I have read many poor
reports cheerleading for nuclear power in over 35 years researching nuclear
power policy. A new report commissioned by Horizon Nuclear published this week
titled ‘Expanding Horizons: The Role for New Nuclear in
the UK’s Energy Mix’
(http://www.respublica.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ResPublica-Report-Expanding-Horizons-The-Role-for-New-Nuclear-in-the-UKs-Energy-Mix.pdf)
by Max Wind-Cowie and Dr Paul
Norman for conservative think-tank ResPublica
wins the prize for the very worst and most inaccurate in memory.
This is odd, as ResPublica
– which describes itself as “an
independent non-partisan think tank” - has a
reasonable reputation for challenging, radical thinking from the right; and the
authors would appear to have quality credentials: Max Wind-Cowie, who has worked previously at left leaning think tank Demos and for consumer
group Which? was seconded to the prestigious National Infrastructure Commission (NIC, https://www.nic.org.uk/) in August 2017 and Dr Paul Norman is listed in the report as the Co-Director of the Birmingham Centre for
Nuclear Education & Research at Birmingham University, and is described on the
centre’s web site as a Reader in Nuclear Engineering &
Reactor Physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy. (https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/nuclear/index.aspx)
The report is however
replete with factual errors, errors of omission and commission and it makes me
worry that the NIC would want to second someone with such demonstrably poor credentials and Birmingham University would employ as a co-
director in an educational centre someone prepared to put their name to such a shoddy, factually
challenged report.
Let me highlight a
few of the more egregiously inaccurate:
The second sentence of
the Introduction reads “In 1956, this country opened the world’s
first commercial nuclear power station at Calder Hall (now Sellafield) in
Cumbria,”
This is both factually wrong and
highly misleading, and suggests the authors either rhave not done their
research properly, or are prepared to perpetuate
uncritically a nuclear industry myth. The truth is Calder Hall’s four reactors
were designed and built to manufacture
plutonium for the Ministry of
Defence by the then UK Atomic Energy
Authority, with electricity and reactor operating experience a spin –off.
In fact it was clearly
stated at the time of the plant’s opening, in a remarkable little book entitled
Calder Hall: The Story of Britain’s First Atomic Power Station, written
by Kenneth Jay, and published by the Government’s Atomic Energy Research
Establishment at Harwell to mark Calder’s commissioning in October 1956.
Mr Jay wrote:
Major plants built for military purposes such as Calder Hall are
being used as prototypes for civil plants . . . the plant has been designed as
a dual-purpose plant to produce plutonium for military purposes as well as
electric power . . . it would be wrong to pretend that the civil programme has
not benefitted from, and is not to some extent dependent upon, the military
programme."
The very next, ie the third, sentence reads:
“The UK led the world in harnessing the power that nuclear
technology unlocked and, in doing so, was able to keep homes warm and lit without dependence on imports such as
gas from overseas.” ( my emphasis) This shares the same fault as the second
sentence, being both factually wrong and
misleading.
As the UK has no economically
recoverable uranium reserves, all uranium used in all British reactors is
imported, and is thus 100% dependent on imports to make the fuel for nuclear power
plants.
Surely the authors must know this
simple fact, so why did they write the opposite?
Later in the introduction, the authors
opine :
“Britain’s new nuclear programme,
currently, is ready to go and is necessary to meet Britain’s medium and
long-term ambitions on both energy security and decarbonisation.”
This assertion is not so much factually
wrong, as a perverse interpretation of the facts I have already pointed out that nuclear provides no energy
security, as the raw material for its fuel are imported ( and once the UK
leaves Euratom, will no longer have the subsidised assistance of the collective
buying power of the EU to procure it); nuclear power is not
necessary to meet UK decarbonisation targets, Indeed, if the full nuclear
fuel chain from uranium mining, milling, transport, enrichment, fuel fabrication, irradiation, cooling, conditioning, packaging and long term management
of disposal are taken into account, the carbon footprint is at least as high as
gas, (https://www.stormsmith.nl/Media/downloads/nuclearEsecurCO2.pdf)
and considerably more than virtually every renewable aside from
perhaps large scale hydro dams.
Finally, it is really hard to sustain the assertion that the planned new nuclear programme is “ready” The projected French builder/owner of Hinkley, EDF, is technically bankrupt with a debt of 33 billion Euros; the planned reactor designer, fellow French firm Areva, is mired in scandal over the substandard workmanship of its steel forger, Le Creusot, for the crucial reactor pressure vessel, as is the alternative supplier Kobe Steel (http://www.atimes.com/article/nuclear-tentacles-kobe-steel/).
Toshiba/Westinghouse, the joint owners NuGen, planned builders of the
Moorside reactors near Sellafield, are bankrupt, and trying desperately offload
their shareholding, possible to a Korean power generator, Kepco, and a
coalition of Korean banks (http://corecumbria.co.uk/briefings/south-korea-number-crunching-its-way-to-moorside/).The reactors
chances of being begun recede further into the future week by week.
Finally, Horizon
Nuclear – sponsors of the report this article criticises- are still mid way
through their Generic Design Assessment
(GDA) process, and a long way from getting regulatory approval for their advanced
boiling water reactor design; and China General Nuclear (CGN) and EDF whose purpose built investment vehicle General Nuclear System Limited (GNS) unveiled
Step 2 of the GDA process for its HPR1000
reactor design, destined for Bradwell in Essex, (http://www.ukhpr1000.co.uk/the-gda-process/),
today (on
16 November) is not due for completion until the start of 2022.
The Small Modular Reactors(SMRs) also championed by the authors are even further from deployment, if ever.
In
short, none of the new reactor options are “ready to go.”
Last but not least of this selection of
errors, the report later on, under the sub headline of Our energy needs are
increasing, because of new technology, the report asserts”
“ New nuclear is not needed simply because we struggle to fulfil
our current energy needs, or because our existing capacity is on the decline
thanks to demand for cleaner energy and the retirement of existing coal and nuclear power stations.
Energy demand tends to ever be on the increase, so the UK will in the future
require far more electricity than now6.”
The
facts are that energy and electricity demand have been dropping, not
increasing, year on year. Reference 6,
on which the assertion above is
purportedly based, is a report by the energy
department (BEIS), Updated energy and emissions projections: 2016 (March 2017) https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/599539/Updated_energy_and_emissions_projections_2016.pdf),
and is, as its title suggests, a projection into the future, not an assessment
of past trends.
But
the ResPublica authors have mixed up the two in order to buttress their case for
more nuclear generating capacity Such distortion
not only discredits authors, but if believed,
leads to very bad public policy.
If
I were running ResPublica I would take down this discredited report from its
web site, apologise for this version being posted, and ask Horizon to sponsor
a replacement, whereby the authors have free hand to undertake genuine analytical research, not construct a
report backwards from conclusions
established by the client, as they appear to have done in this case.
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