Why greens must learn to love nuclear power 19 September 08

Well, I take you very seriously Mark, so I’m re-examining my position as honestly as I can. I hope there will be plenty of well-informed responses here to help me. My first reaction was like you had just announced that GMO’s would help us combat food shortage – it’s just not a risk we can take or a legacy we can leave our children.

The idea of burning up all the stockpiles of old waste is VERY appealing. But then you mention the new waste products being “inert in a couple of centuries” and all waste being safe in “less than a thousand years”.

Do you really know that an informed and well-resourced civil society which could manage this legacy is going to be around in even 100 years? I’d say there’s a good chance it won’t. We would still be gambling with the health and safety of future humans – my own decendants – and I have an ethical sticking point there.

It’s appealing to think of all these new reactors quietly closing themselves down to sleep safely for a few centuries if the workforce are delayed from coming in one day by climate disaster, war, or famine. Hmm… They would have to be extremely well-designed and constructed by people who were genuinely planning for ALL eventualities, including future civil collapse.

Of course, you’re banking on Nuclear providing enough carbon-free energy to help us avoid those terrible outcomes and keep society intact. Is that because you don’t see the Zero Carbon Britain plans outlined by C.A.T. or Monbiot’s European Super-Grid as viable options?

Wouldn’t it be preferable to pursue those “solar farms in the North African desert” ? And do we really need to “match current consumption” or do we need to learn that there is no safe, sustainable and acceptable way to do that – we need to power down instead.

I think that people are scared that our society is too addicted to high-energy life to make the necessary change – visions of Monbiot’s “austerity riots” etc. Well firstly let’s see how this recession pans out in terms of consumption habits, and secondly lets go for the lowest longterm ecological impacts possible. If my society collapses, that’s my reponsibility. I shouldn’t stake my society’s survival on leaving toxic waste for others to deal with.

But I know that these are real issues and not articles of faith, so I’ll keep listening however uncomfortable it makes me!

Mark’s article is replete with so many errors, probably because he has read too few critical studies of nuclear, and relied upon unreconstructed pro-nuclear enthusiasts such as Tom Blees, who does not match his enthusiasm for exotic, untried nuclear technology with robust facts. Below I past a new article by Paris-based energy consultant, Mycle Schneider, just published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It does not address the technical mistakes in Mark’s article, but does demonstrate the unliklihood of the kind of nuclear industrial renaissance favoured by the the atomic enthusiasts.

Dr David Lowry

Stoneleigh

contributing author, Nuclear or Not? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/reports/2008-world-nu…

Hype over the future of nuclear power is rampant, but the facts tell a different story. The percentage of nuclear-generated electricity in the overall global energy mix is decreasing. In this three-part series Mycle Schneider, a French independent nuclear analyst, explores the difficulties facing nuclear power throughout the world and in Western Europe and Asia in particular.

2008 world nuclear industry status report: Global nuclear power

By Mycle Schneider | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 16 September 2008

Last Thursday, in the midst of the world media’s constant constant nuclear revival reportage, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had an embarrassing announcement to make. While it has increased its projections for nuclear generation in 2030, nuclear’s share of global electricity generation dropped another percentage point in 2007. The world’s nuclear electricity generation had decreased by 2 percent in 2007-in the European Union (EU) it dropped 6 percent-more than in any other year since the first fission reactor was connected to the Soviet grid in 1954. The drop by about 60 terawatt hours corresponds to the average annual generation of 10 reactors.

Major contributing factors were the seven units at Kashiwazaki, Japan, which have remained shut down since a severe earthquake shook the region in July 2007; the up to six German reactors that have been taken off the grid simultaneously for major repairs; and the numerous French reactors that have undergone inspections and maintenance after a generic problem was identified in their steam generators. The latter issue is expected to cost the French nuclear fleet another 2-3 percent of its average load factor for 2008 and through 2009. The “Big Six” nuclear powers-the United States, France, Japan, Germany, Russia, and South Korea-saw their global share of nuclear-generated electricity drop from about three-quarters in previous years to 68 percent in 2007.

At the beginning of September, there were 439 operating nuclear reactors worldwide, five less than five years ago, with a total installed capacity of 372 gigawatts in 31 countries. No new nuclear plant has come online since the beginning of the year.

The installed capacity has increased slightly through “uprating,” or technical improvements at existing plants that increase electricity generation. According to the World Nuclear Association (WNA), the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved 110 uprates since 1977, a few of them “extended uprates” of up to 20 percent. An additional seven uprates are to be completed through the end of the year. As a result, close to an additional 5 gigawatts were added to the U.S. nuclear capacity through uprates alone—the equivalent of about four new plants. Europe is experiencing a similar trend of uprates and life extensions of existing reactors.

The capacity of the global fleet increased between 2000 and 2004 by about 3 gigawatts per year, much of it through uprating. That dropped to 2 gigawatts per year between 2004 and 2007 and to about 0.5 gigawatts over the first eight months of 2008. These figures should be compared to the global net increase in all electricity generating capacity of an estimated 150 gigawatts for all new power plants, from fossil-fuelled facilities to renewable energy, per year. That leaves nuclear energy with an insignificant fraction in the global power marketplace.

In 2007, nuclear power plants generated 2,600 terawatt hours, about 14 percent of the world’s commercial electricity (down from 15 percent in 2006 and 16 percent in 2005) or less than 6 percent of the commercial primary energy and on the order of 2 percent of final energy. Only five countries (Armenia, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, and Switzerland), which together operate 11 nuclear plants, increased their nuclear share in the power mix in 2007 over the previous year. Fifteen countries remained stable (less than a 1 percent change) and in 11 countries the role of nuclear power declined. (See chart PDF.)

Construction sites in the 14 countries that are currently building nuclear power plants are accumulating substantial and costly delays. At the end of August, the IAEA listed 35 reactors as “under construction,” which is one more than at the end of 2007, but 18 less than at the end of the 1990s. The total capacity is just under 28,300 megawatts with an average size of 800 megawatts per unit. A closer look at the list illustrates the level of uncertainty associated with reactor building:

• Eleven reactors, almost one-third of the total listed, have been under construction for more than 20 years. The U.S. Watts Bar 2 project holds the record with an original construction start in December 1972 (subsequently frozen), followed by the Iranian Bushehr plant that was started by German Siemens in May 1975 and is now to be finished by Russia.

• Fifteen projects don’t have an official start-up date, including all seven of the Russian projects, two Bulgarian reactors, and three of the six Chinese units under construction. In fact, one Russian plant (Balakovo-5), which had been listed since 1987 and was to go online by the end of 2010, was abandoned and pulled off the list earlier this year. It was replaced by a new project (Novovoronezh 2-1) without any indication of a planned start-up date.

• Two-thirds of the under-construction units have encountered significant construction delays, pushing back officially announced start-up dates. Only 10 projects haven’t indicated delays, they are three Chinese, one Pakistani, three South Korean, and three Russian units. They were all started within the last three years and haven’t reached their projected start-up dates yet, which makes it difficult or impossible to assess whether they are on schedule.

The geographic distribution of nuclear power plant projects extends the trend of previous years. Between 2004 and 2007, 14 nuclear plants, the total number of units that started up during that time, were located in Asia or Eastern Europe. Similarly, 30 of the 35 reactors currently “under construction” are also located in those regions. The average global construction time for nuclear plants (more than nine years for the 14 most recent ones) isn’t a useful metric because of great differences between countries. The four reactors that started up in Romania, Russia, and Ukraine took between 18 and 24 years, while the 10 units that were connected to the grid in China, India, Japan, and South Korea took only five years to complete on average.

Lead times for nuclear plants don’t only include construction times but also long-term planning, lengthy licensing procedures in most countries, complex financial negotiations, and site preparation. In addition, in most cases, the grid system has to be upgraded, often with new power lines that have their own planning and licensing difficulties. In some cases, public opposition is significantly higher in regards to high-voltage power lines than for the nuclear plants that generate the electricity. NRC Chairman Dale Klein noted that potentially necessary grid extensions could lead to further delays of nuclear projects and indicated that he was surprised to learn that “it may take as long to site, permit, and build a transmission line for a new plant as to site, license, and build the plant itself.”

In the past, nuclear planning has rarely turned out to be accurate. In an article entitled “President Offers Plans for Revival of Nuclear,” the New York Times reported that the administration “today formally specified the steps it will take to revive commercial nuclear power.” That piece appeared in October 1981 and the president was Ronald Reagan. Twenty years later the “nuclear revival” is once again on the agenda, with President George W. Bush promoting Nuclear Power 2010.

