a vote of thanks, carried with
acclaim, to the Nuclear Industry Association, with whom SONE had
quarterly co-ordinating lunches, the BNES, BNFL (who had provided the
venue and hospitality for the AGM), British Energy, Sticky Media for
their wonderful work on the website, Nuclear Issues, the Treasurer for
his tremendous support, and the chairman and his staff. Without Sir
William’s generosity and hospitality SONE would be much less effective
and the nuclear cause owed him a great debt of gratitude.
GLOBALWARMING V SECURITY
In the course of the discussion, it was contended that global warming
rather than security of supply was nuclear’s most potent argument. But
it was also clear that Bertrand Barre’s point at the general meeting at
Capenhurst in June – “The most expensive energy is no energy” – made a
deep impression.
Concern was expressed at the performance of the media and especially
the BBC which was described as “a lost cause” - as were Margaret
Beckett and Patricia Hewitt, respectively Environment and Industry
Secretaries.
On safety, security and risk, attention was drawn to nuclear’s record
for the safe handling of waste and decommissioning and the comparative
risks as between nuclear and gas. It was reported that a recent US
Society of Mechanical Engineers’ survey of nuclear power in the USA had
drawn attention not only to multiple layers of protection for the
public and plant employees but also the safety culture inside nuclear
installations. Nuclear’s record for accidental injury (at 0.22 per
200,000 workers’ hours) was 18 times better than that for the average
for manufacturing industry as a whole.
LORD JENKIN: LORDS AT WORK
Lord Jenkin, a former Minister for Energy, set out three problems in
seeking to influence policy in the House of Lords. The media took
virtually no interest in its debates; the Government was represented by
junior Ministers with little room for manoeuvre; and Backbench peers
had little research help, though they had been well briefed by the
nuclear industry during the passage of the Energy Bill. In these
circumstances, it was necessary to keep hammering away – consistently
and persistently - as SONE did. Sooner or later some impact would be
made.
Nuclear presented additional obstacles in Parliament. There was a deep
bias against it on the part of Margaret Beckett and Patricia Hewitt who
seemed to have absorbed Greenpeace propaganda with their mother’s milk.
Nuclear also had to contend with the legacy of the 1997 abandonment of
a nuclear repository at Sellafield, the collapse of British Energy as a
result of the Ofgem price regime and idealism on renewables.
In seeking to preserve nuclear as a real option, supportive peers had
tried to concentrate their fire. Lord Tombs had instituted an annual
energy debate, making the point that a long term energy policy could
not be run on the basis of short term regulation and economic
instruments.
Annual report required
It would be wrong to claim too much from the passage of the Energy
Bill, but nuclear supporters managed to get included a clause requiring
the Government to report annually on the energy situation, including
nuclear. The effect of that achievement should not be under-estimated.
“I think we have played our part in helping to foster an awareness, a
realisation that nuclear is the only way forward”, he said. “Security
of supply is now accepted as top priority. And keeping the lights on is
a very important way of getting the public to understand what we mean
by security of supply”.
In discussion, which concentrated on keeping the issue before the
public, some saw hope in the attitude of the water supply regulator
who, in recognising the importance of supply, had adapted the
regulatory regime accordingly. Professor Simmons also reported in
detail on his remarkable, not to say bizarre, experiences as a Michael
Meacher appointee on the committee looking into the health effects of
low level emitters in the body. These were set out in the October
Newsletter and so are not repeated here.
HOW TO WIN PUBLIC DEBATE
For the closing hour, Malcolm Grimston took as his text the Secretary’s
brief for his talk: “How do we get the politicians to listen to common
sense and act?”. He argued that the fault line was not between the
nuclear industry and politicians but between the old “establishment”
and the new “distributed democracy”.
Over recent decades there had been a major shift in approach from the
broadly utilitarian, greatest good for greatest number, attitude to the
notion that we all had inalienable rights that should not be overridden
whatever the benefits for others. The old “democratic dictatorship”
approach lingered on in the form, for example, of banning foxhunting
but increasingly the rights of the individual dominated – eg roads
programmes, MMR, BSE and radiation.
Society was increasingly influenced by feelers rather than thinkers –
that is, more by individual case studies than by statistics, leading
from the old coherence driven from the centre to a more pluralistic
society with single-issue pressure groups and direct action. The two
had different moral stances. Whereas the old utilitarians saw
economic development and risks-for-financialtradeoffs serving the
greater good, the new distributed democracy argued that poor people
should not be allowed to trade health for jobs and that future
generations could not give consent.
The key to working in the new moral climate was trust and the key to trust was empathy.
Essentially, the nuclear industry talked about costs and such concepts
as climate change; nuclear opponents talked about people. The basic
rational case for nuclear had still to be made and factual accuracies
challenged, but more diverse groups of people were needed to connect
with groups with whom the nuclear industry (and politicians) had
largely lost touch.
Winning the argument might require a softening of tone for the key
information needed was not primarily about uranium, carbons or CO2 but
“emotional information” from folk not so impressed with their own
cleverness that they had lost touch with people’s real hopes and fears.
People needed to hear from someone they thought they could trust.
Petition
The Secretary reported that a Cheshire member, Dr G R Plumb
(
) as a BE shareholder, was organising a petition
to the Prime Minister to confirm his faith in nuclear power as
forthcoming president of the EU and G8 nations.
