Secrets and lies

Posted by nathan - 18 January 2008 at 10:33am - 22 Comments

It really doesn't come as any surprise to learn that, whilst Gordon Brown's government were claiming to be having an honest and open conversation about the future of nuclear power with the British public, secret deals had already been done in Whitehall which would pave the way for a new fleet of reactors.

At the weekend, the Independent on Sunday revealed that, whilst the first nuclear consultation (which was slammed by the High Court for being flawed, misleading and inadequate) was underway, Brown's energy adviser Geoffrey Norris held at least nine secret meetings at Number 10 with the bosses of nuclear energy companies such as EDF, Eon and BNFL.

In a desperate attempt to keep this under wraps, the government at first tried to block details of the meetings from being released under the Freedom of Information Act. But it turns out that no official records were kept of the discussions with the companies, which stand to profit from Brown's announcement last week, and no one seems to recall the details of what was discussed.

A little suspect, I'm sure you'll agree - and rather worrying that certain advisers can operate outside the rules of government accountability. But then again, to embrace nuclear power as a solution to climate change and energy security is outside the realms of reality and common sense.

When you consider that government support for new nuclear power stations is based on a sham consultation and on mantra rather than fact, it stands to reason that the heady mix of government incompetence and big nuclear business should collude to contrive what could be the worst energy policy decision for a generation.

Article tagged as: BNFL, EDF, eon, government, nuclear power, public consultations
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Nuclear expertise is scarce in the UK, never mind countries like India, China and Brazil. Does the UK government seriously expect these rapidly developing nations to use renewables if we go down the nuclear route?

If they don't use nuclear or renewables, they'll continue using cheap, plentiful coal instead. And of course, much of their energy is used in making products for export to the UK and other rich nations anyway.

To save ourselves from abrupt and irreversable climate change we must invest in renewables for both ourselves and the developing world.

The UK's proposed nuclear strategy is simply suicidal.

By energybeing - 18 January 2008 at 3:29pm

It's pretty obvious that the Government won't listen (not just nuclear power, but ID cards, speed cameras, etc.) but energy companies might.

If you want to help stop nuclear power, and your energy supplier commits to new nuclear build, just switch.

You're no longer tied to any energy provider, so find the one that is committed to green electricty and give them your business.

If enough people dropped thier accounts with E.on (rumor has it they had a deal done even before the government "decided" to support new nuclear build), I think they would drop nuclear pretty quickly.

Maybe even someone like Greenpeace could make information on how to switch suppliers more easily available

By Jimmy_B - 23 January 2008 at 10:08am

I find quite funny the way you critise the uk governemnt and his planning process:
not democratic, it s a view quite difficult to defend when it s wrote by an ungovernemtal organisation who have no accountability and no popular representativity like the english governement.
And for the mantra rather than fact, it s even more funny, most of the green associations and parties are lost in their ambiguities, what s the worst global worming or nuclear power. The nuclear suffers a bad vision because of organisation like greenpeace who used cliches and bad arguments (tchernobyl or nuclear weapons) to influenced the citizens. The fact is that nuclear is efficient (economically and also in space not like renewables), produces few CO2, it s also sure with less dead despite tchernobyl than the dam, the gas oil and coal station. It s also a way to be independant.

Nuclear power station will surely not tackle the global warming because his part on the global energy consumption is very little, but greenpeace forget to say that the impact of renewables is even smaller. A good electricity mix in uk will not be 100 percent nuclear but a good mix between renewables nuclear and fuels.

Because speaking about the worst energy policy of his generation when the actual uk electricity mix is 3/4 of fuels it s a dishonest reflexion.

The main question is who really belives in mantras?

Remy Rachet
planning student in Liverpool University
soory for the spelling i m french, the country of Areva one of the few business specialise in technologies without CO2

By remy - 31 January 2008 at 7:29pm

Hi Jimmy

It's an interesting idea and you're not the first to suggest it. The problem is that pretty much all suppliers use energy from the grid, and so include nuclear in their mix. However, the percentages do vary see this table.

Another commenter has answered the question more fully here.

Cheers,

Bex
gpuk

By bex - 1 February 2008 at 12:22pm

The future of energy production will not come by naively turning off existing sources and hoping for the best. The most practical solution to plug the energy gap is nuclear power. Much more reliable and secure in supply than fossil fuels – raw fuel can be sourced from reliable allies such as Australia and the USA.

Nuclear power even satisfies the environmentalists’ demands of low CO2 emissions. That Greenpeace are so opposed to it, despite it being a solution to many of their concerns, indicates that their motives are anti-freedom and anti-capitalist than anti-CO2.