In October 2001, as part of Nuclear Power 2010, the Energy Department planned to “complete construction and deploy multiple commercially viable new nuclear plants by 2010,” and at a minimum deploy “at least one light water and at least one gas-cooled reactor.” Reality is quite different, and it’s now obvious that no new U.S. plant will be up and running by 2010. Energy’s July 2008 update on the status of commercial nuclear reactor licenses lists nine submitted applications for combined construction and operating licenses (COL) and a further 10 intended applications. Only one unit is currently planned to operate under a new license before 2015. NRG Energy plans to start construction at its South Texas site as early as 2009 with grid connection in 2014. NRG’s COL is currently under review by the NRC. However, as Energy points out, “There is no assurance that any of these plants [which it licenses] will ultimately be built or operate commercially,” and “COL filings often include a goal to ‘keep the nuclear option open’ rather than full commitment [to construction].”

Moody’s Investor Services, which provides risk analysis to the capital markets, expects extensive legal cases: “We believe the first COL filing will be litigated, which could create lengthy delays for the rest of the sector.” The Financial Times obtained confidential government documents that confirm a similar situation in Britain: “Fresh legal challenges are expected to hamper plans to build new nuclear power stations in [Britain].”

Without any significant new build for years, the average age of the world’s operating nuclear power plants has been increasing steadily, now standing at 24 years. Some nuclear utilities envision reactor lifetimes of 40 years-or even 60 years. Considering that the average age of the 119 units that have already been shutdown is 22 years, the doubling of operational lifetime seems rather optimistic. If one assumes an average lifetime of 40 years for all the world’s operating reactors (with the exception of 17 remaining German units that, according to German legislation, will be shut down after an average operational lifetime of 32 years) and the 20 units that were under construction as of January 2008 that have an official start-up date (down from 24 units at the start of the year), one can calculate how many plants would be shut down year by year over the next 50 years-see chart PDF.

The exercise enables an evaluation of the number of plants that would have to come online over the next several decades simply to maintain the same number of operating plants around the world. In addition to units under construction with a scheduled start-up date, 70 reactors (generating 40,000 megawatts) would have to be planned, completed and started up by 2015-one every month and a half-and an additional 192 units (168,000 megawatts) over the subsequent decade—or one every 18 days.

The achievement of the 2015 target is simply impossible from an industrial point of view, which means that the number of operating reactors will decline over the years to come unless lifetime extensions beyond 40 years become standard, which would raise safety and maintenance questions. The overall replacement of some 260 units by 2025 seems equally unlikely.

The international nuclear industry lobby, however, claims it can do that and more. The WNA has stated: “It is noteworthy that in the 1980s, 218 power reactors started up, an average of one every 17 days. . . . So it is not hard to imagine a similar number being commissioned in a decade after about 2015. But with China and India getting up to speed with nuclear energy and a world energy demand double the 1980 level in 2015, a realistic estimate of what is possible might be the equivalent of one 1,000 megawatt unit worldwide every 5 days.”

Such a “realistic estimate” seems hard to believe. The situation in the second decade of the twenty-first century will be radically different from that in the 1980s. The nuclear industry will not be in the same position it was in the 1980s, when it started to harvest the early heavy investments made in nuclear. At that time, it also didn’t have to deal with the nuclear waste issue, which was simply put on the back burner, nor the cost of reactor decommissioning, which was underestimated. In that earlier period, the nuclear industry still appeared progressive, attracting young and talented people. And ferocious competitors such as modern natural gas, combined heat and power, and various renewable energy sectors didn’t exist.

The replacement of the aging world nuclear fleet or even the extension of the operating plants encounters three major problems:

• Limited industrial capacity. In the 1980s, there were about 400 nuclear suppliers and 900 nuclear-certified companies in the United States. These have shrunk to fewer than 80 suppliers and 200 certifications in recent years. Even if some of this is due to corporate takeovers, the decline is dramatic. Currently there is only one steel plant in the world, owned by Japan Steel Works that can fabricate the 450-ton ingots needed for so-called generation III reactors such as the Franco-German European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR). A nuclear power plant construction infrastructure assessment PDF by Energy concluded that major equipment (reactor pressure vessels, steam generators, and moisture separator reheaters) for the near-term deployment of generation III units would not be manufactured by U.S. facilities and would result in procurement and construction delays.

• Skilled worker shortage. According to Power Engineering, Art Stall, Florida Power & Light Company’s senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, told the American Nuclear Society’s 2007 annual meeting that the nuclear industry’s revival has been slowed down by the challenges of building new nuclear power plants, which includes finding qualified craft labor, technicians, engineers, and scientists to support both construction and operation. He said that 40 percent of current nuclear plant workers are eligible for retirement within the next five years and that only 8 percent of the workforce is less than 32 years old. While students studying nuclear engineering and other nuclear-specific technical subjects are increasing, there is much competition from other industries for talent. “[T]he nuclear industry must become creative if it is going to entice these graduates to enter and remain in the nuclear field,” he told the crowd. The situation is similar in most European nuclear countries.

• Skeptical financial markets. Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating company, warned in May 2007, “In the past, engineering, procurement, and construction contracts were easy to secure. However, with increasing raw material costs, a depleted nuclear-specialist workforce, and strong demand for capital projects worldwide, construction costs are increasing rapidly.” In October 2007, Moody’s delivered a striking analysis of the U.S. nuclear sector, saying it did “not believe the sector will bring more than one or two new nuclear plants online by 2015.” It concluded that it believed many of the current expectations for nuclear were “overly ambitious.” Moody’s had more bad news for the industry when its June Global Credit Research paper concluded, “The cost and complexity of building a new nuclear power plant could weaken the credit metrics of an electric utility and potentially pressure its credit ratings several years into the project.” Even the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade organization, admitted in an August white paper PDF, “There is considerable uncertainty about the capital cost of new nuclear generating capacity.”

After thorough analysis it seems surprisingly evident that contrary to the public’s perception and the industry’s efforts, nuclear power will continue its long-term decline rather than move toward a flourishing future revival.

Mycle Schneider

Schneider is an independent energy consultant based in Paris. He has consulted for the Belgian Energy Minister, the French and German environment ministries, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Greenpeace, the European Commission, and the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety. He is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials and founded the Energy Information Agency WISE-Paris in 1983, which he directed until 2003. Since 2004, Schneider has led the Environment and Energy Strategies lecture series at the French Ecole des Mines in Nantes.

Dear Mark,

In relation to climate change and the need to cut CO2 emissions, the case against nuclear power is straightforward:

• It is one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity (see http://www.mng.org.uk/gh/no_nukes.htm) and, since the whole nuclear cycle is a long way from being zero-carbon (ibid.), it is an even more expensive way of reducing CO2 emissions. Two good pieces about how costly it is are:

- Paul Brown’s “Voodoo economics”: http://www.mng.org.uk/gh/resources/voodoo_economics.pdf .

- Amory Lovins and Imran Sheikh on “The nuclear illusion”: http://www.mng.org.uk/gh/resources/lovins_sheikh_article_2008-05-27.pdf .

• There are more than enough alternatives that are cheaper, quicker to build and altogether more attractive, see: http://www.mng.org.uk/gh/energy.htm .

• In other words, we get bigger cuts in CO2 for a given amount of money, and we get them sooner, if we choose renewables with energy conservation—and without using nuclear power. We certainly don’t need both.

With best wishes,

Gerry Wolff

Mark’s right, we do need to look seriously at all the options, and dig down to real evidence.

Perhaps my most serious concern about nuclear – of whatever variety – is that while it may help solve the energy crisis and contain climate change, it does nothing to address the fact that ecosystems are already over stressed from our current levels of consumption. (See UN’s Millenium Ecosystem Assessment).

I’m no hair shirt and sandals environmentalist – but we do need to seriously reduce our total impact on the planet. Higher energy costs (whether due to shortages and/or taxation) is one driver for reshaping our economies towards lower resource intensity.

Large supplies of cheap energy will allow politicians to ignore the fact we live in a closed, finite, ecosystem.

Nuclear as part of a mix of energy sources, maybe. Without a strategy that reduces our total impact on the planet – which must surely include energy taxes or rationing – nuclear will just buy us a little to watch ecosystem services (such as fresh water, healthy soil, fisheries etc) collapse around us.

Osbert

All sounds reasonable enough to me. Action is required for sure. Whilst governments sit around debating these issues we could be on with building these new type reactors and investing in all the renewable options as well. This might be a timely boost to the building contractors as well given that the housing market is stagnant at the moment. On top of that unemployment is rising rapidly perhaps some of those people might be glad of a job at the moment. Just a thought Gordon! Really struggling to find any negatives here

I think myself and many more people would have less problems with nuclear energy if it were not in the for-profit world. If it were regulated with every possible safety precaution in place. Where no corners were cut: the cheapest suppliers used with parts from the most underpaid, unskilled corners of the world, outsourced workmanship, the cheapest possible workforce (low skills) etc. Pare down the costs to the bare minimum, that’s the business ideal. Then, there are the byproducts, the refuse: also cutting corners wherever possible, dumping in poor parts of the world, DU & the military etc. Transport as well – it’s secretive and sometimes high risk (through heavily populated areas).

