This is a guest post by Pete Roche, editor of the No2nuclearpower website.
The UK Government’s consultation on the Future of Nuclear Power – forced on to it by a successful legal action brought by Greenpeace – ended on Wednesday 10th October. By coincidence, Wednesday was also the 50th anniversary of Britain’s worst nuclear accident when the reactor core at Windscale caught fire sending a plume of radioactive material across the country. Five decades ago secrecy and cover-ups did nothing to reassure those with growing doubts about the risks of nuclear technology. Today, the closed consultation has carried on the tradition of wilfully misleading the public.
Britain’s leading environmental groups withdrew from the consultation prior to 8th September when a series of consultation workshops, organised by Opinion Leader Research (OLR), were held in eight cities around the UK with 1,100 member of the public who were asked to assess the case for and against nuclear power and then take a vote. The environment groups said the government had failed to fairly reflect the arguments presented at the meetings, and was distorting the evidence. Independently, 20 senior academics agreed that participants were misled.
An inconvenient truth about nuclear - that it can only make a small contribution to reducing the UK’s overall CO2 emissions - was not mentioned. The information given to the public was biased and incomplete. The Government’s intention was clear - provide very limited, biased information in order to lead the participants to a predetermined conclusion. Greenpeace has made a formal complaint to the Market Research Standards Council about the conduct by Opinion Leader Research.
Nuclear power can, at best, only make a very minimal contribution to reducing carbon emissions, and it won’t be able to start making that contribution until around 2020 at the earliest – not soon enough to make it worth the extra risk, and experience suggests there will be delays and cost overruns. The new reactor programme could stall without making sufficient carbon savings, but too late for alternative strategies to be introduced. At worst carbon emissions from the nuclear life cycle could begin to climb, as lower and lower grades of uranium are mined to feed its insatiable appetite.
Focussing on a new reactor programme risks diverting attention and resources from the urgent programmes which we should be implementing now in order to effectively tackle climate change – renewable energy and energy efficiency. The UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) points out that, even with a doubling of UK nuclear capacity, cuts in carbon emissions of at least 50% would still be needed from other measures if the UK is to meet its climate targets for 2050. So it is important that our capacity to implement other carbon abatement measures is not damaged by a decision to go ahead with new reactors. But a new reactor programme is likely to fatally undermine alternative carbon abatement strategies. It will send all the wrong signals to consumers and businesses, implying that a major technological fix is all that’s required, weakening the urgent action needed on energy efficiency.
We need to look at the problem of carbon emissions more holistically. Nuclear power can only supply electricity, so fails to address carbon emissions from heat and transport. For example, the UK Government’s aviation policy has given the industry permission to produce up to three times the volume of carbon emissions by 2030 than might be avoided by replacing the UK’s nuclear power stations. A rethink of aviation policy would be a far more effective way to tackle climate change.
Many advocates of nuclear power say that, because climate change is serious we need to promote renewables, energy efficiency and nuclear power. This suggests we have infinite sources of finance to spend on energy projects, which is obviously nonsense. We have scarce resources, and because of the seriousness of climate change, we need to maximize carbon reductions for every pound spent. Investment in new reactors will, in effect, worsen climate change because each dollar we spend is buying less solution than it would do if we were to spend it on energy efficiency measures, which can be up to seven times more cost effective than nuclear power. In short, investing in expensive nuclear power is just about the worst possible thing we could do.
For more on the Consultation Sham – see Energy Review Update No.15
Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Climate Change by Pete Roche, can be found here.
Advertisement: Reduce your CO2 footprint by as much as 2 tonnes/year & save up to £150 on your energy bills.
Comments:
I was pleased to read Pete Roche’s exposé of the nuclear consultation. I have my own negative experience of this pr exercise. Here is the story:
Former Prime minister Tony Blair, heavily influenced by his chief scientific advisor, Professor David King, instigated the political comeback of nuclear power at Labour’s conference two years ago, declaring it “back on the agenda with a vengeance.” Blair and King, himself soon to depart Downing Street, saw nuclear as being a key technical fix in the battle to halt climate change.
Brown for his part told this year’s Labour Conference in Bournemouth “As we set out on the next stage of our journey this is our vision: Britain leading the global economy – by our skills and creativity, by our enterprise and flexibility, by our investment in transport and infrastructure – a world leader in science; a world leader in financial and business services; a world leader in energy and the environment from nuclear to renewables..”
John Hutton, the Cabinet minister ultimately responsible for energy policy, at the Business & Enterprise Department, said in his own speech to the Labour gathering last month “The Government Gordon Brown leads will not shrink from taking the critical decisions on the future security of our energy supply - including whether to allow investment in new nuclear power stations….”
There is actually nothing stopping the private sector investing new nuclear plants at present, but they are holding out for more hidden subsidies such as nuclear accident insurance cover and Government guarantees over nuclear waste and future electricity prices.
Hutton also asserted at a nuclear industry sponsored fringe meeting that that “building a consensus” on the right way forward (for power policy) was vital, and proclaimed it was therefore disappointing that groups like Greenpeace had “turned their backs” on the national nuclear debate.
Energy minister Malcolm Wicks said of the consultation last month “The Government also believes that new nuclear power stations should be an option for energy companies in the future, but we want to consult as widely as possible on this before making a decision. ..and I want as many people as possible to feed into that ..this is a big decision with consequences either way. It’s critical that we listen to all the views and get it right.”