I would like to see work on hydrogen fuel cells, electric vehicles, nuclear fusion and sustainable forms of electricity generation such as wave power. It would be unjustified and deeply wrong to take the Luddite approach that many in Greenpeace support. Kneejerk opposition to modern technology could be hugely damaging.

I also think that it is necessary to move away from reliance on gas and oil. They are limited resources and that reliance is a risk to British national security. Depending for the functioning of essential parts of our economy and infrastructure on energy sources from the Middle East and Russia gives undue leverage and power to deeply unstable regimes that despise our way of life and are a threat to freedom.

One last point. Third World countries like Africa ought to be allowed to industrialize. One of the greatest sins of Greenpeace is that they oppose modern industrial development and free market capitalism in the Third World. What would undoubtedly bring trade, jobs, money, food and improved standards of living is discouraged to satisfy the Green guilt complex.

By happyuk - 2 February 2008 at 9:10pm

The reasons why nuclear energy is an answer to neither the energy gap nor global warming are time and cost.

According to the last government energy review not to be slammed in the courts as flawed, misleading and inaccurate (2002) the new generation of nuclear plants would be capable of producing energy at double the cost of wind. Here's the link (pdf).

(An interesting thing about the 2002 Energy Review is that every time I look for it the Cabinet Office have moved it to a different URL without providing a link. The URL above worked on 05/02/08, but please let us know if they've moved it again.)

and the page numbers -

onshore wind - 1.5 – 2.5p/kWh (page 101)

offshore wind - 2 – 3p/kWh (page 101)

nuclear – 2.5 – 4p/kWh (page 103)

On page 196 it says "the central inter-quartile range of nuclear costs is 3p to 4p/kWh, with both lower (industry) and higher outcomes possible. Such a result still represents a major decrease in costs compared to all previous nuclear construction in the UK, including Sizewell B."

Sizewell B, the most modern reactor in the UK, produces electricity at a cost of 6p/kWh (page 195).

However, the more important issue is time. The first reactor of the new generation would be on line some time after 2020, and the others in the years following, so that we might have six by 2025, if there are no significant delays (unlikely). The 'energy gap', if you believe in such things, is supposed to open up in 2015, and so nuclear power won't be a factor in this. However, Brown has already promised to make 40% of our electricity renewable by 2020 - so the gap will already have been filled by the time the first reactor comes on line. The timing issue is far more important in terms of climate change, where we have less than a decade to get on the right track. Wind farms generally take about six months to build.

In terms of the developing world, renewable technologies are ideal as they make use of local resources which are freely available such as sunshine and wind. No-one, so far as I know, is recommending putting thousands of reactors in poor countries across the globe, nor do we have the capacity to do so if we wanted to.

Graham
gpuk

By graham - 5 February 2008 at 2:39pm

Graham, it's very true that wind farms can be deployed more quickly than nuclear stations. But the question is what happens after 2020? Once we're getting 20%-30% of our electricity from variable renewables such as wind it become more difficult to increase this because the grid cannot cope with a much larger proportion of intermittent supply. It becomes more expensive because backup is required. We could realistically get another 15%-20% from non-intermittent sources such as hydro, biomass and possibly tidal. But after that the renewable options are restricted.

Also, after 2020, the first generation of windfarms will be reaching end-of-life and will have to be replaced, which will use up manufacturing capacity.

That is why nuclear powerstations are required. If we want to keep reducing carbon emissions from electricity beyond 2020, nuclear makes a great deal of sense. It makes no sense at all to squander renewable resources in an attempt to replace nuclear stations, because this will not save any carbon.

Although it takes longer to build nuclear stations they have a much higher output than renewables. 6 new nuclear stations could easily produce 9GW of power, and possibly two or three times that. It would take 30 to 50GW of wind turbines to generate the same amount of electricity. You cannot build that amount of wind power in six months - we would be pushing it to build that in 10 years; and after that it is difficult to build any more without disrupting the grid.

Nuclear could easily supply half our electricity (or half our energy, for that matter, if we moved to hydrogen/electric transport), and renewables could nearly supply the other half.