If you want an example of how things can go wrong in an unregulated situation untill you end up with an accident waiting to happen, read up on the Koeberg power plant in South Africa.

If there were clear and cautious government regulations in place, if this industry start to finish were in the hands of a department of energy, if no expense or manpower would be stinted when it comes to safety issues, I’d not have so much of a problem with it. But as long as it’s in the hands of private companies who want to maximise the profits for their shareholders, I’m against.

The argument sound plausible, and provides more evidence than that available in the media generally. Uranium supplies available from mining are in limited supply, so if IFRs can use spent fuel from earlier generations this might just tide us over until the next practical clean energy source is developed. But is the old processed fuel really available? Is it not encased in concrete or vitrified or otherwise taken out of the system? We will have an energy crisis anyway as it seems to take so long to commission a nuclear power station, and we don’t even have an energy policy never mind starting the process of building. Our politicians (of all colours) have failed us again!

It would be so useful if we could add Nuclear Power as another option in our efforts to combat climate change.

But sadly it is too late!

We have to deal with Climate Change over the next 100 months. (At most probably 15 years). Nuclear Power has a history of failing to deliver. Over the next 15 years Nuclear Power will deliver very little in carbon reduction. But the huge construction programme over that period will ADD to CO2 emissions. It is an option that we must sadly forgo, if we are serious about stopping runaway climate change.

Theo – I’m not arguing that the waste problem can be forgotten about, but that it is pretty negligible in terms of its impacts on the environment (and people), certainly when compared with other non-renewable energy sources. With vitrification and deep disposal, the reduced amount of waste would not present much of a threat. Remember, there is radioactivity all around anyway in the ambient environment – radon gas is a good example – which our bodies have evolved to cope with. Check out the Cohen online book (ref #2) for more on that.

Plus, as I said, this is not an either/or with nuclear and renewables. I see nuclear as replacing coal and gas primarily. Ideally we’d see a 60/40 split in UK electrical power with renewables/nuclear, though how the grid is managed is pretty complicated.

In terms of powering down electricity use – this simply isn’t going to happen. It’s wishful thinking. Sorry. We’re going to see continual increases in electricity use, particularly as the transport sector is increasingly electrified (cars, trains etc). And as George Monbiot’s book shows, going for energy efficiency can peversely increase electricity use, but making it cheaper. The main thing is to have a strong cap on carbon, not energy per se.

- Dr David Lowry: It’s not good enough to say that my article is “replete with so many errors” if you can’t actually name any. Please oblige, or recant. Simply posting someone else’s tangentially-relevant article is not going to make your argument for you.

- Osbert Lancaster: I totally agree that we need to reduce pressure on ecosystems. Nuclear is probably the energy source that does this best. Fossil fuels and biofuels are worst. What we want to avoid is swapping a below-ground usustainable source with energy harvested from the ambient biosphere, further to the detriment of the remaining natural ecosystems. Renewables like wind and solar are very benign at small scales, but scale them up too far and there will again be impacts – on land use, biodiversity, water, toxics etc. I think that in terms of pure ecology nuclear is probably the most benign of all, despite the fact that there is a waste issue. Just look at the natural environment around Chernobyl, which is flourishing, because all other human impacts have stopped.

Anja – as I say in the article, nuclear on any comparable scale is safer than most other energy sources, partly because it is subject to such a stringent regulatory system. Has there been a single death in the UK attributable to having 20% nuclear electricity for the past 30 years?

Peter and Maurice – The old chestnut about how long it takes to build a nuclear power station and the urgency of climate change simply won’t wash (sorry to mix metaphors!). Are you suggesting that we won’t need any energy in 15 or 20 years? No? Then we need a long-term solution to the problem. Sure, we can peak emissions in the meantime with quicker options, but we still need energy indefinitely. Plus – if there were less challenges to nuclear from greens, it would be a lot quicker to build! The time is mostly about the planning system, not the engineering.

In the three years since you first suggested nuclear power can play an important role in combatting climate change you seem to have been further taken in by the nuclear industry. More than a decade and half ago it was identified that the nuclear industry was facing terminal decline – no new orders, ageing plant, no solution to waste, strong anti-nuclear sentiment and very poor economics. The industry needed to find a new rationale that could convince policy makers, politicians and media that they had a future. Climate change became that lifeboat – and yet nothing has changed in terms of the critical reasons why nuclear cannot and will not play an important role in combatting climate change. What has happened is that commentators have jumped on the bandwagon created by a global public relations budget (the Nuclear Energy Institute an industry funded body – pumps 100 million dollars a year into convincing those ready to be convinced that nuclear is our saviour). These commentators (and even climate change authors) are now unwittingly at best part of the industry strategy of convincing the public that nuclear is part of the solution. Despite the impression that the world is on the verge of a new nuclear age – the projections for the next 10 years show a real decline in electricity generated from nuclear. The construction of 20-30 reactors underway at present – not at all what it seems given how long some of these have been under construction – will not match the 70 or so additional reactors required by 2015 to replace those shutting down – thats one new reactor every month and a half. Contrast that with annual installed wind and solar.

Your latest piece on nuclear power is even more full of holes than your last piece in the NS. In the run up to the 20 year anniversary of Chernobyl the IAEA and WHO released a report that stated 4,000 deaths. Challenged on this by two reports in March/April 2006, one of the leading authors from WHO broke ranks and stated that the earlier report was more political than scientific. The range of fatailities from 40-100,000 were deemed more credible. What is disappointing is that you seem to take on blind faith the instititions – including UNSCEAR – that for decades has underplayed the impact of low level radiation. As the 30 year anniversary of Three Mile Island approaches you repeat the industry claims that there were zero deaths – again the many thousands of law suits by residents in Pennisilvania prompted by a large increase in still-births, infant deaths, soaring cancer rates and more would tend to counter your assurances. By being selective in your research and dismissing the effects of man-made level raditio on public health you might convince yourself but do indeed do a disservice to the victims of nuclear power and those fighting climate change (and nuclear power).

It is on the role of fast breeder reactors however that your advocacy of nuclear power becomes a dangerous joke. The claims that – Russia, India, China and Japan are all building or operating such reactors does not describe the reality of their programs – if they have been so successful why have these centrally planned economies not built more ? The answer is that they barely work, they suffer accidents and they are hugely expensive – the 6 billion US$ Monju operated for less than 9 months in 1995 at pretty much zero power, and even now they are putting back start up after finding further problems. OK, so maybe the French much touted today as getting it right on nuclear power faired better ? Eh, no. The Superphenix reactor from start up to shut down (1985-1996) generated 8.2Twh – a capacity factor of 7% – the worst record of any operated reactor. Oh yes, it cost 11 billion US$ – ie a lot of efficiency measure or solar.

On the issue of not requiring additional uranium this is the argument that they breed their own fuel – plutonium – except the breeding ratio is in most cases far less than 1. The doubling time – that required for one IFR-type reactor to produce sufficient plutonium fuel to fuel another reactor blows a hole in industry and your arguments. A Monju type reactor would require as much as 60 years of continued operation to produce sufficient plutonium to fuel itself. The theoretical breeding ratio for the abandoned IFR was 0.65. So that won’t work. On plutonium separation, Mr Blees who seems to have convinced you Mark – suggests that it will not require large stocks of separated weapons material and therefore very different from Sellafield – this is based upon the notion that pyroprocessing (as opposed to Purex-type) would be utilised – again, there is technically no difference in terms of proliferation resistance – you have the technology to separate plutonium – and therefore nuclear weapons.

The timeframe for rolling out FBR’s – despite claims that we could deploy it now – does not match the timeframe for combating climate change, that is the next decade or so. As stated before, the industry does not even claim that Gen IV can be deployed commercially for decades – and they have consistently underestimated the timeframes.

Mark I’m aware you come at this issue from being concerned about climate change (I know its much stronger than this) but there are other issues to be aware of not least the threat from nuclear proliferation. A world of fast breeder reactors and rampant nuclear weapons proliferation would be a world you would not want to see (see, www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/france/ presse/dossiers-documents /japanesenuclearpolicy.pdf – for some regional some scenarios)

So why point to a solution that isn’t ? Seeking to portray those critical of nuclear power as stuck in 1970’s dogma is perhaps an attempt to distance yourself from that old-style environmentalist – but they were the ones first warned of unsustainable energy paths, ozone depletion and dangerous climate change – they also promoted the real energy solutions – efficiency and large scale renewables. That’s an honourable history to be part of. Their fears for the future of the planet were at least as genuine as yours – but they did not embrace any solution offered – they studied the options and concluded nuclear was too high a price to pay. As you are aware, the challenge of climate change is unprecedented in human history – promoting solutions that could work is essential – promoting non-solutions that also make the world a more dangerous place is not.

