I have to say I'm not 100% sure but on balance I think I'm against nuclear power for a number of reasons.
Order listing below from least important to most (for me).
1. Hold my hands up and admitting a probability of bias against it because of Greenpeace and the people I mix with.
2. Sustainability. High grade Uranium ore is a limited resource, low grade ore is more common but apparently the energy required to extract and refine it is greater than the energy produced. If every country went down the nuclear road then this would be an issue, but that's looking increasingly unlikely. Also new reactor designs will no doubt find new fuels.
3. Cost. Nuclear is veeeeery expensive with some costs being hidden within government coffers, eg. insurance underwriting. I think we could do a whole lot more with renewable technology if the same money was spent there.
4. Time. it will take 10 years or more before a new fleet of nuclear power stations would make any difference to our carbon emissions. This is a very critical 10 years, according to TrillionthTonne.org, to have a 75% chance of keeping global warming below 2 deg.C, we have to reduce our emissions by over 5% per year.
5. Safety. We have seen what can and does happen when nuclear power stations go wrong. However these consequences pale in comparison to the consequences of carbon emissions. But there seems to be a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest many more casualties of nuclear power - not just the disasters but also in operation. I grew up in a small village with a high incidence of birth defects, on the edge of a leukaemia cluster, about 6 miles south-west (prevailing downwind) of a nuclear power station (so perhaps a little more personal bias there too).
6. Examples abroad. It appears that where a country has decided to go down the nuclear route, truly renewable technologies have languished and stagnated from lack of funding and focus (see point 7). There are only two new nuclear power stations being built in Europe, one in Finland and one in France, both are behind schedule (point 4), over budget (point 3) and have had safety issues.
7. Psychology. Our current, old and outdated way of thinking is that we can have as much power as we need, keep growing, keep expanding, bigger is better. We now know this is unsustainable, we have hit nature's buffers, our bubble is about to burst. So we need to change that psychology to only using what we can produce. Rather than matching production to demand, we should be matching demand to production. This is true for all our resources and it's a lesson we should be learning rather quickly.
Nuclear gives everyone the impression that they can sit back and consume to their hearts content with the problems of production being someone else's.
Any thoughts on this? Please comment below to enter the nuclear debate.
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Nice piece and for me, cost is the unstoppable argument.
Over the last 50+ years the nuclear industry has had more government subsidies thrown at it, than almost any other industry on earth - with perhaps the exception of the arms industry, and if there was any feasible way to make the things economically viable, then we'd have done so.
Instead even ignoring the issues of risk (indefinite liabilities and all) and waste (don't know what to do about that) then onshore wind is significant cheaper, and offshore wind is almost there. Throw in a chunk of solar, some big scale projects (industrial CHP for starters), and you have to wonder why on earth anyone is considering building such things.
Then because waste, and risk, are financial issues, the government has to bend over backwards to sneak subsidies through (despite many a policy, and much ideology) and still noone sees any financial sense in building them.
Time methinks, for common sense to triumph over corporate lobbying and bad politics.
Roll on the day when common sense rules in politics! I'm about to post a blog in response to both Pete and Richard's comments. It puts the current UK situation into context with the much more enlightened approach that Germany is taking to prepare the way for sustainable, nuclear-free energy provision that's fair and affordable. There is light at the end of the tunnel...the battle is getting politicians to see it....
Interesting article and well put. Sometimes when we look at the whole climate change situation, nuclear does look a credible option and several thinkers have moved their opinion in favour of nuclear.
I think for me, as with Richard cost is the arguement we are most likely to win on. But there are other reasons why we should not go down the nuclear route - sustainability for one. Uranium is not an endless resource and the amount of energy required to process it plus the amount of energy required to build a concrete nuclear power station that is strong enough to withstand a Fukishima in my 'umble opinion negates a lot of the carbon free energy nuclear produces.
Also there is a very interesting report by the Oxford Research Group produced in 2007 called Too Hot to Handle which looks at the future of nuclear power and ask the question' can we manage the security risks associated with nuclear power?' Nuclear power is still as dangerous and expensive as it has ever been, it's just that now it has a raison d'etre that many people find undenyable - climate change.