Regarding the use of nuclear power by poorer developing countries: this is a realistic possibility that is being actively pursued. There are many new designs for small rectors that are specifically intended to be deployed in developing countries. These small reactors are typically 10MW-100MW, with passive safety features that mean they do not require skilled operators. They run without refuelling for decades, and then the whole unit can be returned to the manufacturer for disposal or reuse.
They can be used for desalination of water; hydrogen production; or the generation of heat or off-grid electricity.
See the following, particularly the section on "Liquid Metal cooled Fast Reactors":
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html

By ColinG - 28 March 2008 at 8:52pm

Bearing in mind that renewables are faster and cheaper to install, safer to run, don’t require fuel to be transported around the world and aren’t great targets for terrorists, what is it about them that you don’t like? If it’s just intermittency, the German study Bex pointed you to demonstrates how to get around any intermittency issues from renewables. Unfortunately, they have yet to come up with a solution for how to solve this problem for the most cripplingly intermittent energy source, nuclear.

graham, gpuk

By graham - 31 March 2008 at 4:06pm

Graham, it's not that I dislike renewables. I approve of renewables, of the right type, in the right place. However it is not realistic to expect them to produce 100% of our energy any time in the next 50 years. That is the kind of thinking that has stunted nuclear development and consequently allowed fossil fuel use to grow out of control.

Certain renewables are more appropriate than others in the UK. Wind is relatively cheap and clean, but it is intermittent. We could get perhaps 20%-30% of our electricity from wind.

Hydro is great, but nearly all the good sites have been exploited.

We don't really know the potential for wave power because it is in its infancy, but it too is intermittent.

Of the mature renewables available in the UK, all the alternatives apart from wind have higher external costs than nuclear.
Table on p13:
http://www.externe.info/externpr.pdf
What this means is that the side effects of using PV Solar, biomass and in some cases hydro cause more damage to health and the environment than nuclear power does. This is particularly true of biomass, which the German scenario relies upon to combat intermittency. Burning biomass generates air pollutants such as NOx and particulates, which are harmful to health (much moreso than the limited radiation releases from nuclear powerstations). Your claim than renewables are safe to run is not entirely correct.

A combination of wind, hydro and (quite a lot of) nuclear with a little biomass would be ideal from the UK. The alternative to nuclear is essentially fossil fuel.

It is feasible to deploy small amounts of renewables quickly, but it isn't feasible to deploy the tens of gigawatts required, and even if we could the currently available mix of renewables is not viable for the UK. We don't have enough hydro and we can't realistically expect to grow enough biomass. PV is fairly pointless at this latitude, and wind is limited to 20%-30%. If you don't advocate nuclear, you are by default advocating continued use of fossil fuel.

By ColinG - 1 April 2008 at 8:20pm

Colin, you say in your first paragraph –

I approve of renewables, of the right type, in the right place. However it is not realistic to expect them to produce 100% of our energy any time in the next 50 years. That is the kind of thinking that has stunted nuclear development and consequently allowed fossil fuel use to grow out of control.

Are you saying that if it wasn’t for Greenpeace we’d have nuclear cars? Or that the billions and billions (and billions) of tax payers’ money poured into the nuclear industry was wasted due to politicians’ obsession with tidal barrages? The only reason why nuclear development has been stunted is that even the most enormous subsidies in history have failed to make it anything other than a financial black hole.

graham, gpuk

By graham - 2 April 2008 at 2:24pm

Graham, it's simple. Over the last 30 years if there had been more nuclear powerstations built there would be fewer fossil fuel powerstations now. The reason that the US and several European nations stopped building nuclear powerstations was largely because of (misinformed, unfounded, irrational) anti nuclear opposition.

In part it was influenced by finance too, but that is also largely related to anti-nuclear groundswell. This is because the main cost in nuclear electricity is the cost of building the plant. The main financial risk in building the plant is the risk from delays in construction. Nuclear opposition caused delays to building plant, increasing the financial risks. Furthermore the main financial risk after the plant is built is the risk that govts might change the regulations or decide to close nuclear plants early. Nuclear opposition also influenced public opinion in this regard, which in turn influenced govt opinion, and in some cases resulted in a moratorium on nuclear build and early closure of existing plant.

Even the threat of anti nuclear opposition is sufficient to increase the financial risk. It was remarkably successful.

In some ways this would have been fine if there was a decent alternative. The big promise in the 70s (and 80, 90s…) was that we didn't need nuclear because renewables could do the same job. But of course they couldn't and they still can't. There are some renewables that work well and compete with conventional generation: e.g. hydro works - and it has consequently been exploited in every available site in the developed world. Geothermal also works, though the geographical locations are limited. But most renewables in most places cannot compete reasonably with fossil fuel or nuclear.

Hence inevitably the reduction in nuclear power development led directly to more fossil fuel development. It was the obvious commercial choice.