In 2005 the trade journal Nuclear Engineering International (not an anti-nuclear journaly as you’d guess) published the analysis of the 2004 Edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report under their headline. “On the way out – In sharp contrast to multiple reporting of a potential ‘nuclear revival’, the atomic age is in the dusk rather than in the dawn”. (see, www.greens-efa.org/cms/topics/ dokbin/206/206808.pdf )

If they get it why don’t you ?

Shaun Burnie – Thanks for your response here, and I mean that genuinely. I see you work for Greenpeace on nuclear issues, so it is useful to engage with the organisation which is probably the most dogmatic on all on these issues. I suspect it cannot be any other way, since Greenpeace was founded largely as an anti-nuclear organisation. Reconsidering would be like the Pope reconsidering the Virgin Birth.

Arguing that I and others who have tried to be open-minded about this issue have been ‘taken in’ by the big, bad nuclear industry PR machine is patronising nonsense. Nuclear industry PR is terrible, and has been spectacularly unsuccessful in communicating to the public even the basic facts about nuclear power and radioactivity. Greenpeace and its allies have won the PR battle hands down for decades, though this may be starting to change.

As to Chernobyl, it seems to me that you are being selective with the science, and employing just the same tactics that climate change deniers employ in order to support a preconceived position. If you reject ‘official’ reports from the likes of WHO and UNSCEAR then perhaps you might also like to reject similarly official, authoritative sources like the IPCC on climate, and instead cite your own preferred, though rather less authoritative sources. Focusing on a the political debate surrounding the WHO report reminds me of sceptics always alleging that the IPCC is a ‘political’ organisation and that its Summary for Policymakers cannot be believed.

For both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island you have to stick to the science – that means rigorous, controlled epidemiological studies. I am not aware of any for TMI or any other western country which definitively show increased cancers or any other impact from the very small releases of radiation that have so far taken place. If there were such studies, you and others would be able to cite them (repeatedly), rather than simply referring to the number of lawsuits in Pennsylvania. I don’t think counting lawsuits counts as an epidemiological study. Remember: if there were to be leukaemia and other cancer clusters, you’d expect them to be around coal plants, which release far more radioactivity than nuclear stations, as you must know. But everyone seems to forget this.

I’ll skip the technical arguments on fuel production in fast-breeder reactors here, because it’s complicated, and what you say is again at odds with everything else I’ve seen. I’m not a nuclear engineer, so I cannot claim to have the last word here of course. I notice though that you don’t engage with the potential of IFR-type reactors to burn up current stocks of high-level radioactive waste, depleted uranium and plutonium. Is this inconvenient?

Proliferation is certainly an issue – civil nuclear power must always be subject to a rigorous international regulation and inspection regime. That helps keep us safe from both accidents and states intent on gaining nuclear weapons. But it has long been agreed by the international community that nuclear weapons should be separated from power production, and that all states have a right to the latter – that is the essence of the NPT.

You repeat another persistent myth – that we must solve climate change in the next decade or not at all – to support the idea that nuclear stations take too long to build. Sure, there will be a time-lag, just as there will be to dramatically scale-up renewables (though I don’t see Greenpeace deploying the same argument against offshore wind or CSP, which also face substantial engineering and capacity challenges). I suggest we pluck the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of energy efficiency win-wins to reduce emissions initially, until scaled-up low-carbon power production can take over. Or are you suggesting that we cease to need electricity at all after 2020 or so?

I’ve said loudly and repeatedly that it’s not an either/or with nuclear and renewables. So why posit solar and wind as counter-arguments? They are complementary: the most important thing is to get off coal. Unfortunately, the Greens in countries like Germany have been far busier trying to close nuclear stations than anything else, with the effect that more coal stations (without CCS) are now planned. That’s the worst of all possible options.

Yes, greens have an honourable history, and I am proud to be part of it. But times change, and opinions must change too in the light of new evidence. I respect the people that have gone before me, but I want to learn from them and stand on their shoulders rather than in their shadow.

To conclude: climate change must be our pre-eminent concern, and is manifestly more dangerous than any amount of worst-case nuclear accidents. All energy sources have their drawbacks, even renewables. It is the totality of impact on the biosphere we must look at, and here nuclear may even be better than renewables at a massive scale. So you really cannot argue that nuclear is a non-solution: according to the IPCC we’re already saving 2 billion tonnes of CO2 thanks to nuclear power. We need to increase that figure, not reduce it.

Why is no body taking on board what is the most important factor in this whole debate.We are running out of Uranium on this little planet of ours. At the present level of usage in some 440 reactors generating some 363 gigawatts 67,000 tonnes of natural uranium are required each year. Increasingly lower grade ores will have to be mined and more energy will be expended in its extraction and refining process than will result from the nuclear reactors. Witness last weeks request by Russia (yes a country the size of Russia) to enter into a contract to buy Uranium from Australia.

Good for you Mark. Having been against the Bomb, in the ‘60s & ‘70s, it took James Lovelock, a few years ago, to get me to look at the situation we find ourselves in. We are a power hungry country, and Wind, Solar, Tide & Wave cannot generate the power need to run the country industially let alone domestically. Without Nuclear Power we would soon find industry grinding to a halt, well, I suppose it already has we manufacture so little these days but we must keep the lights on in the City & Stock Exchange.

I became aware of Climate Change in the mid ‘70s, just by keeping my senses open to what was happening around me with the chemical soup we were pouring into the atmosphere, and what effectit was & could have on our environment. Now I’m no scientist, but by the early ‘80s I could see changes taking place in the countryside and I began to talk to friends about it, they laughed & said I was crazy. Interesting now, how they do their recycling yet still drive their Chelsea tractors about town. Then, I wrote a piece on Water & Food conflict along with currency colapse, againg folks laughed. It is said that he who laughs last laughs longest, but I have two Grandchildren. What are we leaving them? We won’t be around to clear up the mess we’ve help create. I do believe we are at the ‘tipping point’ infact I think we’ve passed it & are now in a Damage Limitation exercise. The Godfather of the Ecology Movement, Prof. Eugene Odum, toldme a tale, back in the ‘80s, of an interview for an American PBS station. He was asked, what is the worse case scenario when it comes to the environment. He answered “HE WHO COULD LITTLE DID NOTHING.” Sorry for putting that in caps but it’s so true. We have to act now & with what we’ve got. We can’t wait for Tide & Wave technology to catch up, it’ll take 30-40years before it gets to where it can be used. Wind & solar will never generate enough to power the country so, if we are to give up burning fossil fuels, then Nuclear is the only way. The so-called Green Movement is very green & blinkered when it comes to looking at the Whole Picture. They only see a tiny fraction, they don’t see outside of their emotional world sadly. It took me time t0 look at the whole picture but as soon as I did, my views changed. I may be a crazy old Yarnweaver/storyteller, an ancient Hippy, but I Do care for our environment, and I want action NOW from our government/s and not the lip-service we’ve had for the last 10yrs. I’m starting to ramble so I’ll leave by saying this. If anyone out there can generate enough power to run the whole country in 10yrs, without burning fossil fuels then they should start putting it into place now.

Good to hear you on Today this morning. The Green Party leader nicely illustrated your point that her party’s anti-nuclear stance is based largely on dogmatic, almost religious, belief rather than on good science. Shamefully she played the percentage game as in “it’s only x percent” and “something else can do y percent” – so what, can’t we do both to achieve x+y? She also trotted out the old chestnut about “only” z percent of input energy to large power stations ending up as useful electricity whilst failing to point out that most micro-generation plants succeed in delivering a lower proportion of useful electricity per kilowatt input.

