UK nuclear capacity in meltdown

Can anyone come to an event on energy in London on 11th October? (details below) A speaker from the Nuclear Industry Association will be participating along with others. The event is organised by the School of Economic Science, most of us are very environmentally concerned but some more environmentalists with some good questions/comments about nuclear power will I think be very useful at this talk. I have read Helen Caldicott's book 'Nuclear Power is not the answer' and as a mother am extremely worried about the development of more nuclear power riding on the back of climate change.

EVENT: ENERGY COUNTS

at: SCHOOL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE: 11 Mandeville Place, London, W1

PROGRAMME Saturday 11th Oct.

Tickets: £20.00 (I think!) - includes lunch and refreshments

10.00 -10.10 The Chairman’s opening remarks
10.10 - 11.05 The Current Situation Jeremy Labram ( Consultant)
11.05 – 11.35 Refreshments
11.35 - 12.15 Our Addiction to Oil Derek Aldous (for Exxon
Mobile )
12.15- 13.15 Lunch
13.15 - 14.10 The Nuclear Option Tristram Denton (Nuclear
Industries Association)
14.10 - 14.30 – Refreshments
14.30 - 15.20 - Carbon Capture Brendan Beck (International
and Clean Coal Energy Agency)
15.20 - 15.30 Break
15.30 - 16.00– What ShouldWe Do? Peter Holland (School of
Economic Science)
16.00 – 17.00 – Forum: All speakers;
Chairman’s Closing Remarks

Of course it is possible to generate base load electricity without nuclear power. But just in case it is not obvious (and it should be patently obvious to anybody concerned about climate change) when these nuclear plants are not running the gap is being filled with fossil fuel. Hence CO2 emissions rocket. Also, the price of electricity increases significantly.

Again, Greenpeace seems happy to promote the burning of fossil fuel – in their much touted CHP plants - tacitly acknowledging that renewables cannot offer a complete non-nuclear solution in the coming decades. The more we use gas-fired CHP, the more we are locked into a cycle of fossil fuel dependence – at a time when we should be dismantling our gas infrastructure. And the claim that CHP is “safer” is demonstrably false. As the EU Commission’s ExternE study showed, the air pollution from burning gas (or, for that matter biomass) causes significantly more overall damage to health and the environment than the nuclear lifecycle does.

The gas burned in CHP plants is also a potent greenhouse gas – if it escapes it is more than twenty times as potent as CO2. If only 2% of the gas leaks (and on its way from Russia, this is not implausible) burning gas becomes as bad as burning coal in the short term.

So what has opposition to nuclear power in the UK achieved? It has successfully run our old stations into the ground with no replacements in sight. The result? More fossil fuel burned; higher electricity prices; greater dependence on foreign gas; more GHG generated; worsening climate change; worse air pollution; more premature deaths.

Hi Leonie,

thanks for the heads-up. I've passed the details along to our nuclear campaigners, but as it's such short notice I'm not sure they'll be able to send anyone along.

There are some obvious points to make though, most of which I'm sure you'll already be aware of:

1 nuclear reactors simply won't deliver the urgent emissions cuts needed to tackle climate change. Even the most optimistic estimates suggest that a new generation of nuclear powers stations will only reduce our emissions by 4% by 2024: far too little, far too late, to stop global warming or address the predicted energy gap.

2 a new generation of reactors will create thousands of tonnes of hazardous radioactive waste, which remains dangerous for up to a million years.

3 we'll all be liable for the clean-up costs; estimated at over £70 billion for existing waste.

4 new reactors will act as targets for terrorists, including nuclear waste trains carrying deadly cargoes along our public rail network.

5 they will lead to the proliferation of weapons-grade plutonium.

6 they will keep the threat of a nuclear reactor accident hanging over us. As recent studies show, the nuclear industries safety claims don't stand up to close examination, with 4,100 fatalities in total, and 29 accidents around the world since Chernobyl.

But the most imminent threat that a new nuclear age poses is to the real energy solutions to climate change. Investment in nuclear energy and its infrastructure is a dangerous and expensive distraction from the real solutions – energy efficiency, renewable technology and decentralised energy. By decentralising our energy system and producing energy locally, the UK can meet its energy needs in a much cheaper, cleaner and safer way, slashing our climate change contributions.

All the best

Joss
Greenpeace UK web team

ColinG, no-one has been stopping the nuclear industry building new nuclear plants in the UK. What has been stopping industry building new nuclear power stations in the UK is the nuclear industry. Unless tax payers money is put up to subsidise nuclear power then no company will build it. It's to expensive and to risky. After Chernobyl, government was reluctant to underwrite nuclear; to much risk. We had also deregulated the electricity industry so there were no more fixed electricity prices like before, again bad news for Nuclear which needs a subsidised electricity price. So the private companies put their cash elsewhere; into cheap and quick returns based on gas and existing fossil fuel plants. Less complex, cheaper to run, less risk and faster returns. The nuclear industry dumped the UK because of self interest.

The only reason things are changing now is because politicians see nuclear as a “quick fix policy” to circumvent a looming disaster. They are willing to sell the family silver, create a waste legacy and strangle home grown industry in order to protect their jobs; after all power cuts don't win votes. The British tax payer will be subsiding new nuclear build in the UK, we will underwrite the risk and therefore the Nuclear industry is interested again.

Mbradshaw, what you are saying regarding the economics of nuclear power in the UK’s deregulated power market is more or less correct up to the point where you start using the present tense.

It was too risky financially compared to fossil fuel (though this had little to do with Chernobyl). It was financially risky compared to burning gas when gas was cheap. But this is no longer the case. Gas and coal are not cheap options any more. Consequently, in case you hadn’t noticed, power companies now want to build new nuclear powerstations in the UK.

And they are not banking on any very significant subsidy for this. The same cannot be said of other low-carbon options. Developers look for ROC subsidies even for relatively mature renewable technology such as onshore wind. More exotic renewables struggle to attract any investment even with the ROC offering. And of course, power generators are also looking for government subsidy for carbon capture too.

Looking beyond the UK, the vast majority of developed and developing countries either already run nuclear powerstations or are planning to build them. This is largely because in an economic climate where fossil fuel is expensive (and it is particularly so when the pollution is taken into account) nuclear power is often the next cheapest option.