A new nuclear future?
A WEEK after Labour’s re-election, the share price
of British Energy hit £3.35, compared to £2.50 in January. British
Energy owns eight nuclear power stations and hopes that the government
will decide to build more. City financiers think Tony Blair will be good
for nuclear business.
All eleven Magnox reactors built between 1956-71
need to be closed by the early 2020s. Four are still working. Their life
has already been extended. It takes nearly ten years to plan and build a
new nuclear power station, so a decision on their replacement must be
taken before the next general election.
The nuclear industry likes to describes itself as
‘climate friendly energy’. Burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide,
the principal greenhouse gas, causing global warming. Nuclear energy
produces far less, although the mining and transportation of raw
materials, building power stations, and the storage and processing of
waste all lead to carbon dioxide emissions.
Evidence is mounting that global warming is
accelerating. ‘Tipping points’ occur when a further small increase in
temperature results in changes that feed back to produce larger
temperature rises. An example is the vast area of frozen peat bog in
Siberia, recently found to be melting. This will release huge quantities
of previously trapped methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
Recent crop failure in Niger, drought in France and
Spain, forest fires in Portugal and Indonesia, floods in India, and even
a tornado in Birmingham, all indicate an increasingly unstable climate.
The need to drastically cut back greenhouse gas emissions is urgent.
So is nuclear power an answer? In fact, even if
nuclear power in the UK was doubled, this would only cut emissions of
greenhouse gases by about 8%. Electricity generation is responsible for
less than a third of UK carbon dioxide emissions.
Nuclear power, produced by splitting atoms
(fission), can never be safe. The process produces radioactive waste
which remains highly toxic for tens of thousands of years. Next year
marks the 50th anniversary of Britain’s first nuclear power station at
Calder Hall. The surrounding Sellafield area is the most radioactive in
the world, according to Greenpeace. The rate of childhood leukaemia
there is ten times the average elsewhere in the UK.
Next year is also the 20th anniversary of the
catastrophic meltdown of the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine. Thousands were
displaced from their homes. Vast areas of Europe and the then Soviet
Union were polluted by radioactive fallout. Thyroid cancers in children
under 15 years old in the Gomel region of Belarus are now running at
nearly 100 per million. The UK average is 0.5 per million. Thyroid
cancer is treatable and usually non-fatal, but is only one of a number
of cancers caused by radiation.
The latest estimated cost of dismantling Britain’s
Magnox reactors, together with some military nuclear sites, is £56
billion – £8 billion up on the previous estimate by the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority (NDA). If another 100 tonnes of plutonium and
thousands of tonnes of uranium stored at Sellafield are also classified
as waste, the bill will rise by a further £10 billion. A US company,
Jacobs, is set to sign a deal to decommission the Magnox stations. This
seems likely to lead to the takeover of the British Nuclear Group by a
US company.
A recent opinion poll showed that 59% believed it
would be irresponsible to build more nuclear power stations while
problems remain in the management of current waste. Fifty percent saw
nuclear power as unsafe. The Department of Trade and Industry has stated
it realises "the importance of having public opinion on our side". It
has a big job in front of it as the poll shows a paltry 1% would trust
an MP or minister’s word on safety – that figure will probably have been
rounded up!
With oil prices at record levels, nuclear ‘experts’
calling for 80 new reactors worldwide, and with Blair calling for
greenhouse gas reductions in the next ten years, the signs are that
Labour will approve the replacement of old nuclear power stations. The
report on handling nuclear waste is due in December. What will the
government then decide?
Keith Baverstock, formerly senior radiation adviser
with the World Health Organisation in Europe, accused the Committee on
Radioactive Waste Management of wasting time on "amateurish" attempts to
draw up a list of options: "The public health aspects of the problem are
being ignored and trivialised by people who do not sufficiently
understand the issue", he said. Unsurprisingly, Baverstock was given the
boot.
Finland is building the first new nuclear power
station in Europe for many years. In France the parliament has recently
approved a new nuclear plant. Guillaume Dureau of Areva, the world’s
largest nuclear supplier, declared: "We are pretty convinced of a
nuclear revival and need to prepare for it. We need to hire 1,000
engineers". In Germany the Christian Democrats may overturn the ban on
new plants imposed in the 1990s should they win the coming general
election. Sir David King, the government’s chief scientific advisor,
argues for ‘another generation of nuclear-fission stations’.
The war of words from US and European governments
against Iran reopening its nuclear power industry shows the links
between nuclear energy and nuclear warfare. Weapons-grade plutonium is
produced by some reactors. US companies are dealing with China, where
plans are in progress for 30 reactors in the near future. But they have
seen contracts blocked by the House of Representatives, for fear of
transferring too much secret know-how.
The renewed enthusiasm for nuclear power is in spite
of past events such as the Three Mile Island near-meltdown (1979),
Chernobyl (1986), and the falsification of safety figures at Tokyo
Electric Power, where Japan’s largest private electricity company had to
shut 17 reactors after hiding cracks at some of its plants. If a
9/11-style attack struck Sellafield it would unleash a catastrophe 40
times greater than Chernobyl, according to a European parliament report.
There are many alternatives to nuclear power and the
unsustainable burning of fossil fuels. Sixty percent of government
energy research funds, however, were spent on nuclear power in 2000,
compared to 23% on renewable energy. There is huge potential for
renewable sources as part of an integrated and planned energy programme.
According to Cabinet Office figures in 2002, the estimated cost of UK
electricity in 2020, measured in pence/kilowatt hour will be: land wind,
1.5-2.5p; offshore wind, 2-3p; energy crops, 2.5-4p; wave and tidal
power, 3-6p; gas, 2-2.3p; coal, 3-3.5p; large combined heat and power,
over 2p; nuclear, 3-4p.
Since then, the cost of gas and the decommissioning
of nuclear power stations has gone up. As Ed Cummins of US energy
company, Westinghouse, says "the biggest motivator for nuclear today is
$6 [per million British thermal units of] natural gas. If gas goes back
to $3.50 then nuclear plants aren’t competitive". Such short-term,
profit-oriented calculations cannot solve the growing crisis of energy
production, pollution and global warming.
A socialist programme would incorporate massive
investment in renewable technologies. Decommissioning nuclear power
stations would place safety as the only priority and would provide
decades of work for existing nuclear industry workers. Renationalisation
of the whole energy industry with workers’ control and management is
essential to avoid impending catastrophe from global warming and nuclear
fallout.
Sam Lesniak
|