Perhaps no one should be permitted to pontificate about electricity unless they have the qualifications that would have entitled them to chartered membership of the old Institute of Electrical Engineers (like what I have and to prove it I was a C Eng, MIEE!). But, given the truth about what you say about the nuclear industry’s poor PR, perhaps engineering boffins do need some expert communicators to help them talk to the rest of humanity rather better…

I disagree with Brian: I thought that Caroline was excellent at rebutting Mark’s points. I thought Mark let himself down by saying that what Caroline said was “complete rubbish” when it was palpable that what Mark then went on to say did not rebut Caroline’s points in the slightest… As Ed Sturton then pointed out, and Mark basically had to admit… But that’s all by the by. The question is for us to look at what is wrong with the substance of your arguments, Mark. And there is so much wrong with them, that sadly I truly don’t have enough time to enumerate it all… But most of the counter-arguments [some of them already well-outlined above] can be easily found at my blog, www.rupertsread.blogspot.com (e.g. search for ‘nuclear’ with the search facility there). And EVERYONE interested in this topic should read David Fleming’s superb ‘Lean report’ on nuclear power: http://www.theleaneconomyconnection.net/nuclear/index.html This systematically devastates every conceivable argument for nuclear power, including the argument that Mark will use against Alex: namely, that fast breeder reactors are allegedly different. Once one understands the science, set out beautifully by Fleming, then one finds that this isn’t true: fast breeders, paradoxically, will run out of fuel even faster than regular reactors (and they are also likely to be phenomenally unsafe, basically untested). How about this one, too, Mark? I’d love to hear your response: Mark is getting a lot of page-time and air-time at the moment with his ‘iconoclastic’ embrace of nuclear power, but the funny thing is, Mark’s own work already implicitly shows why he is wrong to back nuclear power, yet he has somehow missed this… Mark shot to prominence with his wonderful book ‘High tide’, about how incipient climate chaos is already rendering many coastlines and even entire islands less- or un- inhabitable. Where are virtually all the world’s nuclear power stations? At sea level, because of their need for huge amounts of water for cooling… It would be a vast crime, if this generation were to build yet more nuclear power capacity, in places that are in many instances likely to be inundated by rising sea levels, even if we manage to get manmade climate change under control at about 2.5 degrees of over-heat (let alone if we don’t…). Mark also fails to mention a huge part of the real solution, that lies in those same waters: Let’s harvest the energy that we need from those rising and falling tides—rather than seeing them create the mother of all eco-catastrophes, if we put our eggs into the deadly energy basket-case of nuclear… Tidal power is bigger than wind. Mark’s attacks on wind are excessive—but he fails altogether to mention the water power that will render his anti-renewables invective irrelevant. This, despite the fact that he would quite possibly be unknown as a writer were it not for the power of that very same water, that he himself has so powerfully chronicled… Isn’t life ironic…

Well done, Mark!

With the approaching energy gap, Prof Fells power cuts, fast rising populations all wanting the electricity high life and not wanting to save energy let alone be energy efficient, why not leave it to France to sell us their nuclear electricity? Let them expand and we get on with offshore wind and other renewables and, the likes of us – the righteous remnant – vainly pleading for a low energy future!

Oil is more important as a chemical building block for the 500 everyday products on which we depend than to turn, very inefficiently, into electricity. It is urgent that we stop burning oil.

Many years ago, I can remember Jonathon Porritt saying that renewables would not be enough but we must go down that route. The Greens were right since the 1970s when New Zealand was the first Green Party. Our Manifesto for a Sustainable Future is correct in its analysis and solutions. However, such is the urgency of reducing the burning of fossil fuels, I now think that James Lovelock and Mark Lynas are right, too. Nuclear is the lesser of two evils. BUT, leave it to France AND still use deserts and rooftops for solar power – everywhere.

Humans won’t restrain themselves, so nuclear is what they must have – to postpone inevitable ecocide!

I hereby resign from my life membership of the Green Party and FoE!

Mark – appreciate the quick response, but disappointed but not surprised that you demonstrate your limited understanding of nuclear power history. The WHO in matters related to radiation and health is required to report to the IAEA – the latter is in the driver seat and when the 2005 report was released WHO staff were not happy. That would explain why 6 months later, rather than defending the 4000 fatalities reported by the IAEA/WHO report, one of WHO’s lead radiation scientists (Elisabeth Cardis) confirmed that 30-60,000 cancer deaths was the right order of magnitude. Now you may not consider that number so significant in terms of the impact of climate change, but then you are not one of the victims or a family member. The fact is the IAEA is a very political organization – its mandate is to promote nuclear power, while also trying to detect the diversion of nuclear materials to weapons purposes. To compare the IAEA and WHO (in the area of radiation) to the IPCC is wholly disingenuous. To some up I reject official reports when they deliberately mis-represent reality – and the history of the nuclear industry and its sponsoring organs, principally the IAEA has these in abundance.

One of the problems about a discourse on nuclear power between those who have spent their lives understanding and then opposing it on the one hand, and those who have not, is the political dimension of nuclear power. The former understand that it is political, and the latter don’t. Therefore to insist on sticking to science ignores the political forces that have framed the debate these past decades. The founder of health physics, Karl Morgan whilst leading the US Atomic Energy Commission investigation into the effects of low-level radiation with the aim of setting ‘safe’ radiation standards concluded that there was no safe limit, no threshold below which there would not be a measurable effect – this was after three decades of research. His work was not made public until he went against his employers. He then spent the rest of his life warning of the dangers of nuclear energy. The nuclear establishment which through the last half century has been an extension of government does not take kindly to evidence that shows their industry to be inherently dangerous. In the decades since UNSCEAR, BEIR and the ICRP began reporting on radiation and health, their recommended limits have been in nearly all cases downwards. The dose you would have received in 1950 and deemed within limits would now be regarded as very significant and unacceptable. The trend is clear – not fast enough in heeding the warnings of Morgan and not fast enough to protect the public. Since your reading matter seems to be limited to Bernard Cohen and his ilk, (it was he who described plutonium as one of humanity’s greatest gifts I think was it not?) I’d suggest some alternatives – such as the Mancuso-Stewart-Kneale study on Hanford workers, and Morgan’s last book The Angry Genie: One Man’s Walk Through the Nuclear Age. To underscore the nature of nuclear power and science one final example. In 1997 an epidemiologist called Andre Viel co-authored a study on childhood cancer rates around the la Hague reprocessing plant in Normandy. The study was devastating, concluding that there was a correlation between radioactive discharges and cancer clusters, the first of its kind in France. The government’s response was to set up a commission to investigate – its still investigating. In the meantime Andre Viel has lost his academic post and he moved home after his family received death threats.

The Chernobyl study I would point to as perhaps the most authoritative (because it is based on the work of health professionals in the Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation) is the Greenpeace report of April 2006. In its foreword Alexei Yablokov of the Russian Academy of Science eloquently summarizes the devastating impact of Chernobyl and how data is suppressed to suit political ends. In the two years since its publication not one science based rebuttal has been published although it clearly shook the IAEA to its core. (Shortly after its release and a further study by Sumner and Fairlie) the IAEA removed its report from its website for ‘alteration.’)

By highlighting the work of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory on radiation releases from coal plants (fly ash) I agree that that is worrying – radiation is a direct health risk from what ever manmade source. (I’m not doubting the science of ORNL – I would point out that it was where the Hiroshima bomb was born and is fully funded by the US Dept. of Energy whose primary role is the production of nuclear weapons and development of nuclear energy) I’m not in favour of coal plants for obvious reasons. The study of course does not factor in the full nuclear life cycle – ie where the largest percentage of radiation is released during uranium mining, milling etc and, where conducted, reprocessing. Nuclear power plants are operated on the basis that there is a threshold below which there is no effect. That of course is wrong. With a no threshold policy all nuclear plants would have to be shut down. I know there are other more important reasons for shutting down coal plants, but your point merely adds another one. I’m a little bit suspicious of your motives in grasping at the coal radiation report – as its publication has been seized on by the nuclear establishment. Are you seeking to convince yourself that nukes are safe ?

Rather than skipping fuel production on breeders I’d expect you to try and answer the challenge of how a reactor that is supposed to provide energy security by breeding its own fuel can in fact not do so unless operated over decades ? On burners – the alchemy of transmutation of high level waste remains that – having been talked about for almost as long as the nuclear age there remains no facility anywhere with none I predict in the next decades. On plutonium burning the U.S,/Russia agreement of 1997 committed each nation to ‘disposing of 34 tons of plutonium’. This has been increased to 50 tons each. Eleven years later the U.S. program is years behind schedule and billions over budget, with only one test conducted in North Carolina (this was in a conventional light water reactor using 140kg of plutonim). And, oh yes the test failed earlier this year when the fuel pins ruptured. The Russian program is even further behind with plans to burn in its BN-600 and unbuilt BN-800 stalled. The alternative option of immobilizing plutonium with high level waste – far cheaper, technically feasible and most importantly quick (the longer separated plutonium sits around the greater the proliferation risk (unless you see the world through the eyes of Bernard Cohen) was blocked because of vested interests in the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (they really still believe in breeders) and USDOE having fallen under the spell of French lobbying.. It’s not inconvenient it just does not work in reality. From the Carter Administration through to Clinton, the U.S. rejected fast breeders as too expensive, unreliable, and a direct proliferation risk. That changed with Dick Cheney and his so-called Energy Review Board. The board was dominated with industry types – ENRON and AREVA (the latter being lined up to build any future reactors in the UK). Personally I’m a bit dubious of an energy policy put together by Dick and his friends. You appear not to be. If all you have ‘seen’ on breeders runs counter to what I say, then you clearly don’t come from the environmentalist spectrum on energy policy.

