Sarah Arnott, The Independent 24 Feb 09;
Why are we asking this now?
Because as The Independent reported yesterday four of the country’s leading green activists have overcome a lifetime’s opposition to warn of the dire consequences of not building more nuclear power stations.
Scientific evidence about the environmental impact of burning coal, gas and oil has overcome concerns about safety issues, the build-up of radioactive waste and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
So Stephen Tindale, a former director of Greenpace; Lord Chris Smith of Finsbury, the chairman of the Environment Agency; Mark Lynas, author of the Royal Society’s science book of the year; and Chris Goodall, a Green Party activist and prospective parliamentary candidate, are now all lobbying in favour of their erstwhile bete noir.
What nuclear capacity do we have at the moment?
Nuclear power currently accounts for about a fifth of the UK’s electricity, compared with the 35 per cent from coal and 35 per cent from gas. There are 19 reactors in 10 different power stations across the country. But the fleet is ageing. The last two Magnox power stations, now under the control of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency (NDA), have already had their lives extended once and will both be turned off by 2012 at the latest. Of the remaining eight nuclear plants – owned by British Energy (BE) – all except the one reactor at Sizewell in Suffolk are due to be shut down by 2023. BE is working on plans to extend lifespans, but at least two have already been extended once.
Why do we need more?
Partly to replace the obsolete nuclear capacity. Left to itself, the proportion of UK electricity provided by the nuclear sector will be down to single digits by 2018, and in 15 years only one reactor will remain in operation. But nuclear is not the only dwindling supply. Some eight gigawatts – equivalent to about six power stations – of coal-fired generating capacity will be out of action by 2015 as Europe’s clean-air directive bites and older facilities prove uneconomic to upgrade. Taken together, the UK needs to replace a third of its electricity generating capacity in the next 15 years. Even plans for seven gigawatts of new gas-fired capacity, expected by 2015, and another five gigawatts recently given the go-ahead by the Government, will not be enough as estimates put energy demand ballooning by anything up to 20 per cent in the coming decade.
How does nuclear fit in with the UK’s overall energy strategy?
Very well. Not only is it able to produce massive amounts of power with no carbon emissions. It is also entirely secure, increasingly important as North Sea oil and gas reserves decline. With the vast majority of the world’s gas held by Russia, Qatar and Iran, we may be left dangerously exposed to the vicissitudes of geopolitics – as the flare-up between Russia and Ukraine last month amply proved.
A private sector-led “nuclear renaissance” is only part of the solution. Targets for renewable energy are being ramped up. Investments in fossil fuels are also continuing. As-yet-unproven carbon capture and storage systems will be central to meeting green criticisms such as those levelled at the controversial coal-fired plant proposed for Kingsnorth in Kent.
What are the plans for nuclear?
So far, EDF is making the running. The French energy giant spent £12.5bn buying British Energy, giving it eight nuclear power stations and one coal-fired facility. It is also committed to building four new nuclear reactors by 2025, two at Hinkley Point in Somerset and two at Sizewell in Suffolk. The first, at Hinkley, could be up and running as early as 2017. The other company with specific plans is E.ON, the German utility. Last month, the company announced it was teaming up with RWE, another German group, to spend £10bn building five reactors, or at least two new power stations, over the next 15 years. The plan is for the first to be online by 2020, the other soon after.
What is it worth?
Lots. Both in terms of the local economy, and in terms of the global market, nuclear is a big prize. Potential suppliers from all over the world are lining up for a piece of the action. GDF Suez and Iberdrola, from France and Spain respectively, are making moves to take on E.ON and EDF. Rolls-Royce, Balfour Beatty, the builder, and Areva, the French reactor maker, say they expect to create up 15,000 jobs in the sector between them. But the UK is just the start.
Nuclear power is finding favour across the world, and as the havoc wrought by the financial crisis spreads ever wider, the energy sector is a rare case of relative stability. The global civil nuclear industry is currently worth about £30bn a year. But it is expected to swell to £50bn in 15 years’ time. Any company which can prove itself in one place will have the potential to sell its expertise across the world – with much to gain for its home economy.
Is it a big deal that the Green have changed?
Yes and no. Symbolically it is hugely important. Plans for new reactors are still expected to raise hackles but the Green movement’s acknowledgement of nuclear as the lesser of two evils will take away some of the sting. Ironically, it is the environmental agenda that made the economics of commercial nuclear expansion work. Regardless of moral reservations, the cost of nuclear power stations compared with their gas and coal-fired cousins has always been a major factor. But the introduction of a carbon emissions trading mechanism has forced fossil fuel plants to pay for their environmental impact, and the predictable income for nuclear plants provides much-needed clarity for private sector investors.
Are the Greens’ concerns now all answered?
No. There are two main environmental complaints about nuclear, and only one has changed. On the question of safety, accidents such as that at Chernobyl in 1986 caused massive image problems. But accidents are increasingly rare thanks to technical improvements and tight regulations.
The other big issue is waste. While the processing of spent fuel has also come a long way from the early days of the industry, critics emphasise that the basic process is still the same. No way to neutralise defunct fuel rods has yet been found, and the only solution is still to bury them. There are concerns that global expansion will not only boosting uranium mining to destructive levels, but that safe storage locations will also be exhausted.
What happens now?