Greenpeace's opposition to nuclear power continues to promote fossil fuel development (hopefully not deliberately).

I am not saying, as you suggest, that we would have nuclear cars; but if we had more nuclear stations at least any electric vehicles that we did develop would be using less-polluting electricity. And obviously governments did not become "obsessed with tidal barrages" when nuclear fell out of favour with the public: they built fossil fuel plant instead, and kept patching up their old reactors.

Clearly the people responsible for spending the money do not consider nuclear to be a "financial black hole". Are they all financially incompetent? And I am not just talking about the UK, nor even Europe. All over the world developing countries are looking at developing nuclear power. It makes perfect financial sense for any country that does not have ample fossil fuel reserves or good hydro resources.

By ColinG - 2 April 2008 at 6:35pm

Nuclear expertise is scarce in the UK, never mind countries like India, China and Brazil. Does the UK government seriously expect these rapidly developing nations to use renewables if we go down the nuclear route? If they don't use nuclear or renewables, they'll continue using cheap, plentiful coal instead. And of course, much of their energy is used in making products for export to the UK and other rich nations anyway. To save ourselves from abrupt and irreversable climate change we must invest in renewables for both ourselves and the developing world. The UK's proposed nuclear strategy is simply suicidal.

By energybeing - 18 January 2008 at 3:29pm

It's pretty obvious that the Government won't listen (not just nuclear power, but ID cards, speed cameras, etc.) but energy companies might. If you want to help stop nuclear power, and your energy supplier commits to new nuclear build, just switch. You're no longer tied to any energy provider, so find the one that is committed to green electricty and give them your business. If enough people dropped thier accounts with E.on (rumor has it they had a deal done even before the government "decided" to support new nuclear build), I think they would drop nuclear pretty quickly. Maybe even someone like Greenpeace could make information on how to switch suppliers more easily available

By Jimmy_B - 23 January 2008 at 10:08am

I find quite funny the way you critise the uk governemnt and his planning process: not democratic, it s a view quite difficult to defend when it s wrote by an ungovernemtal organisation who have no accountability and no popular representativity like the english governement. And for the mantra rather than fact, it s even more funny, most of the green associations and parties are lost in their ambiguities, what s the worst global worming or nuclear power. The nuclear suffers a bad vision because of organisation like greenpeace who used cliches and bad arguments (tchernobyl or nuclear weapons) to influenced the citizens. The fact is that nuclear is efficient (economically and also in space not like renewables), produces few CO2, it s also sure with less dead despite tchernobyl than the dam, the gas oil and coal station. It s also a way to be independant. Nuclear power station will surely not tackle the global warming because his part on the global energy consumption is very little, but greenpeace forget to say that the impact of renewables is even smaller. A good electricity mix in uk will not be 100 percent nuclear but a good mix between renewables nuclear and fuels. Because speaking about the worst energy policy of his generation when the actual uk electricity mix is 3/4 of fuels it s a dishonest reflexion. The main question is who really belives in mantras? Remy Rachet planning student in Liverpool University soory for the spelling i m french, the country of Areva one of the few business specialise in technologies without CO2

By remy - 31 January 2008 at 7:29pm

Hi Jimmy It's an interesting idea and you're not the first to suggest it. The problem is that pretty much all suppliers use energy from the grid, and so include nuclear in their mix. However, the percentages do vary see this table. Another commenter has answered the question more fully here. Cheers, Bex gpuk

By bex - 1 February 2008 at 12:22pm

The future of energy production will not come by naively turning off existing sources and hoping for the best. The most practical solution to plug the energy gap is nuclear power. Much more reliable and secure in supply than fossil fuels – raw fuel can be sourced from reliable allies such as Australia and the USA. Nuclear power even satisfies the environmentalists’ demands of low CO2 emissions. That Greenpeace are so opposed to it, despite it being a solution to many of their concerns, indicates that their motives are anti-freedom and anti-capitalist than anti-CO2. I would like to see work on hydrogen fuel cells, electric vehicles, nuclear fusion and sustainable forms of electricity generation such as wave power. It would be unjustified and deeply wrong to take the Luddite approach that many in Greenpeace support. Kneejerk opposition to modern technology could be hugely damaging. I also think that it is necessary to move away from reliance on gas and oil. They are limited resources and that reliance is a risk to British national security. Depending for the functioning of essential parts of our economy and infrastructure on energy sources from the Middle East and Russia gives undue leverage and power to deeply unstable regimes that despise our way of life and are a threat to freedom. One last point. Third World countries like Africa ought to be allowed to industrialize. One of the greatest sins of Greenpeace is that they oppose modern industrial development and free market capitalism in the Third World. What would undoubtedly bring trade, jobs, money, food and improved standards of living is discouraged to satisfy the Green guilt complex.