On proliferation – civil nuclear power must be, but is not, subject to rigorous international regulation. Read your history of safeguards starting with Acheson/Lilienthal of 1946 – they cannot be relied upon was their conclusion – the widespread use of nuclear power will give nations the bomb option. By the way the NPT is a flawed instrument – obtaining access to nuclear power under Article IV is what has given us the current Iran crisis, and tens of other states that have the option to go nuclear. Article IV directly undermines the intentions of Articles I, II and III. If the nuclear weapon states continue to defy their commitments under Article VI (to disarm) then those states with access to so-called peaceful nuclear technology will increasingly question their own commitments to abide by the NPT. Of course, this does not even factor in the latest U.S./India nuclear agreement where a non-NPT member gets access to nuclear technology which will directly assist its nuclear weapons program. Relying on the NPT as it approaches disintegration is not credible. Given that the IAEA cannot meet its own safeguards goals today, a world with more breeder reactors, plutonium and reprocessing plants should be of deep concern to those aware of proliferation risks. If your priority is climate change then maybe you can just rely on assurances that someone will take care of it. But that’s not my position. I think climate change should be a priority but not at the expense of rampant nuclear proliferation and the risk of nuclear war.

What I’m saying on timeframes includes the fact that for every euro/dollar/rhenminbi and rupee sunk into nuclear directly undermines the deployment of large-scale renewables. You have heard of Amory Lovins I presume ? Go read his stuff and come back and say that nuclear can do it. If you have got the time read Peter Bradford formally a commissioner at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on why nuclear will not make it. Since your probably not old enough this next quote does not apply to you, but it makes the case succinctly, “Those suffering from nuclear amnesia have forgotten why nuclear power faded from the energy scene in the first place, how many times it has failed to deliver, how often it has disappointed its most determined advocates, how extravagantly it has squandered unparalleled, unstinting support from taxpayers around the world, leaving them with burdens that may last for millennia” Walt Patterson who has done more for explaining energy policy and promoting renewable energy from the 1970’s onwards than most.

Only this month the industry stated at one of its annual knees up (World Nuclear Association) that the spiraling costs of nuclear meant that they should no longer commit to public disclosure of price ! The argument being that to reveal the ever increasing costs helped those opposed to nuclear power. Too right ! When a CEO of Florida Light and Power states that future nuclear costs could be in range of US$5-7,000 kW you know why they are worried. And remember those are light water reactors the basis of the vast majority of the world’s operating reactors – not breeders, including IFR’s of which a handful have ever been built and only one on a commercial scale. Of course as predicted AREVA’s plants under construction in Finland and Flamanville France are now significantly over budget and behind schedule. However it seems the reality of climate change is so shocking that it has removed key critical faculties of people who should know better. But worse than this, to advocate nuclear power is to set back efforts to combat climate change. If part of the solution is to throw money at the problem – and over the next decades it will be trillions in the energy sector globally – as Lovins says, every dollar spent on nuclear buys far less coal displacement. So think about this – your advocacy of nuclear power is helping to bring about the very thing you are justifiably extremely worried about! I predict that you will not be able to accept this, will dismiss the figures and claim that other evidence says differently. I’m OK with that except I worry about climate change so would rather those with a profile on the issue use it promote real solutions not dangerous fantasy.

Your dismissal of environmentalists in Germany is arrogant and uncalled for – and makes me question your credentials. You’ve written two good books and then spoken about climate change. Very good. And what else ? What’s your experience of working in environmental movements/ advocacy/policy/ industry to bring about change – including energy policy ? Perhaps you have done a lot more I’m not aware of, but those German greens seem to have been quite successful in pushing renewables. So they have not stopped coal because they focused on nuclear? That’s just childish nonsense.

I’m happy you acknowledge the past role of environmentalists, but I’m not sure many of them will understand or respect your support for nuclear power. Perhaps there is something revealing in the words you use when you say you want to be not in their shadow but on their shoulders. You clearly like the profile – it gives a good buzz, makes you feel important, and at the end of the day you are talking about a huge threat to the planet. I’ve been there. But actually being in the shadows of environmentalists is no bad place to be – it teaches a bit of humility and maybe a bit more depth to your thinking and certainly a great deal less arrogance.

I welcome your article Mark because of your willingness to address the energy issue as a matter of fact rather than opinion. Its no use carpetting the entire country with wind farms if they won’t even turn all the lights on let alone boil the kettles. It is the mathematical equation of the energy demand versus the energy supply that we need to address. No amount of anti-nuclear sentiment can change the numbers.

I do take some issue though with the way you attack people who express doubts about the CO2 argument. You ( and many others ) freely use loaded language to disparage those who worry about the downside of reducing CO2 emissions. Are they “sceptics” or “deniers”. Are these terms interchangeable as mere terms of abuse or is there some other meaning. They can sometimes be found in the same paragraph.

Scepticism is the first quality of any true scientist. Some climatologists shout that the theory of AGW is the most successful in science. I am sceptical about that. Time will tell. The most mathematically successful theory is Quantum Theory. It is testable to 15 decimal places. But phycisists have just built a 3 billion dollar experiment to check it further. They must be sceptical.

“Deniers” though is a much darker word. Why do you use it? Putting the obvious analogy with the holocaust to one side, in my experience of following the argument there is no denial by anybody that the climate has warmed over the last decade or so. It would be absurd to do so. The argument is with the cause of the warming and as far as I can tell from my reading- there is no proof. Do you have it? There is no proof either in the historical record, as far as I can tell, which supports the idea that reducing CO2 will reduce global temperature. Do you have it?

My and many other’s worry is that should we be spending billions of hard earned tax dollars on a theory of AGW when there are many other proven uses for the money right in front of us? We could clean up an awful lot of pollution with carbon offset taxes.

The scientists who said that the millenium bug was going to bring western civilisation to its knees were just as passionate about their theory. But the sceptics were right.

Thank you for offering a realistic position on the subjects of energy and the environment. You are correct to say that it is unrealistic to assume power can be cut back enough to reduce our impact on the environment. Anyone who disagrees can go and pick out the hospitals to close and convince everyone to unplug their refrigerators. The truth is, we need a lot of power in the magnitude that only nuclear plants can produce cleanly. I think that wind and renewable production could maybe provide 20-30% at most.

Due to being out of town I’ve missed out on this discussion, but let me just add a bit. Mr. Lowry’s characterization of me as an “unreconstructed pro-nuclear enthusiasts such as Tom Blees, who does not match his enthusiasm for exotic, untried nuclear technology with robust facts.” rings extremely hollow, since he has never read my book. Since he just pasted his comment from the New Statesman discussion here, I’ll refrain from pasting my response. If anyone’s interested they can go there to read it.

There are many good questions and points of concern by the commenters here, many of which would take a lot of writing to address clearly. Virtually all of them are dealt with in my book, so at the risk of sounding like a salesman I must simply suggest that people who are concerned about these issues pick up a copy from Amazon and take the time to read it. It’s 3 AM and I have business early in the morning. My apologies for not being able to contribute fully to this conversation. The fact is that the Gen IV nuclear technology that Mark and I are advocating is very little known even by physicists. But Gen IV makes all the difference in the world when discussing the possibilities of nuclear power. The IFR was specifically designed to eliminate all the problems with nuclear power—safety, proliferation, cost, waste—and it was a spectacular success. Those who decry Mark’s disregard for these problems in his advocacy of this technology simply do not have the facts. Before railing against Gen IV reactors, learn about them. What you find will be quite surprising, I can assure you. Many previously ardent anti-nuclear activists have become zealous supporters of these reactors, and for good reason. To dismiss them, and to dismiss their proponents as shills for the nuclear power industry, is simply invalid.

Friends of the Earth tried to wind down campaigning on nuclear power, some members got aggrieved about this and two Sundays ago, they passed a Conference Resolution calling on the board to consider increasing campaigning on this issue and assisting local campaigns against nuclear power stations and dumps.

Never mind that this is like sacking one of your best firefighters for BO and timekeeping when your city’s burning down.

Or that, if indeed the Government is sidelining renewables so as to keep an attractive field for nuclear, the longer you delay a new nuclear programme the longer they will keep sidelining renewables also.

It seems to me to be as futile to expect major environmental groups to relax their stance on nuclear power in any way, as it is of those groups to think they are helping the environment with that stance. Except for the matter of international proliferation, which I think can be looked at separately.

Thanks to everyone for further comments on this issue.

Shaun – your posting certainly falls under the category of ‘ad hominem’, I’m afraid – against the policy of this site. Your arguments would have much more weight if you could make them without accusing me of arrogance and suchlike. I won’t remove it, because I want others to be able to read your substantive points, but nor will I take the time to respond since you cannot be polite.

I have been encouraged by the increasing trend of noted figures with green credentials softening their anti-nuclear positions, changing their minds, or reiterating their support for the technology. I recently graduated from Imperial College London with a Masters degree in physics. I was fortunate enough to see Mr. Lynas in person there earlier this year, speaking about his book ‘Six Degrees’ in the same lecture theatre where I had learned enough about the basic physics of nuclear fission to satisfy myself of its potential value.

Nuclear fission does present problems. It is not an ‘ideal’ source of energy. The biggest problems are, in my opinion: the economics; nuclear weapons proliferation; and in a distant third, the availability of nuclear fuel.

