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We've been banging on about the sham nuclear 'consultation' for ages now, but today 17 scientists, academics and nuclear industry insiders piled into the debate, giving Gordon Brown a drubbing over well, pretty much everything to do with nuclear power.
I wanted to share a few highlights from their report but the arguments are so compelling I just couldn't stop cutting and pasting. So here, have more quotes about nuclear power than you can shake a stick at, or read the full report for yourself at www.nuclearconsult.com:
"An accumulating public sense of a lack of independence and a lack of transparency behind government initiatives in this area, and a hidden industry agenda belittling the problems seem to emit a strong whiff of mortgaging the long-term future to short-term interests. The issue is one of trust in government..."
Dr Paul Dorfman, University of Warwick
Prof Brian Wynne, University of Lancaster
"Interestingly it was only very late in the 1-day events ['consultations'] that the, by now tired, members of the public were given another hand-out which, half way down page 17, noted that the rebuilding of the UK’s nuclear fleet would mitigate only 4% of our CO2 emissions."
"From what was provided [at the public 'consultation'], you would have been hard pressed to grasp the fact that the UK's renewable potential is very large - possibly the largest per capita in the world..."
"It seems likely, although not certain, that we will continue to see a move forward to a more decentralised, locally embedded, pattern of power generation, based on larger numbers of smaller plants using renewables and more attention to end use matching management. One of the main reasons for uncertainty is the current revival of interest in nuclear power - an approach that very much relies on large centralised plants..."
"[W]e were offered what was, at best, a comparison between a half-hearted renewables programme and a speculatively enhanced nuclear programme. And at worst, a comparison based on caricatures of renewables and fantasies about nuclear."
"Can nuclear power contribute significantly to achieving a reduction in global warming and climate change and contribute significantly to a sustainable global energy future? In my opinion, it cannot. Moreover, the huge amounts of money and human skills that will be needed to achieve a significant global increase in the use of nuclear power would be best spent on research into and the development of non-nuclear energy sources, particularly renewable energy sources."
"A significant use of fast breeder reactors will carry with it the real risk that nuclear terrorist groups will eventually acquire plutonium, fabricate primitive nuclear weapons and use them in terrorist attacks."
"Although there are uncertainties in the assessment of all technologies, those of nuclear power are so great as to render it uncompetitive in any realistic assessment."
"Nuclear new build should not proceed until there is an acceptable solution for the permanent management of long-lived solid nuclear waste."
"Any new build programme should not proceed until it has been subjected to a thorough process of citizen and stakeholder engagement on the issue of radioactive waste including the quite distinctive and separate ethical issues that arise."
"The unresolved technical and ethical concerns related to managing radioactive wastes safely provide both a necessary and sufficient condition for rejecting the case for nuclear new build."
"There is no 'solution' to the management of radioactive waste, be it 'legacy waste' or that derived from the operation of a new generation of nuclear power plants. That Government has assumed the recommendation from the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management represents such a 'solution' is wrong and deliberately mendacious."
"Although the government maintains that it would be for the private sector to fund, develop, and build new nuclear stations, nuclear power plants in UK would only be possible if the large economic risks of building, and operating them were borne by the British public."
"Over the past 40 years, the British government has made four attempts to relaunch the British nuclear power programme. The result of these attempts is a handful of unreliable and uneconomic units that supply less than 20 per cent of our electricity."
Prof Steve Thomas, University of Greenwich
"If Britain was to pursue nuclear power now, it would load extra costs on the British people and it would continue to divert attention and resources away from the measures that could be effective in dealing with these serious concerns."
"Labour market limitations on any envisaged construction programme are likely to impact on envisaged completion dates and have implications for reactor reliability and safety."
"The vulnerability of coastal locations to climate change related events represents a significant and difficult to quantify risk to security of supply."
"New nuclear build will add to the existing risks associated with reliance on national and trans-European grids fed by large generating units. These include the vulnerability of such systems to terrorist attacks and extreme weather events. Distributed supply systems can insulate against these risks."
"By acting to establish viable domestic and small scale electricity generating capacity in the UK the Government can move towards fulfilling these goals. Such measures can make meaningful contributions to CO2 reduction targets within the short timeframes
identified as consistent with climate change mediation. New nuclear build will come too late to achieve this critical objective."
"It was a major short-coming of both the Energy Review and the Nuclear Consultation that they both accepted uncritical views of existing regulatory and industrial regimes. A further weakness was to ignore the valuable experience of comparable European nations."
"When we consider the key pressures that are driving the current review of energy policy in the UK and the potential role of nuclear within that, it is clear that new nuclear build is not a strong contender in relation to any of those issues."
"If the full range of options in policy, regulation and technology are looked at creatively, it’s clear we could meet our energy needs and environmental goals without resorting to nuclear power."
"It is not in the public interest to allow energy companies to pursue large inflexible and vulnerable nuclear investments. They would lock the country into centralised electricity generation which is insufficiently robust in an era when the dangers of deliberate disruption to the system are increasing."
"Existing nuclear sites in England have a ‘favoured status’ for locating new build. The criteria on which this status is based are primarily commercial and give insufficient attention to future coastal flood risk. The assumption that existing nuclear communities will welcome new build is unproven and has the likely consequence of planning blight whilst site location decisions are made."
"The UK needs to act on its ethical responsibilities to mitigate climate change, but should not be achieving this by giving the major burden to a handful of isolated and dependent nuclear host communities. Action should rather be focused on the heartlands of demand and consumption. There are better and fairer ways of distributing responsibility to reduce carbon that do not pose an irresponsible and unethical burden of radioactive waste on future generations."
"There are real concerns that infants and children living near nuclear facilities may be subject to greater cancer and leukaemia risk."
"Since current radiation risk standards are subject to large levels of fundamental scientific uncertainty, and may underestimate risk to public health, it would be unwise to subject critical groups and the general public to further radiological insult through new nuclear build in the UK."
"The public mistrust of policy decision making on nuclear issues comes from 50 years of cover-up, secrecy, misinformation on cost, performance, and waste... Now the industry is trying again. This time nuclear will be cheaper because it will be quicker to build – against all evidence to the contrary. It is also being sold as a carbon free technology that will cut emissions. Even on the government’s own calculations if four of the world’s largest nuclear power stations were built in the UK by 2025 they would only reduce gas imports by 7%."
"The taxpayer will have to foot the bill for the disastrous THORP project, for the collection and making safe of the nuclear waste stream, for the losses of the MOX plant and the disposal of contaminated plutonium and uranium. All this the government wants to brush under the carpet while compounding the problem with new nuclear build, ensuring more insoluble problems are passed on to future
generations."
"Whatever directions it takes, however, the political steering of the next great energy transition means opening up a multitude of apparently closed technical decisions and asserting a wider diversity public values and interests. Only in this way, can we be sure of overcoming the negative effects of forced framings and blinkered lock-in discussed here, and acquire a more positive momentum towards real sustainability. This requires on the part of those in power in energy systems: a daunting level of commitment to transparency, participation, flexibility and diversity. It requires on the part of the rest of us: a willingness to become engaged; self-confidently to argue for our own visions and values; and tolerantly to accept a plurality of others. Most of all, for everyone, it means avoiding intimidation: by over-assertive expertise; by narrow vested interests; by expedient appeals to ‘sound science’; by counsels of despair over a lack of alternatives; and by disabling apocalyptic fears. This is the nature of the real choice that we have to make. So far, it seems that Government has yet to fully grasp this challenge."
Prof Andy Stirling, University of Sussex
