Don't take the nuclear option

Just as Mr Blair suddenly remembers he wants to build some nuclear power stations (did it slip your mind during the election campaign, Tony?), twenty tonnes of uranium and plutonium dissolved in concentrated nitric acid leaks out of a pipe at Sellafield’s Thorp reprocessing plant.

Parts of the Sellafield complex have been closed down, at a cost of £1 million a day – a tab to be picked up by the taxpayer, as our money is all that is keeping the nuclear industry afloat. Of course, a million a day is nothing compared to the ten of billions it will cost us to decommission Britain’s ageing nuclear power stations and store their radioactive waste.

And yet despite all of this, nuclear is being presented as the solution to Britain’s energy requirements. In case you have been taken by the great atomic swindle, consider the following facts: The much-quoted estimates of the cost of electricity from new nuclear power stations are lifted straight from the nuclear industry’s own best case scenarios, and are based on a new design that has yet to built anywhere in the world. Due to the immense financial, legal, political and technical challenges involved, it is extremely unlikely that any new nuclear generating capacity would come online before the later part of the next decade – meaning that the nuclear option would need to be competitive not with the alternative technologies of today, but those of the 2020s and 2030s. And as for reducing carbon dioxide emissions that can be done more cheaply through energy efficiency measures -- so, in terms of taxpayer and consumer subsidies, nuclear actually represents an opportunity cost in the global warming stakes.

As for the political calculus, Conservatives should think very carefully before backing Blair on nuclear. Not only is the nuclear option unpopular with the public, it is unpopular with many Labour backbenchers. Given Blair’s majority it wouldn’t take many Labour rebels to inflict a defeat on the Government. Aternatively, we could save Blair’s bacon and give the Lib Dems the mother of all campaigning opportunities. Energy is going to be an increasing important issue in the next few years. Political cowardice kept the nuclear option off the table in the election we’ve just had, but voters will have their say next time. The Lib Dems must be praying that we will allow them to corner the market in ‘no’ votes.

Comments

[Peter Berrow]

Hopefully this message wasn't done by someone who is a Star Trek fan who thinks that if they stick their heads into the sand the problem of Nuclear waste will go away (firing it into the sun is the most laughable). Through fast track stations you are solving a long term power option but also giving a option of where countries like Russia put their waste rather than them sinking it into the sea of Sweden or putting warheads in disused army barracks guarded by conscripts on less than two dollors a day.
I know people will say not in our backyard but again Nuclear has no backyard only what is safe and what is not safe in terms of options.

[Ry]

The issue of energy supply needs impartial consideration. Basing policy on public prejudice and short-term political expediency may be unwise.

[simon clewer]

How about storing the waste in, hmmm what are they called, the word escapes me. Oh yes, warehouses - you know, big empty covered spaces where you can put stuff.

Future generations ( say 100 years from now ) can burn it up in fusion reactors or chuck it into the sun or whatever.

Let the greenies worry about that, they are a bit thick so it is nice for them to have something to worry about, and its Blair's problem to deal with the media and the NIMBYs and the greenies.