The consultation document, ‘The Future of Nuclear Power’, was published on 23 May. It was a reluctant publication, brought about because earlier this year, Greenpeace won a High Court ruling which overturned the earlier consultation on nuclear power, which was part of a wider public sounding on energy policy, as Pete Roche outlined. Mr Justice Sullivan, who presided over the so-called judicial review, described the first consultation as “manifestly unfair” and “unlawful”, adding that it was “seriously flawed” and “manifestly inadequate” because insufficient information had been made available by the Government for participants to make an “intelligent response.”
Dr Paul Dorfman, senior research fellow at the University of Warwick, who is leading the project - involving 20 academics, to which Pete Roche refers - examining the fairness of the nuclear consultation process, says “partial information was rammed down the public’s throat. It was totally impractical for people to make a rational decision based on the information they were fed. The way it was put together was designed so that a particular view would emerge.” That particular view was one favourable to nuclear, of course.
Shortly after the Greenpeace High Court victory triggered a second consultation, I wrote to the then Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) under the Freedom of Information Act requesting copies of “the reports and advice prepared in association with the Energy Review and follow-up activities for the Government by departmental officials and consultants contracted by the DTI or other government Departments or non-departmental public bodies reporting to the DTI, Defra or the Devolved Administrations on the costs of prospective new nuclear plants and the full management of radioactive waste arisings and decommissioning, including financial projections of security costs, and any fiscal incentives or subsidies envisaged for nuclear plant construction and waste management.”
I requested each of these documents in full “un-redacted” ie uncensored form.
Two months later, ironically on the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine, the DTI’s director of energy, Willy Rickett, refused my request, spending all of 14 pages to say “no”! My appeal was also turned down in June.
Then, in mid August, Malcolm Wicks gave a fascinating interview to the Financial Times on the future landscape for energy policy. He told the paper it was “not inconceivable the government might reverse its view that nuclear power should remain part of the UK’s energy mix,” and he disclosed that civil servants were doing “preparatory work on alternative strategies” should nuclear be rejected. If new evidence or new arguments came up that made us think again, then we would think again, he said.
I applied under the FOI act “for all information relating to the preparatory work on alternative strategies should nuclear be rejected, including internal e-mail exchanges between the relevant civil servants on this work.”
This information request was again turned down on 5 October by Mr Rickett. He confirmed that his department indeed held the information I wanted.
“However, “ he added, “a public authority does not have to disclose information that is covered by one of the exemptions in the Act. Having carefully considered your request we have concluded that the information should be withheld. In deciding to withhold the requested information we place reliance on the exemption in section 35(1)(a) of the Act as the requested information contains information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy concerning the preparatory work on alternative strategies should nuclear be rejected.”
I have appealed, but clearly even if the appeal was successful, it is now too late to be of any use in support of any submission to the nuclear consultation.
When Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the UK branch of Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF-UK) and environmental umbrella group, The Green Alliance, withdrew from the nuclear consultation a month ago, they issued the following statement: “While the NGOs have always been absolutely committed to taking part in a balanced and open consultation that will actually shape policy, it is has now become clear that the Government has already made up its mind on building new nuclear power stations and that this new consultation is nothing more than an expensive and time consuming sham. It is for this reason that Greenpeace and other leading NGOs have decided to pull out of the consultation process.”
My personal experience in trying to obtain primary documents from Government in order to make a considered nuclear consultation response sadly reflects the disaffection of the green groups. If the outcome of the consultation is roundly rejected by the public, ministers will have only themselves to blame.
Dr David Lowry is an environmental policy and research consultant, and a contributing author on nuclear waste and nuclear insecurities to ‘Nuclear or Not?’ (Palgrave Macmillan, February 2007)
“We need to look at the problem of carbon emissions more holistically. Nuclear power can only supply electricity, so fails to address carbon emissions from heat and transport. For example, the UK Government’s aviation policy has given the industry permission to produce up to three times the volume of carbon emissions by 2030 than might be avoided by replacing the UK’s nuclear power stations. A rethink of aviation policy would be a far more effective way to tackle climate change.”
I see - and what percentage of the carbon we burn is used for electrical power generation?
See http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2007/2007-05-11-03.asp
For an article thats lambasting the government for not giving a fair and balanced report backed up by statistics you seem to be doing an awfully good job of it yourselves.
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The government consultation-sham suppresses the highly important issue of the Nuclear Waste from new nuclear stations.
Hugh Richards of Welsh Anti-Nuclear Alliance (WANA)has submitted an analysis of the ’spent fuel’ high-level radwaste that would accumulate on future nuclear sites. This would be a terroist target, but the government has swept the issue away in its pretence that the nuclear waste issue has been sorted by CoRWM.
Hugh Richards’ paper points out
# it’s wrong/misleading to treat rad-waste from new plant as a few % addition to the current rad-waste inventory.
# the new waste will be stored on nuclear sites, first in cooling ponds or equivalent
# the new waste is to be stored on site in “interim” stores, not as present taken to Sellafield.
# Hugh Richards shows how the radioactivity in these interim stores will increase as spent fuel is added over the reactor lifetime, to amounts from a few to over ten ‘chernobyls’ (ie. the radioactivity released at Chernobyl)
# interim on-site stores have been identified as prime terrorist targets, yet the CoRWM-recommended security review has been sidelined.
# The government quotes reassuring statements (OCNS - ‘trust the experts’) but not the MOD’s warnings or independent reviews.
This is of a piece with government denials that Britain’s actions in Iraq have not generated or added to risks of terrorist acts in the UK. Hugh
Richards does well to focus on the radwaste issue.
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