“New Labour’s love affair with nuclear is a dangerous, irresponsible, and costly distraction from the real challenge to tckling climate change“.
“Indeed there are colossal lies at the heart of the government’s nuclear fundamentalism.”
“New reactors are not the answer to UK energy problems and will do little to tackle climate change. We could meet our energy requirements by investing in cleaner, safer solutions such as renewables, combined heat and power, energy efficiency, and the more efficient use of fossil fuels.”
“This is a flawed decision based on a sham consultation- we all knew that ministers made up their minds long ago.
The government has effectively locked us into nuclear power for the best part of a century. By the time they are up and running in the 2020s, nuclear power plants may be obsolete given the breathtaking progress in renewable technologies.”
Despite all the public criticism, the government has gone ahead and put forward plans for new nuclear power plants. It was the world’s worst kept secret. Ministers took the easy way out without bothering to look at the alternatives. But nobody should be surprised about this. Labour as a party have never considered promoting green policies either at local or national level. Many of its (older) members still mourn over the decline of the coalmining industry, which its workers once formed a hugely solid support base in the past, but the infamous strike of 1984-5 saw the end to that.
It seems that the government’s so-called green ambitions have turned into unwelcome hot air.
First a disclosure: I am not from the UK but here are my thoughts:
The issue of nuclear power cannot be thought of in vacuum concerning energy production.
Modern Generation III reactors turn out 1.5 + gigawatts of electricity for the base load on the grid. Compare that to any source currently available. They produce less waste than previous designs and are safer to operate. They are not without environmental impact considering the amount of energy and chemicals used to create enriched uranium or build and take down the plants. There is also the issue of high level radioactive waste.
Coal plants emit CO2, mercury, acid rain constituents, uranium and thorium, and produce tons of fly and bottom ash. The mining of coal is a dirty deadly affair, where either miners dig deep into the earth and risk black lung or run the risk of more acute forms of death, or the whole tops of mountains are removed, at the expense not only of the mountain, but of vast amounts of oil. After the coal is mined, it has to be transported.
The production of solar panels is not energy neutral or environmentally friendly and wind turbines also take a lot of energy and materials that have to be mined and extensively processed before they have a chance to kill birds or mar sea beds.
Damming rivers disrupts ecosystems, even with fish runs.
In principle, I am not opposed to wind, solar, geothermal and hydroelectric etc. Except for the last two, so-called alternative sources can’t support the base load needed to sustain the grid. They can reduce total power demand, especially during peak demand periods which happen to usually coincide when the sun is out and the wind is blowing.
I personally think that a part of the answer to our (the world’s) current problems lies in distributed energy production using a variety of alternative means of electrical generation close to their points of consumption that augments a predominantly nuclear generated base-load. The nuclear infrastructure should consist of a circuit of reactors. Some reactors would burn uranium in order to be plutonium sources. This plutonium would be used in other reactors to drive the transmutation of thorium to uranium which would then be burned in situ to produce power. These latter reactors would thus burn down plutonium while producing very little new waste and act as a sink. They can also be used to dispose of weapons grade plutonium. The waste produced from the thorium fuel cycle is relatively short lived and less than the mass produced during the current uranium cycle. The first fuel design necessary to produce the thorium reactors in this model is nearing commercialization, so this really isn’t a pipe dream.
The other part of the solution has to be greater energy efficiency (read conservation, but I think this is a bad way to describe it).
The real demon is coal, not nuclear. Nuclear just scares people while coal keeps on silently killing and killing without people becoming too exercised about it. So called “Clean coal” is still a nightmare.
The real issue here is that the UK government has made the decision to go nuclear without considering the pros and cons of the alternatives. They have made great speeches about promoting environmental issues in the past only to do the exact opposite of what they said. There is no real energy strategy and the British population need to be told about how our scarce energy needs are going to be met in the future.