Politicians worldwide lack the political guts to invest in new solutions to the long-predicted problem of global warming. The UK Government is no exception. Already well behind the modest CO2 emission-reduction targets it set itself, it is desperate to be seen to be doing something, however pointless and whatever the long term implications. Rather than invest in energy conservation and the development of clean, sustainable energy sources, it has decided to prioritise the building of more dirty, unsustainable nuclear power stations.

In the last issue of Green Health Watch Magazine we reported an article by Paul Mobbs arguing that insufficient world resources of high-grade uranium made nuclear power at best a short term source of energy. Writing in The Ecologist (June 2006), Jon Hughes gives more reasons why the rationale for nuclear power simply does not add up ...

Building a nuclear power station
With global warming self-evident, and the prospect of rising sea levels and greater coastal erosion, the first problem is where to build them. The average nuclear power station requires around 30 million gallons of water a day to cool its reactors, the reason all current stations are sited on the coast. This, as a confidential Nirex* report implies, is no longer an option. Future nuclear power stations will have to be built further inland, presenting major and costly logistical and safety problems which will themselves generate huge volumes of CO2 emissions. Will new roads have to be built to supply all the building materials and reactor components, and rivers dammed and populations resited to provide adequate water supplies?

The UK Government has prioritised nuclear power as a swift and sure response to global warming when building new nuclear power stations is unlikely to be either swift or sure. No-one has built a nuclear power station in Europe for ten years or in the US for twenty years. The new European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR), the model of reactor most likely to be favoured by the Government, has never been built nor its ‘innovative’ computer management systems proven. The prototype is currently under construction in Helsinki (Finland), where construction is already a year behind schedule after only one year’s work. The Government has boasted that new nuclear power stations could be built in five years but, all of the above aside, the nuclear power industry is infamous for missing deadlines by miles while costs spiral. Ten years would be a more likely timescale, but that would only be if the current design of EPR is adopted.

Although opponents of nuclear power have long highlighted the potential of nuclear power stations for terrorists to make impressive statements, the current design of EPR ignores what nuclear engineering consultants John Large now considers “a probability, no longer a possibility”. John Large estimates that it will take ten years to develop and incorporate adequate protection.

In short, even if the UK Government were able to find geologically ‘safe’ sites, and ‘streamline’ (i.e. run rough shod through) any local consultation or planning processes, and go ahead with nuclear power stations vulnerable to terrorist attack, it would probably still take at least ten years before the first Watt of alleged CO2 - saving nuclear electricity left the stations. All that while construction of the new stations would have pumped CO2 into the atmosphere while global warming got worse.

At present, nuclear power supplies 20% of the UK’s electricity wants. The current facilities are ageing and must soon be shut down then decommissioned (another source of CO2 emissions). To provide the same amount of electricity, ten new power stations will have to be built, at a cost of £20 billion and bequeathing radioactive pollution to current populations and generations for thousands of years to come. At the end of it all, in terms of CO2 emissions from electricity production, the UK would have stood still. Imagine, on the other hand, what £20 billion across 10 years invested in energy conservation and renewable energy sources could achieve. The UK Association for the Conservation of Energy states that energy efficiency measures alone could save 25 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. In the same period, the German Government will have invested 10 billion euros in upgrading 75% of its pre-1978 housing stock to 2006 standards. Meanwhile, the UK Government, with seven million sub-standard homes, has so far only committed itself to 150 million euros.

Ed.- (i) In his report Nuclear Power: the Energy Balance, Dutch nuclear expert Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen states (i) that the current grade of uranium ore being mined will be exhausted by 2034, and (ii) that the increased cost of mining and processing lower grade ore will cause nuclear power to become increasingly inefficient and expensive. The more intensive processing will also dramatically increase carbon dioxide emissions attributable to nuclear power.

(ii) In a letter to The Ecologist (1.9.06), Peter Bunyard notes that the French Government assesses that, using the currently available high grade uranium ore, generating one megawatt/hour of electricity with one of their Pressurised Water Reactor nuclear power stations* emits 29 tonnes of carbon dioxide. France should know. It is the country with the most experience of nuclear power in the world. Its 60 reactors are responsible for 9% of its carbon emissions. When or if lower grade ore is used, those figures will be much higher.

(iii) The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament states that, from cradle to grave, a nuclear power station causes as much CO2 emission as a modern gas-burning power station.

(iv) The Sustainable Development Commission (March 2006), states that a natural gas-burning power station emits 356 tonnes per megawatt/hour, a coal-burning power station 891.

(v) Only a third of the UK public supports the building of new nuclear power stations in Britain (Financial Times 20.11.06).

* In pressurised water reactors the water surrounding the core is kept under pressure. When the pressurised water is heated by the reactor, it is sent to a heat exchanger and it boils water which is kept at a lower pressure. This steam is then sent to a turbine to generate electricity.