By John Sauven, Greenpeace UK executive director. This first appeared on Comment is Free.
It really comes as no surprise to see the Financial Times has today reported that Gordon Brown's plans for more nuclear power stations appear to be in total disarray. Government rhetoric has long masked the fact that the ailing, subsidy-gobbling nuclear industry should have been put out of its misery years ago.
Any claim, however laughable, that the government possessed a shred of credibility on this issue was firmly dealt with by the High Court earlier this year. The Court ruled that the earlier self-styled 'consultation' on nuclear power was "unlawful", "manifestly unfair" and "seriously flawed". Since then, the Department for Business, Entrprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) has carried out another consultation but that too is being widely criticised as misleading the public over radioactive waste, economics and the role of nuclear power within the climate debate.
And now, still desperate to pander to the nuclear industry, the government appears to be planning to wreck a European deal to generate 20 per cent of our energy (not just electricity but heat and transport also) from renewables in order to accommodate its nuclear aspirations.
This is the crux of it. As the government masquerades its support for nuclear power as a genuine solution for tackling climate change, the real reason has suddenly become clear. Gordon Brown is desperately trying to safeguard an ideological obsession with market mechanisms, over and above any other way of driving the necessary change. That's not just unfortunate; it also risks actively undermining the real solutions which are needed.
Arguing that achieving the EU renewables targets is undesirable because it might threaten the price of carbon in the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is frankly perverse and astonishingly short-sighted. As the leaked document revealed, "meeting the 20 per cent renewables target crucially undermines the scheme's [ETS] credibility... and reduces the incentives to invest in other carbon technologies like nuclear power". Far from helping stop climate change, nuclear power remains the single biggest obstacle to a clean energy future.
It's not just over renewables and ETS that the government's thinking is left wanting. If you take into account the inherent and unsolved problem of dealing with radioactive waste, the shortage of a skilled nuclear workforce necessary for safety and the fact that nuclear could only, at best, reduce 4 per cent of CO2 emissions in 20 years time then it is clear there is much more to wreck the nuclear agenda.
Nuclear waste remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years - yet Brown's government is still attempting to fudge this hugely dangerous issue. There still isn't any solution to dealing with radioactive waste. As well as the fact that 'deep geological disposal' - which basically translates as putting it all in a big hole in the ground - remains technically uncertain and ethically questionable, there are many unanswered questions.
It will no doubt prove nigh-on impossible to identify a "willing community", who "volunteers" for such a facility in their neighbourhood, and there are concerns about how such a partnership might work in practice. The most recent reports would also seem to show that, even behind closed doors, the government is at a possible impasse. The Treasury is resisting plans to invite communities to come forward to bid for the right to house the waste, amid fears that only one will come forward and hold them to ransom - the ever enthusiastic Cumbrian council of Copeland - home to the troubled Sellafield plant - and this area was considered unsuitable. This key issue could further ruin any plans to create more new waste and stop them dead in their tracks.
Efforts to build more nuclear reactors are being severely undermined further still by the simple fact that the required technical staff to ensure safety do not exist. Attempts to recruit have failed and many of the existing staff are fast approaching retirement, leaving just five inspectors to undertake the work of forty. This means that any proposal to give the green light to nuclear has to be put on hold.
So with the plans for 'new build' haemorrhaging, it is all the more disturbing that the government's imprudent and bloody minded approach should threaten to kill any meaningful development of new technologies that really would effectively tackle climate change. If Britain continues with its current focus it will miss the opportunity presented by the vital EU renewable energy deal and face a massive struggle in the longer term.
Instead, the government should embrace the targets Tony Blair helped to establish and set out a strategic vision for British energy generation with an ambitious policy framework and clear commitments to decisive action. Brown's priority must be on creating certainty for investors in new technologies, giving them the necessary confidence to begin an urgent shift to renewables, and leaving this antiquated nuclear power in the last century where it belongs.
