Extracts from the March-April 2003 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

15. Phasing out Nuclear

‘Anyone who suggests that we should not replace nuclear with nuclear must say how our environmental obligations are to be met if nuclear is not replaced with nuclear’. So said Energy Minister Brian Wilson, in a House of Commons debate on energy on 20 Jun 2002.

Meeting the challenge head on, SERA, in its submission to the new energy review, argued the following case. Although, in the UK, around 9GW of old nuclear plant is set to be retired over the next two decades, by 2010, the UK is planning to have 10GW (e) of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) capacity installed, with presumably more to follow. CHP plants produce heat as well as electricity, and this can be in roughly equal proportions, the heat in effect being a bonus- it was wasted before. The widespread adoption of gas-fired CHP would provide heat which would release gas currently used for heating, for use in electricity generation. This could in effect replace the output of nuclear power plants as they retire, without leading to any increase in carbon emissions, leaving renewables to begin to replace coal burning and also to begin to provide electricity, hydrogen and biofuels for transport use. Carbon sequestration might be seen as performing a similar interim role, by allowing gas to replace nuclear without creating any extra emissions. In parallel, investment in energy efficiency and demand side management should be able to hold down the rate of increase in demand, with, ideally, the cash savings from energy conservation being used to fund the expansion of renewables. On this basis SERA said- who needs nuclear power? Whether its old plants of new plants, they simply siphon off money that is needed to expand renewables. That point must hardly now need making, given the British Energy debacle. They were reported to be losing £4 on each megawatt their nuclear plants generated. The £650m loan from the government can only be the start of a continuous flow of public subsidy.

Nuclear Insurance

The PIU in effect saw nuclear power as an ‘insurance’ option in case renewables, efficiency and CHP do not deliver as much as hoped. But, as SERA noted, it is hard to see how it can offer a viable insurance.

Firstly, it is an unreliable insurance- there is no guarantee that a commercially viable, socially acceptable technology would be available when and if it was needed. The Westinghouse AP1000 has yet to be built and the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor is decades away. Indeed, at least one of the PMBR’s supporters, Exelon Corporation of the USA- the world’s third largest private nuclear utility- has already withdrawn, in April this year, from an industrial partnership promoting the PBMR. So it will be some time before the safety and economic claims made by their proponents can be tested.

Secondly, although it is claimed that new nuclear technology will produce less wastes, there would still inevitably be wastes from these plants to add to the growing stocks (500,000 tonnes over the next century) as existing plants are decommissioned. And yet we have no idea where it is to be put long term.

Thirdly, trying the keep the nuclear option open will be expensive, inevitably diverting money away from what we would see as more sustainable energy options, and ironically thereby perhaps even justifying continued funding for nuclear. As it is, half the £50m currently allocated to energy R&D in the UK goes to nuclear and this imbalance is set to continue. By 2003/4, the total energy R&D budget is planned to double, but so will the allocation to nuclear, including continued support for fusion, an option which is widely seen as a very long shot.

Who would buy an insurance which undermined the thing being insured, which increased the level of hazard and risk, which has costs which are likely to escalate, but which cannot be guaranteed to deliver when and if required? Nuclear power is also inimical to sustainable development, as the waste management responsibilities have to be passed on to future generations, due to their very long-lived nature. On the basis of the ‘polluter pays’ principle, the cost of dealing with this problem, including the regulatory costs, must be met by the industry, not the taxpayer. It is a tragic comment on the security of this proposed ‘insurance’ option that, following the terrorist attacks in the USA, UK insurers have recently withdrawn their limited third part cover from UK nuclear facilities, forcing the government to take over this liability. While it’s good to see that the nuclear operators are being charged for this service, it does illustrate that insurers now feel the nuclear option is not a viable insurance risk.

Other refutations

Brain Wilsons’ jibe that it was up to the anti-nuclear movement to show how environmental goals could be met without nuclear power, can be stood on its head- the real question is how can they be met with nuclear power ? But if you need chapter and verse, then last year Friends of the Earth produced a study ‘Tackling Climate Change without Nuclear Power’, based on an new energy model, which suggests that it would be possible to achieve the governments target of cutting carbon emissions from the power sector by 29% by 2010, without needing to replace decommissioned nuclear power plants.

Instead FoE’s scenario relies on renewables, CHP, energy efficiency, and carbon sequestration. They also found that by 2020, their sustainable energy policy could reduce emissions by 45%. That is hardly surprising. Paul Ekins’ study ‘The UK’s Transition to a Low Carbon economy’, produced for Forum for the Future last year, came to similar conclusions. So indeed did the PIU and the RCEP- or rather, they both concluded that a non-nuclear future was a possible option.

And to round things off, Greenpeace commissioned the ILEX consultancy to consider a future in which British Energy’s nuclear power stations are withdrawn from service over the next two or three years. ILEX concludes that ‘all of British Energy’s power stations could be withdrawn from service by the winter of 2005/6 and an acceptable level of security of supply maintained, provided that none of the other power stations currently in service are withdrawn, except for the announced closures of Magnox nuclear power plants by BNFL Magnox, and prospective new capacity, which has full planning consent, is commissioned according to the National Grid Companies project timetable’.

A faster shut down, by the winter of 2004/5, could be achieved if, in addition to the above provisos, three new gas fired plants currently, with full consent, are commissioned earlier than planned, and two existing mothballed plants are restarted. On that basis the Magnox plants as well as BE plants could all be closed by 2005/6, or by 2006/7 without these extra provisos- and still give us roughly a 20% plant margin. Overall, ILEX assume that such a programme would be contingent on wholesale electricity prices rising to 2.4-2.6p/kWh, i.e. above the pre-NETA levels, although they leave open the economic implications and the environmental implications. But clearly starting up more gas plants would increase carbon emissions. In principle, renewables could be ramped up faster to make up some of the difference, as could the conservation effort, but ILEX say that renewables (and CHP) couldn’t be expected to make much more of contribution than was already planned in this timescale unless, for example, the 3p/kWh buy out price in the Renewable Obligation was increased.