The issues that anti-nuclear activists often focus on – safety and nuclear ‘waste’ – do not seem to be significant problems when considered quantitatively and in context. As a rational, scientifically educated person I understand that, like any process involving the handling of hazardous materials, the nuclear fuel cycle poses risks. I am satisfied that these risks are negligible when compared to risks that the public readily accepts, such as that of carbon monoxide poisoning due to faulty domestic gas boilers – this predictably results in roughly 50 prompt fatalities per year in the UK. I live in a house with a gas boiler and I’m not scared of it. Being scared of the nuclear fuel cycle or nuclear ‘waste’, which has caused zero provable fatalities in the UK in the past 30 years, in that context would be ridiculous.

The problems with the economics of nuclear power are that the cost is dominated by that of physical capital which must be paid before any electricity can be delivered and any money can be made; and that the capital investment must be large, long-term, and requires very careful technical management. Reactors do go over time and over budget – not always but often due to obstructive legal action by opponents, which has also prevented completed plants from operating. This hugely disadvantages nuclear reactors in a deregulated energy market where fossil plants can be brought on line more quickly, much less expensively, and in which profits are guaranteed because natural gas generation sets the price of electricity. Likewise, wind turbines or solar PV can be built quickly and, though expensive, profits are guaranteed thanks to renewables obligations or feed in tariffs. These options are less risky for investors, and that really does make securing financing for nuclear new build from private firms difficult.

The French experience should simply torpedo any claim that nuclear power is inherently ‘too expensive’. France has some of the least expensive electricity in Europe; and far from being dependent on taxpayer money, EDF and Framatome (now AREVA) were and are hugely profitable sources of income for the French government. Decommissioning and waste management are fully priced in, by the way. This was achieved when the French state created a technically competent engineering organisation (CEA), charged it with making nuclear the mainstay of electricity generation, and supplied inexpensive financing with government-backed loans. It is clear that the French success came when the government ‘picked a winner’ and stuck with it: anathema to modern market ideologies. I suspect this sort of approach will be essential if fossil fuel fired electricity is to be phased out as quickly as climate science says is necessary.

Nuclear weapons proliferation is a thorny issue that can’t be easily dismissed. What I will say is this. Opponents say that nuclear weapons can’t be eliminated in a world that uses nuclear power. This is really about expertise: its dangerous to have people around who understand nuclear fission. Well, I want to understand nuclear fission. I don’t think that should be a crime! As long as there are people who do, a state that wants nuclear weapons will be able to create them. That genie is out of its bottle. On the other hand, if there was no nuclear power it would be impossible to carry out enrichment or reprocessing (the activities of concern from a proliferation standpoint) under the cover of a civilian power programme. This would make acquiring a bomb somewhat harder, but not impossible. I think any sufficiently determined state would probably manage it anyway as long as people who understand the theory are available.

Finally, the availability of fuel is an issue if the world intends to expand nuclear power dramatically. Breeder reactors will eventually be required. I am not yet expert enough on the technical readiness of Generation IV reactors to comment on this, but there seem to be no showstoppers. In the meantime, another generation of proven light water reactor technology will not deplete the recoverable U-235 during their lifetimes. Breeder reactor R&D should clearly be a priority during that window. If Gen IV plants are ready to roll out before U-235 is becoming scarce, all the better.

Another problem for nuclear energy right now is the existence of supply chain bottlenecks: notably large steel forging capacity, and expertise. The former is quickly disappearing, a sure sign that the steel industry at least thinks the ‘nuclear renaissance’ is real. As for the latter, well, let me say a few more words about myself. On Monday I will be starting my first real job. My employer will be AREVA, and my job title will be Graduate Engineer. They’re going to train me for two years, and I’m very much looking forward to it. I’m part of a cohort of ten from all around the world. If the websites of the major players in the industry are anything to go by, they’re very keen to hire new talent. Its time to get building, and I’m very excited to be part of it!

Shaun Burnie’s (of the Green Party) contribution has a familiar ring to it; if the facts don’t support the argument, change the facts. The GP’s stance for example on the use of animal testing for medical research is only supported by misrepresenting the evidence. The Green Party, like the two major political parties have, needs to have a careful look at its policies and jettison those that are no longer relevant to the world in which we now live.

I think lots of you are missing the point of debate here. Especially you Cliff! “Deniers” Holocaust? Why would you assume Mark is making some kind of sinister reference here or are you likening those whom use the words “sceptic” or “denier” to Nazis? Get off your high horses! The point originally made here I think is simple. The renewable sources available, all of them, wont be enough and can’t be built fast enough. Nuclear is likely to be a better answer, certainly in the short term. Yes, we all know it is not without it’s problems and is not the perfect solution. Yes we should invest in renewables AS WELL. At this rate by the time anybody takes any meaningful action it is highly likely that it will be way too little too late. If you are a “sceptic”, if I am allowed to use the word, fine. Then none of this concerns you anyway because you already know you are right and that Mark Lynas and the current scientific concensus has got it wrong. ??? Or actually are you not that sure? STOP being so negative and learn to express your views in a better manner.

Fast breeder reactors. Let’s burn it and run the risk of dumping it in the atmosphere like we dump everything else in our atmosphere? Fast breeders… like mankind’s endless ‘growth’. But of course the real argument here is that the Green New Deal doesn’t fit the corporate model of endless ‘growth’... of wasteful consumerist junk products (that is leading to global economic & glacial melt-down unless we change course right now). If our government were to simply invest in people, we could have solar water heaters for every domestic property & for a starters that would cancel the negative effects of recent price rises and save millions of people from fuel poverty this winter. The energy companies would also see that there’s ‘competition’ now and so prices would have to fall to compete! We mustn’t miss this opportunity. If we don’t have massive investments in renewables, it is people who will suffer long-term. The jobs are sorely needed too and this was always the promise of ‘New-Technologies’! So where are the jobs? The amount of jobs per £billion building nukes is miniscule next to a national programme of investment in jobs in renewables! The ‘Home Improvements’ Companies that brought us Double Glazing should long ago have been bringing us solar water heaters (at the very least.. if not the full solar wind & groundheat package to get as many as possible off grid… thus freeing up the national grid’s electricity for industry’s use). I haven’t even touched on solar PV, or miro wind, because in an ideal world that requires that manufacturers change the voltage of domestic apliances to be more compatible with that technology… so in the meantime renewables like PV & wind can be plugged back into the grid thus producing energy ‘locally’ and reducing wastage in transportation (was the figure mentioned 5-10% loss in transportation?... well there’s ALL the new nukes for a start)... not to mention reducing people’s bills even further! And why doesn’t every pylon in the country have a verticle blade wind turbine on its top to boost power a bit more? There’s millions of pylons already there so nobody could claim it was an eye-sore! The fact is, nuclear power isn’t anywhere near as ‘cheap’ as they claim when one factors in the de-comissioning costs! Something that never gets done because the taxpayer is still expected to come up with that money as well… what was it? £70+ billion at a recent estimate (but of course nobody really knows because how do you know what it’ll ‘cost’ in a thousand years time)? Add de-comissioning costs to the ‘cost’ of nuclear power ‘at the plug’ and your hairdryer becomes the most expensive hairdryer in history! Having said ALL of that the real danger is this civilisation of ours (that seems to be teetering on the edge of a global catastrophy of its own making), leaving a toxic technology legacy that nobody understands in the future, which poisons future generations for hundreds of thousands of years and yes it is hundreds of thousands… Plutonium has a Half-Life of 250,000 years (which means if an ounce of plutonium kills you in ten minutes now… in 250,000 years it will take twenty minutes for you to die!) The stuff is just too dangerous to leave for future generations… and of course that’s where it all comes back to weapons again. Once again we are looking to replace Trident and suddenly we need to ‘love’ nuclear power stations again and this time they’re trying to ‘sell’ it as an ‘environmentally friendly thing’ to do… please don’t suggest there isn’t a weapons connection… There’s always a weapons connection with nuclear power. From Iran to Sellafield. Its about being in the nuclear ‘club’... There is nothing environmentally (or any other way) ‘friendly’ about nukes and its high time we stopped trying to solve problems with the same sort of thought processes that created those problems in the first place.

Mark – sorry that you believe I have been rude to you. But that was not me on Radio 4 calling the information on a Greenpeace site “lies” or dismisssing Caroline Lucas with the phrase “utter nonsense”. Perhaps the impact of witnessing over a few decades the impact of nuclear power on people’s lives in the United States, former Soviet Union, Japan, Korea, China, and western and eastern Europe has led me to be a bit emotional. Your advocacy of nuclear power is indeed an insult to their suffering. In 20 years or so from now when further billions have been squandered on nuclear power resulting in a fraction of the electricity we need, and renewables and efficiency have failed to reach their potential as a result, those who made the monumental error of supporting nuclear power development will have to answer the question, why?