But as Richard says and we all know, we can combat climate change with the resources we have at hand (solar,wind) plus others in the pipeline such as tidal and wave. All we need is a bit of courage and a large bit of investment. Investment in solar is already paying back so we know investment in renewables works. All we have to do is convince everyone else. Easy.
Oh and last time we had a really big heatwave in Europe, Frances nuclear power stations had to shut down because a large number of them are on rivers and the river water got too hot or was it not enough due to evaporation to cool the reactor so France ended up importing energy from Germany. Roll on the supergrid.
whilst cost is a major factor, I ranked it lower in importance because for me reducing our emissions should be done at almost any cost. However I'm not a government trying to balance the books so that's easy for me to say.
Anyone have any thoughts on the IFR (intergral fast reactor) which Monbiot currently fancies? He's saying they will reduce the UK's massive stockpile of waste.
Just like to say that I personally don't regard cost as any more important than any other reason for going down the nuclear route it's just that cost is the arguement most likely to succeed.
Great blog. Point 4 is a particularly power point to combat the pro-nuclear "environmentalists" who claim runaway climate change is here if we don't include nuclear in the mix.
I see climate change as a waste issue as much as an energy issue. If we are finding it so hard to deal with carbon emissions, a waste product of fossil fuels, what are future generations going to do when the aggregate amount of nuclear waste becomes problematic? Presumably we want the human race to continue. And the only solution, thus far, to get rid of nuclear waste is to bury it into land, another finite resource that we need to feed and house our populations.
Of course, all of the above is a future problem when climate change is today's problem. I fear that if give up on energy efficiency, a mix of renewables and a change in psychology, because it's seemingly politically and culturally too difficult to get off the overconsumption band wagon, next we will be facing a world that demands GMO crops, not because we can't grow enough food through sustainable methods to feed the world but because politically and culturally it seems too challenging. So now is the time to get our approach to and understanding of "sustainability" right. Let's truely push for a sustainable energy system - one which does not depend on finite resources and has zero pollution (emissions, landfill waste etc).
Oh and does anyone know Japan's record of investment in renewable energy? I don't have the facts at my finger tips but I seem to remember reading somewhere that Japan languishes at the bottom of the developed countries. If that's true, then that is proof that investment in nuclear does indeed deter from investment in renewables.
I recall a Big Ask climate change meeting several years ago, where the nuclear is the solution to climate change argument came up - yet again, and Martyn (from FoE), who was / is one of the convincing environmental speakers I've heard, put it something like this;
If we had no other choice but, to build one more generation of nuclear power stations to reduce emissions such that we stay within 2degrees of pre industrial levels, then we'd need to make a tough call. But the thing is that we do have a choice.
We can generate a large proportion of our electricty from renewables - especially wind. We can save large amounts of energy by investing in energy efficency and a decentralised energy grid, we can generate a large amount of electricity as a by product of industrial processes using large scale CHP, and we can reduce electricty demand by consuming less, living within our means and turning the lights off when no-ones home.
So given that we do have a choice, why choose an energy future that involves so much risk, dangerous waste, is unreliable and so expensive? If as a society we want to subsidise an energy future, then let's subsidise a clean energy path that has the promise of becoming more economically viable, not the failed experiment of the last 50 years.
What we lack of course is the political will, or any politicians with the guts to see beyond the next election. We should change that.
For me the main issue with nuclear has always been one of safety, simply that. There are too many long term risks involved with nuclear, that require too high a price to pay. There will always be accidents, I don't think it will ever be possible to eradicate accidents because of human error and complacency and natural disasters and the consequences as we have seen are catastrophic.
Then there is the issue of waste and the cost of disposing of that waste, such that it has to be secure for thousands of years. No-one has yet come up a satisfactory way of dealing with nuclear waste, and until they do we shouldn't be building more nuclear power plants.
As an island surely we should be devoting more resources into wave and tidal research. It is estimated that at least10% of our energy needs could be generated from tidal sources yet the Coalition Government last year reduced funding in marine energy from a promised £50m down to a paltry £20m. Like the look of the developments with Searaser seawater pump. See link below.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2012/jan/23/searaser-seawate...
It's projects like this that should be getting investment rather than the risky new nuclear plants that are proposed. I'm sure with the right immediate investment this technology could be delivering clean energy within a few years ... as long as a thorough environmental assessment is carried out on the impact to the marine ecosystems.