Before anything can actually be built, the Health and Safety Executive must complete its investigation of the two next-generation reactor technologies that will go into any new plants. The planning process is the other big potential cause of delay. Even the reform of the system and creation of a central Planning Inspectorate to speed through national infrastructure schemes may not help.
But things are moving. EDF already has its plans in hand, and the NDA is in the process of auctioning off sites adjacent to three existing facilities – at Wylfa in Anglesey, Bradwell in Essex and Oldbury in Gloucestershire – for the purposes of new nuclear. The finally auction itself is due in April, with all the big names expected to be involved in the bidding. Once those three sites are sold, the NDA will start the process for another piece of land at Sellafield.
So is nuclear expansion an unalloyed good?
Yes
*In an increasingly power-hungry world, the generation capacity of nuclear is potentially enormous
*Nuclear reactors are the best way to produce lots of electricity, reliably, with no carbon emissions
*Except for the purchase of uranium, nuclear power stations offer absolute security of supply
No
*Safety records may be far better than they were in the early days, but accidents can always happen
*Despite technical advances, digging a hole is still the only way to get rid of spent fuel rods
*More countries, buying more uranium, means more mining and more chance of nuclear proliferation
Nuclear power? Yes please...
Leading greens join forces in a major U-turn
Steve Connor, The Independent 23 Feb 09;
Britain must embrace nuclear power if it is to meet its commitments on climate change, four of the country’s leading environmentalists – who spent much of their lives opposing atomic energy – warn today.
The one-time opponents of nuclear power, who include the former head of Greenpeace, have told The Independent that they have now changed their minds over atomic energy because of the urgent need to curb emissions of carbon dioxide.
They all take the view that the building of nuclear power stations is now imperative and that to delay the process with time-consuming public inquiries and legal challenges would seriously undermine Britain’s promise to cut its carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
The volte-face has come at a time when the Government has lifted its self-imposed moratorium on the construction of the next generation of nuclear power stations and is actively seeking public support in the selection of the strategically important sites where they will be built by 2025.
The intervention is important as it is the first time that senior environmental campaigners have broken cover and publicly backed nuclear power.
It will be a welcome boost to the Government, which is expecting strong protests about the new generation of nuclear power stations at the planning stage.
The four leading environmentalists who are now lobbying in favour of nuclear power are Stephen Tindale, former director of Greenpeace; Lord Chris Smith of Finsbury, the chairman of the Environment Agency; Mark Lynas, author of the Royal Society’s science book of the year, and Chris Goodall, a Green Party activist and prospective parliamentary candidate.
Mr Tindale, who ran Greenpeace for five years until he resigned in 2005, has taken a vehemently anti-nuclear stance through out his career as an environmentalist. “My position was necessarily that nuclear power was wrong, partly for the pollution and nuclear waste reasons but primarily because of the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons,” Mr Tindale said.
“My change of mind wasn’t sudden, but gradual over the past four years. But the key moment when I thought that we needed to be extremely serious was when it was reported that the permafrost in Siberia was melting massively, giving up methane, which is a very serious problem for the world,” he said.
“It was kind of like a religious conversion. Being anti-nuclear was an essential part of being an environmentalist for a long time but now that I’m talking to a number of environmentalists about this, it’s actually quite widespread this view that nuclear power is not ideal but it’s better than climate change,” he added.
None of the four was in favour of nuclear power a decade ago, but recent scientific evidence of just how severe climate change may become as a result of the burning of oil, gas and coal in conventional power stations has transformed their views.
“The issue that has primarily changed my mind is the absolute imperative of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Fifteen years ago we knew less about climate change. We knew it was likely to happen, we didn’t quite realise how fast,” said Lord Smith, who described himself as a long-time sceptic regarding nuclear power.
“What’s happened is that we’ve woken up to the very serious nature of the climate-change problem, the essential task of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and the need to decarbonise electricity production over the course of the next 20 to 30 years,” he said.
Renewable sources of energy, such as wind, wave and solar power, are still necessary in the fight against global warming, but achieving low-carbon electricity generation is far more difficult without nuclear power, Lord Smith said.
Mark Lynas said that his change of mind was also a gradual affair borne out of the need to do something concrete to counter the growing emissions of carbon dioxide created by producing electricity from the burning of fossil fuels. “I’ve been equivocating over this for many years; it’s not as if it’s a sudden conversion, but it’s taken a long time to come out of the closet. For an environmentalist, it’s a bit like admitting you are gay to your parents because you’re kind of worried about being rejected,” Mr Lynas said.
“I’ve been standardly anti-nuclear throughout most of my environmental career. I certainly assumed that the standard mantra about it being dirty, dangerous and unnecessary was correct,” he said.
“The thing that initially pushed me was seeing how long and difficult the road to going to 100 per cent renewable economy would be, and realising that if we really are serious about tackling global warming it the next decade or two then we certainly need to consider a new generation of nuclear power stations.”
The long moratorium on building nuclear power plants in Britain came about largely because of intense lobbying by environmentalists in the 1970s and 1980s – a campaign that may have caused more harm than good, Mr Lynas said.
“In retrospect, it will come to be seen as an enormous mistake for which the earth’s climate is now paying the price. To give an example, the environmentalists stopped a nuclear plant in Austria from being switched on, a colossal waste of money, and instead [Austria] built two coal plants,” he said.
The four will now join the ranks of those like Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser to the Government and now director of the Smith Centre in Oxford, who was sceptical about nuclear power until he was presented with data on the scale of the climate-change problem.
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