A very interesting debate. I will be very glad if people arguing against nuclear power answer to these doubts of mine.

1) Nuclear power is expensive : This is what everyone says. But why should the nuclear power be expensive ? Is it the material required for construction ? Can solar or wind be done for less concrete/steel/other material than nuclear ? Can they be done for less land ? Or is it the shortage of personnel and the salaries that have to be paid for them ? Or is it the fuel which is expensive ? There has to be an inherent reason why nuclear power is expensive. Can somebody please give a breakup of nuclear costs and explain why nuclear will remain inevitably more expensive than solar / wind ?

2) Nuclear power is a proliferation danger : Can you convince every single country in the world to abandon nuclear power ? We have not been able to yet convince each country to destroy their nuclear bombs. How can we get them to abandon nuclear power ? If USA or UK stops using nuclear power, is there any guarentee that China or Pakistan will do likeways. In fact, Pakistan has just signed a nuclear deal with China.

3) Breeder reactors and Plutonium : Can somebody tell me why breeder reactors are more dangerous than the current nuclear reactors, either in terms of proliferation or safety ? Are breeder reactors more prone to accidantal meltdown than the current reactors ? Do breeder reactors produce fissile material in a format better suited for nuclear bombs, than say current nuclear reactors ? Can Uranium used as breeder reactor fuel be directly used for nuclear bombs ? If not, what more has to be done ? Do breeder reactors produce more waste (or more dangerous waste) than the current nuclear reactors ? Do they pollute water sources or atmosphere with some emissions or radiation ?

Please reply to me with answers. This information will be very useful for arguing against a pro-nuclear person. Thank you very much :)

Matthew, Congratulations on picking a career that should prove quite profitable and fulfilling. While I strongly encourage you to check out my book that deals with the many points you brought up, I’d just like to comment on your concerns about proliferation. If humanity is to avail itself of the many benefits of advanced nuclear power, we really must divorce nuclear power from nationalism and look to set up an international regime similar to what France has done with EDF and AREVA, where a single organization of highly trained individuals oversees every aspect of nuclear power, from mining uranium (which we wouldn’t have to do with IFRs) to waste disposal (which is very easy, cheap and safe with IFRs since there are no long-lived actinides). The solution to this is a major component in my book, and I believe it can be accomplished. The problems are not technical but political, hence my attempt to present an actual multifaceted solution for the general public to become aware of and then, hopefully, to create the pressure to force our leaders to act in our best interests.

If we follow this plan, uranium availability will be a moot point in the long run, for we’ll be able to switch to all-IFRs by about 2030, and with that we’ll have enough fuel to power the planet (for all our energy, not just our current electrical needs) for literally hundreds of years with fuel we’ve already got out of the ground.

You are to be congratulated, Mark, for putting your sound reputation as an environmentalist behind an objective assessment of nuclear power’s potential role in reducing carbon emissions. This is much needed. You are right to recognise the difficulty for the ‘green’ organisations in accepting that nuclear power can have a role, but given that the public is generally not well placed to assess their arguments and distinguish between fact and dogma, it becomes vitally important for respected, impartial commentators like you to be heard. With the urgency of reducing the world’s continuing carbon emissions it is surely irresponsible to be arguing about whether we need to be investing in improved energy efficiency, the renewables or nuclear power: we need to be doing as much as we can in all of these. There is no evidence that one will stifle investment in any other. Nuclear (and the renewables) moreover should not be seen just as a means of meeting the need for electricity generation, but as sources of non-carbon energy that can be used, with electricity as the energy carrier, to substitute for fossil fuels in use areas currently dependent on these fuels.

The arguments against nuclear tend to fall into five categories: safety; pollution of the environment; waste management; cost; and proliferation risk. A few words on each.

Safety

Nuclear power must be under strong and effective regulation. No plant must be built or operated until it has been subject to the most stringent, independent safety assessment to be satisfied that whatever goes wrong the likelihood of harm to anyone is very low, and that of a major accident vanishingly small. Anyone who has experience of the NII’s scrutiny of plans for building and operating UK nuclear plants will know how intense this scrutiny is. As a result it’s difficult to see concern over safety as a sustainable argument against the future building of nuclear power stations in the UK. (It could however be a valid argument against nuclear power in countries which do not have the institutions, infrastructure or political stability to provide this necessary standard of regulation.)

But everyone has heard of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Don’t these accidents shake our confidence that nuclear power really is safe?

Three Mile Island actually supports the argument that nuclear reactors can be built to be safe. Despite the catastrophic meltdown of the core, the engineered systems worked as they should to contain almost all of the radioactivity. As you note, despite numerous independent epidemiological studies, no discernible health effects have been detected in the population exposed to the radioactivity that was released, and there have been plenty of people keen to find such effects! The accident has moreover led to important improvements in the safety of all nuclear plant. A major contributing cause of the accident was the lack of instrumentation, which meant that the operators did not know what was happening when an initial malfunction occurred and this led them to respond to it in a way that was the complete opposite of what was needed. This then led directly to a loss of cooling and the overheating of the core. Had the operators done nothing no one would now remember Three Mile Island! Since this accident regulators in all countries pay special attention to the adequacy and effectiveness of instrumentation.

Chernobyl, seen by many to typify the risks of nuclear power, is quite untypical. It was of a reactor type that had potentially dangerous characteristics that meant that it could never have been licensed in the West; it was operated with criminal irresponsibility (safety interlocks designed to prevent this from being done had been switched off to allow an unauthorised procedure to be carried out, with disastrous results); and the political/cultural mores of the then Soviet Union provided no checks on this irresponsibility.

These two major accidents underline the importance of maintaining the strictest possible safety management of nuclear plant but don’t support the concern that nuclear power is inherently unsafe.

Pollution

There is a common impression that nuclear power is heavily polluting. While it does produce gaseous and liquid emissions that are radioactive, these are tightly controlled against limits set to ensure that even the hypothetically most exposed individual does not receive a dose significantly above the average background dose. As compared with the toxic emissions from many other industries, the environmental impact of the nuclear industry is benign.

There have of course been leakages that have attracted a great deal of attention, and there are some examples of past environmental practices that would not be acceptable today. Standards have changed since the early days but the legacy of these past practices lives on. Some of the early plants and storage facilities were built to lower standards than would be obligatory today, and leaks and unauthorised discharges have occurred, especially at Sellafield and Dounreay where there are complex, often aging chemical plants built in the 1950s or before. In most cases these leaks have been radiologically insignificant, often involving no release of radioactivity beyond the site boundary (sometimes entirely contained within a building), but they should not occur and are properly reported to the world. However because they involve radioactivity they tend to receive disproportionate and sensational reporting by the media.

New nuclear power stations will meet modern environmental standards, with discharge authorisations set to reflect these standards. Because they are likely to use a fuel cycle that does not involve reprocessing, effluents associated with fuel reprocessing will avoided.

Waste disposal

Much is made of the fact that “we do not have a means of disposing of nuclear waste”, and some in the ‘green’ movement see this as a clinching argument against nuclear power. Ultimately a means will have to be found, to deal with the considerable holdings of waste not yet disposed of that has been accumulated from the past 60 years of nuclear research, weapons production and electricity generation. Until this can be disposed of, it is being safely stored on the nuclear sites in purpose-built facilities and is being put into a form that immobilises the waste and eliminates any risk that the radioactivity could become dispersed into the environment in the event of flood, fire or any other calamity. The waste can therefore be stored almost indefinitely, although it would obviously be preferable to be able to place it into its final repository. The problems of finding a place for such a repository are essentially social/political rather than technical. However once such a site is found and an underground repository created, dealing with the additional wastes from future nuclear stations will add a comparatively modest increment to the capacity needed – requiring only a few extra caverns to be excavated. The waste from future stations will be very much less than that from the old Magnox and AGR stations because of their different design and different fuels.

Cost

Government has said that it will not subsidise those wanting to build new nuclear stations. Therefore any that are built will have to be economically justified against the market conditions expected to be prevailing, allowing also for any carbon premia placed on fossil fuels or obligations for non-fossil generation. It will be for the private investors to judge whether an investment in a nuclear power station is justified, and therefore it is a little odd that many in the green movement keep chirping that nuclear power is too costly. If it is, no one will want to build nuclear stations and there will be no need to oppose them!

Much is made of the fact that decommissioning all the existing nuclear stations is estimated to cost the government an enormous £75 billion, and there is the concern that building future stations could be similarly as expensive. However, the current decommissioning bill is heavily weighted by the costs of decommissioning Sellafield, the UKAEA’s research facilities at Dounreay, Harwell, Winfrith and Culham, and the old Magnox stations, which in relation to their generating capacity are very bulky plants, expensive to dismantle and creating large volumes of waste. None of these early installations were designed with ease of decommissioning in mind. More