Tatchell on Brown's nuclear policy

[xmasdale]

Gordon's nuclear con trick

The government is pursuing a simplistic, knee-jerk nuclear energy
policy that won't work

By Peter Tatchell

The Guardian – Comment Is Free – 9 January 2008

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/peter_tatchell/2008/01/gordons_nuc lear_con_trick.html

The government's decision to give the go ahead for a new generation of
nuclear power stations sums up New Labour's fundamental ignorance,
short-sightedness and lack of imagination.

When the Prime Minister says expanded nuclear power is essential to
meet an expected energy deficit, and cut carbon emissions and global
warming, he is badly misinformed and seriously mistaken. There are
other – cheaper, faster and safer – ways to remedy these problems,
such as energy conservation and renewable sources like wind, wave,
tidal, hydro, geo-thermal and solar power.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/19/ccvi ew19.xml

This wide variety of practical non-nuclear energy options was detailed
by Roger Higman, campaigns coordinator of Friends of the Earth, when I
interviewed him for my Talking With Tatchell online current affairs TV
programme, which you can watch here.
http://doughty.gdbtv.com/player.php?h=afb6da65e27e71bbf73fd6ab60701ee9

On one point the government is absolutely right: global warming and
climate chaos are the biggest threats to UK and world prosperity,
justice, peace and human rights. We need urgent action to cut carbon
emissions; especially in the energy-production sector where fossil
fuels - like oil, coal and gas - are major contributors to the looming
rise in global temperatures.

Gordon Brown's solution is nuclear power. He wants 10 new nuclear plants.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,2237440,00.html

This will, however, only reduce our carbon emissions by 4% according
to Greenpeace and the Sustainable Development Commission.

One problem the government appears not to have accounted for is the
worldwide shortage of nuclear engineers. If there are not sufficient
technicians available, who will build and operate these new nuclear
reactors?

Even if the green light is given to nuclear this year, the earliest
the new reactors will be completed and start delivering electricity is
2021 to 2025 – well beyond 2015 when the government says the UK will
be hit by the energy shortages that it claims nuclaer is necessary to
remedy.

The truth is this: even if you love nuclear, it is too little, too late.

Although the government proposes that the massive construction and
operating costs of these new nuclear stations will be borne by private
energy corporations, the taxpayer and consumer are expected bear the
burden of the tens of billions of pounds that it will cost to
decommission the reactors at the end of their working life and to
store their toxic radioactive waste for up to 20,000 years, until it
decays and becomes harmless.

Bizarrely, the government is pursuing the nuclear option and claiming
that it will produce cheap electricity less than four months after its
own Nuclear Decommissioning Authority revealed that the clean up of
the UK's existing nuclear power stations will top a staggering £73
billion.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/oct/11/nuclearindustry.environ ment

When you factor in these decommissioning costs, nuclear energy is not
low-cost at all. Indeed, Jeremy Leggett, Chief Executive of
SolarCentury recently highlighted
the public's hidden subsidisation of the nuclear industry, without
which it would not be competitive and without which the proposed new
nuclear plants will never be built.

If nuclear power is so economic, why have no nuclear plants been built
in the UK in the last two decades? The truth is that no nuclear
generators have ever been built without public subsidy, as was
conceded by an energy industry spokesperson on BBC Newsnight on
Tuesday evening's programme.

Steve Webb MP, Lib Dem spokesperson on the Environment and Energy,
earlier this week reminded us of the government's subversion of
democracy with its biased, unlawful, so-called consultation on nuclear
power.

His criticisms of the way the government has attempted to railroad MPs
and the public into accepting the nuclear option have been echoed by
Jeremy Leggett, Chief Executive of SolarCentury and by 17 top
scientists and academics,
including professors of Oxford, Sussex, and Lancaster universities,
and of Rutgers university in the US.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/04/nuclearpower.greenpo litics

This group of independent experts have warned that the risk of
radiation leaks, the long-term disposal and safeguarding of nuclear
waste and the vulnerability of nuclear plants to terrorist attack have
not been addressed by the government.

Their warning follows a high court decision last year which declared
the government's public consultation unlawful and ordered that it be
repeated.

The experts expressed dismay concerning the government's flawed
nuclear energy consultation process:
"We are profoundly concerned that the government's approach was
designed to provide particular and limiting answers," said Paul
Dorfman, a spokesman for the group of 17 scientists and academics.
"Those answers risk locking in UK energy to an inflexible and
vulnerable pathway that will prove unsustainable," he added.

In an 88-page report, the experts say: "Significant issues were not
consulted on in any meaningful way or resolved in practice. It has
left the government vulnerable to legal challenge and may lead to
hostility and mistrust of any future energy decision."
http://www.nuclearconsult.com/NUCLEAR_REPORT_COMPLETE.pdf

Even at this late stage, I hope the Prime Minister and his government
will think again and recognise that nuclear power is not cheap, safe
or sustainable. It is certainly not necessary. Energy conservation and
renewable energy offer viable, practical alternatives to the nuclear
option. Moreover, they will plug the projected energy gap much quicker
and more reliably than nuclear power.

If the government won't listen, let's hope that backbench Labour MPs
will have the guts to join with MPs from other parties to vote down
against Gordon's simplistic, knee-jerk and unworkable pro-nuclear
policy.

--
Peter Tatchell is the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford East
http://www.greenoxford.com/peter and http://www.petertatchell.net