By happyuk - 2 February 2008 at 9:10pm

The reasons why nuclear energy is an answer to neither the energy gap nor global warming are time and cost. According to the last government energy review not to be slammed in the courts as flawed, misleading and inaccurate (2002) the new generation of nuclear plants would be capable of producing energy at double the cost of wind. Here's the link (pdf). (An interesting thing about the 2002 Energy Review is that every time I look for it the Cabinet Office have moved it to a different URL without providing a link. The URL above worked on 05/02/08, but please let us know if they've moved it again.) and the page numbers - onshore wind - 1.5 – 2.5p/kWh (page 101) offshore wind - 2 – 3p/kWh (page 101) nuclear – 2.5 – 4p/kWh (page 103) On page 196 it says "the central inter-quartile range of nuclear costs is 3p to 4p/kWh, with both lower (industry) and higher outcomes possible. Such a result still represents a major decrease in costs compared to all previous nuclear construction in the UK, including Sizewell B." Sizewell B, the most modern reactor in the UK, produces electricity at a cost of 6p/kWh (page 195). However, the more important issue is time. The first reactor of the new generation would be on line some time after 2020, and the others in the years following, so that we might have six by 2025, if there are no significant delays (unlikely). The 'energy gap', if you believe in such things, is supposed to open up in 2015, and so nuclear power won't be a factor in this. However, Brown has already promised to make 40% of our electricity renewable by 2020 - so the gap will already have been filled by the time the first reactor comes on line. The timing issue is far more important in terms of climate change, where we have less than a decade to get on the right track. Wind farms generally take about six months to build. In terms of the developing world, renewable technologies are ideal as they make use of local resources which are freely available such as sunshine and wind. No-one, so far as I know, is recommending putting thousands of reactors in poor countries across the globe, nor do we have the capacity to do so if we wanted to. Graham gpuk

By graham - 5 February 2008 at 2:39pm

Graham, it's very true that wind farms can be deployed more quickly than nuclear stations. But the question is what happens after 2020? Once we're getting 20%-30% of our electricity from variable renewables such as wind it become more difficult to increase this because the grid cannot cope with a much larger proportion of intermittent supply. It becomes more expensive because backup is required. We could realistically get another 15%-20% from non-intermittent sources such as hydro, biomass and possibly tidal. But after that the renewable options are restricted. Also, after 2020, the first generation of windfarms will be reaching end-of-life and will have to be replaced, which will use up manufacturing capacity. That is why nuclear powerstations are required. If we want to keep reducing carbon emissions from electricity beyond 2020, nuclear makes a great deal of sense. It makes no sense at all to squander renewable resources in an attempt to replace nuclear stations, because this will not save any carbon. Although it takes longer to build nuclear stations they have a much higher output than renewables. 6 new nuclear stations could easily produce 9GW of power, and possibly two or three times that. It would take 30 to 50GW of wind turbines to generate the same amount of electricity. You cannot build that amount of wind power in six months - we would be pushing it to build that in 10 years; and after that it is difficult to build any more without disrupting the grid. Nuclear could easily supply half our electricity (or half our energy, for that matter, if we moved to hydrogen/electric transport), and renewables could nearly supply the other half. Regarding the use of nuclear power by poorer developing countries: this is a realistic possibility that is being actively pursued. There are many new designs for small rectors that are specifically intended to be deployed in developing countries. These small reactors are typically 10MW-100MW, with passive safety features that mean they do not require skilled operators. They run without refuelling for decades, and then the whole unit can be returned to the manufacturer for disposal or reuse. They can be used for desalination of water; hydrogen production; or the generation of heat or off-grid electricity. See the following, particularly the section on "Liquid Metal cooled Fast Reactors": http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html

By ColinG - 28 March 2008 at 8:52pm

Bearing in mind that renewables are faster and cheaper to install, safer to run, don’t require fuel to be transported around the world and aren’t great targets for terrorists, what is it about them that you don’t like? If it’s just intermittency, the German study Bex pointed you to demonstrates how to get around any intermittency issues from renewables. Unfortunately, they have yet to come up with a solution for how to solve this problem for the most cripplingly intermittent energy source, nuclear. graham, gpuk

