The Friendly Atom
NuclearSpin
On February 15, Tony Blair’s plan to introduce
a new generation of nuclear power stations suffered a serious setback
when the High Court ruled that the consultation carried out by the
government earlier was “misleading” and “seriously
flawed”. Justice Sullivan’s ruling enjoins the government to
canvass public opinion again, causing a likely delay in the publication
of the energy white paper scheduled for March. The judgement is a
significant victory for Greenpeace which, describing it as a sham, had
applied for a judicial review of the consultation process.
The landmark ruling closed a chapter that started on January 23, 2006 when the government officially launched the 12-week consultation exercise on the UK’s energy needs, entitled: ‘Our Energy Challenge: Securing Clean, Affordable Energy for the Long Term’. The review officially ended in April, and on July 11, Alistair Darling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, gave the green light to a new generation of nuclear power plants extolling that: “nuclear power would make a ‘significant contribution’ to cutting carbon emissions and to securing Britain’s energy future.”
It is obvious why the Energy Review should have been seen as a cynical PR exercise that gave the appearance of a public debate, since Blair had reportedly made up his mind in November 2005, when he was said to be “convinced” of the pro-nuclear argument; and the pro-nuclear bias of his Cabinet was equally well known.
Nuclear revival in the rest of the world is being led by the G8 countries, that intend to resurrect fast breed reactors – which were earlier scrapped in the UK, France and Germany due to their astronomical costs. To be sure, there is scepticism within the ranks of the G8; Italy and Germany would rather dispense with the option. In the rest of Europe, Sweden wants to phase out its nuclear power plants; Austria and Spain are equally keen to diversify.
Failing to take into account any lessons learned from past mistakes, The Energy Review seemed to have “abolished history” according to an editorial in the Sunday Herald. The same editorial quotes Colin Mitchell, a manager of nuclear policy at the Department of Trade and Industry, saying, “in-depth research into the past performance of nuclear industry is not required to carry out the review.” Supreme disdain for learning anything from the past is evident throughout the report.
Only days prior to the High Court decision, British Energy – a company with a disastrous record and 65% owned by the government – was calling for partners to help build a new generation of nuclear plants by 2016. The company had been rescued from bankruptcy earlier by a government bailout, even as it raked in £622 million profit in the first nine months of the financial year and reactors at four of its sites remain out of action due to a lack of maintenance. While most of the proposed sites for new nuclear plants are owned by British Energy, the private financing approach ensures that in the end, while most of the profits remain private, the costs will for the most part be public. The real price of nuclear energy has never been properly disclosed, partly because the public has been saddled with the massive costs of decommissioning. In the UK alone these costs stand at £50 billion, and since the opening of the first civil nuclear power station at Calder Hall in October 1956, the nuclear industry has received global subsidies of around $1 trillion.
But government is now pushing nuclear power on the grounds that it would be impossible for it to meet its carbon emissions targets otherwise, and, invoking the spectre of terror, on the grounds of ‘energy security’.
Peak Uranium
The claims for carbon-free nuclear energy are undermined by the fact that the industry’s advocates want us to overlook the carbon emissions that are an inevitable part of the uranium extraction process. This is only going to get worse as the higher demand for uranium (both nationally and internationally) makes it necessary for it to be extracted in less refined forms, adding to the emissions. In reporting on energy security and uranium reserves, Jan Willem and Storm van Leeuwen, independent nuclear analysts at Ceedata Consulting, state:
“A new generation of nuclear reactors will increase demand for uranium ore to produce reactor fuel. In 2005 the world nuclear fleet consumed about 68,000 tonnes of natural uranium, mostly from mined sources. At the end of 2005 the world known recoverable uranium resources amounted to about 3.6 million tonnes. These resources show a wide variation in ore grade and accessibility. ... Uranium ore is not an energy resource unless the ore grade is high enough. Below grade 0.02% (U3O8 Uranium Oxide) more energy is required to produce and exploit the uranium fuel than can be generated from it. Falling ore grade leads to rapidly rising CO2 emissions from the nuclear energy cycle. Assuming world nuclear generating capacity remains at 2005 levels, after about 2016 the mean grade of uranium ore will fall significantly from today’s levels, and even more so after 2034. After about 60 years the world nuclear power system will fall off the ‘Energy Cliff’ – meaning that the nuclear system will consume as much energy as can be generated from the uranium fuel. Whether large and rich new uranium ore deposits will be found or not is unknown.”
Even according to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’s sixth report, “the history of nuclear industry gives little confidence about the timescales and costs of new build’; that “nuclear can do nothing to fill the need for...new generating capacity... by 2016, as it simply could not be built in time”; that “uranium mines can only supply just over half the current demand for uranium, and the situation is likely to become more acute”; whilst “nuclear power can justifiably be regarded as a low-carbon source of electricity....the level of emissions associated with nuclear might increase significantly as lower grades of ore are used”; and that “no country in the world has yet solved the problems of long-term disposal of high-level waste. The current work being conducted by CoRWM [Committee on Radioactive Waste Management] will not be sufficient of address the issue”.
If media saturation has been dominated by a crisis of reaching the peak point in oil production – that less oil is left to find than we have already used – the proponents of nuclear power are silent about the nuclear industry’s equally fragile dependency on uranium and the associated insecurities.
As Jan Willem and Storm van Leeuwen state:
“It is inevitable that replacements for uranium fuel will be sought within the lifetime of any new nuclear build in the UK. It is also inevitable that as high grade uranium supplies decrease, the cost of nuclear power will increase along with nuclear CO2 emissions.” And that: “Once high-grade uranium ores are no-longer available, the nuclear industry will rely on uranium and plutonium from military and civil stockpiles. These will last only a few years, and questions remain about the net energy gain from reprocessing these materials. In the future, it is likely that the nuclear industry and governments will look to MOXfuel – a mixture of uranium and plutonium dioxides. In time, the nuclear industry hopes to develop fast breeder reactors fuelled by weapons useable plutonium. The widespread use and production of either fuel has serious implications for nuclear weapons proliferation and the risk of nuclear terrorism.”
Toxic Freedom
While it strives to sell itself as the environment friendly energy option, the nuclear industry seems curiously keen on escaping government regulation. It already caused concern when it started lobbying to lift regulatory constrains through the creation of a new energy agency, independent of government influence, to oversee its operation if a new generation of nuclear plants is to be built. The creation of such a body would free the industry from any kind of enforceable responsibility and enable artificial price hikes. The industry is also shaken by the example of the plant in Olkiluoto, Finland – the first reactor to be built in Western Europe in the past two decades – causing financial losses to its builder Areva by running wildly over budget. The reactor caused losses of £180 million in the first half of the year alone, despite the government expediting its construction through a “streamlined” process that kept public consultation to a minimum.
More alarmingly for the UK, the idea of self regulation has been supported by Dieter Helm, of the Oxera consultancy, an advisor to the Blair government.
In most debate on the nuclear question, the toxic issue of radioactive waste is overlooked. The |