By graham - 31 March 2008 at 4:06pm

Graham, it's not that I dislike renewables. I approve of renewables, of the right type, in the right place. However it is not realistic to expect them to produce 100% of our energy any time in the next 50 years. That is the kind of thinking that has stunted nuclear development and consequently allowed fossil fuel use to grow out of control. Certain renewables are more appropriate than others in the UK. Wind is relatively cheap and clean, but it is intermittent. We could get perhaps 20%-30% of our electricity from wind. Hydro is great, but nearly all the good sites have been exploited. We don't really know the potential for wave power because it is in its infancy, but it too is intermittent. Of the mature renewables available in the UK, all the alternatives apart from wind have higher external costs than nuclear. Table on p13: http://www.externe.info/externpr.pdf What this means is that the side effects of using PV Solar, biomass and in some cases hydro cause more damage to health and the environment than nuclear power does. This is particularly true of biomass, which the German scenario relies upon to combat intermittency. Burning biomass generates air pollutants such as NOx and particulates, which are harmful to health (much moreso than the limited radiation releases from nuclear powerstations). Your claim than renewables are safe to run is not entirely correct. A combination of wind, hydro and (quite a lot of) nuclear with a little biomass would be ideal from the UK. The alternative to nuclear is essentially fossil fuel. It is feasible to deploy small amounts of renewables quickly, but it isn't feasible to deploy the tens of gigawatts required, and even if we could the currently available mix of renewables is not viable for the UK. We don't have enough hydro and we can't realistically expect to grow enough biomass. PV is fairly pointless at this latitude, and wind is limited to 20%-30%. If you don't advocate nuclear, you are by default advocating continued use of fossil fuel.

By ColinG - 1 April 2008 at 8:20pm

Colin, you say in your first paragraph – I approve of renewables, of the right type, in the right place. However it is not realistic to expect them to produce 100% of our energy any time in the next 50 years. That is the kind of thinking that has stunted nuclear development and consequently allowed fossil fuel use to grow out of control. Are you saying that if it wasn’t for Greenpeace we’d have nuclear cars? Or that the billions and billions (and billions) of tax payers’ money poured into the nuclear industry was wasted due to politicians’ obsession with tidal barrages? The only reason why nuclear development has been stunted is that even the most enormous subsidies in history have failed to make it anything other than a financial black hole. graham, gpuk

By graham - 2 April 2008 at 2:24pm

Graham, it's simple. Over the last 30 years if there had been more nuclear powerstations built there would be fewer fossil fuel powerstations now. The reason that the US and several European nations stopped building nuclear powerstations was largely because of (misinformed, unfounded, irrational) anti nuclear opposition. In part it was influenced by finance too, but that is also largely related to anti-nuclear groundswell. This is because the main cost in nuclear electricity is the cost of building the plant. The main financial risk in building the plant is the risk from delays in construction. Nuclear opposition caused delays to building plant, increasing the financial risks. Furthermore the main financial risk after the plant is built is the risk that govts might change the regulations or decide to close nuclear plants early. Nuclear opposition also influenced public opinion in this regard, which in turn influenced govt opinion, and in some cases resulted in a moratorium on nuclear build and early closure of existing plant. Even the threat of anti nuclear opposition is sufficient to increase the financial risk. It was remarkably successful. In some ways this would have been fine if there was a decent alternative. The big promise in the 70s (and 80, 90s…) was that we didn't need nuclear because renewables could do the same job. But of course they couldn't and they still can't. There are some renewables that work well and compete with conventional generation: e.g. hydro works - and it has consequently been exploited in every available site in the developed world. Geothermal also works, though the geographical locations are limited. But most renewables in most places cannot compete reasonably with fossil fuel or nuclear. Hence inevitably the reduction in nuclear power development led directly to more fossil fuel development. It was the obvious commercial choice. Greenpeace's opposition to nuclear power continues to promote fossil fuel development (hopefully not deliberately). I am not saying, as you suggest, that we would have nuclear cars; but if we had more nuclear stations at least any electric vehicles that we did develop would be using less-polluting electricity. And obviously governments did not become "obsessed with tidal barrages" when nuclear fell out of favour with the public: they built fossil fuel plant instead, and kept patching up their old reactors. Clearly the people responsible for spending the money do not consider nuclear to be a "financial black hole". Are they all financially incompetent? And I am not just talking about the UK, nor even Europe. All over the world developing countries are looking at developing nuclear power. It makes perfect financial sense for any country that does not have ample fossil fuel reserves or good hydro resources.

By ColinG - 2 April 2008 at 6:35pm

GP online