Nuclear Fault Lines
By Dr David Lowry and Paul Flynn MP
23 April 2013, London
We want to make three points:
one on the current critical
situation with nuclear waste;
another on responses to the
Weightman report on nuclear safety since Fukushima;
and a third on nuclear
subsidies
Nuclear Waste
The decision
by Cumbria County Council on 30 January to vote against proceeding with stage
four investigations for a subterranean repository under DECC’s Managing Radioactive Waste Safely
programme has created a
major ‘fault line’ in the programme to manage
both so-called “legacy” nuclear
waste, and waste arising from any nuclear new
build programme.
Despite this, the then energy minister, John Hayes told Paul in a written Parliamentary answer on 6 February:
“we remain committed to geological disposal as the best approach for the
long-term management of higher activity radioactive waste.”
“we remain
confident that the programme is sound and will be put into effect. ..We
are now considering whether any changes should be made to our current approach
to the site selection process. No changes will be introduced without further
consultation. Until such time as a geological disposal facility is
implemented, safe and secure interim storage facilities will remain available,
for as long as necessary.”
Councillor
Alan Smith, leader of Allerdale Council, which had voted in favour of further
exploration in Cumbria, admitted in the middle of last month that the current process to search for an
underground nuclear waste storage site in West Cumbria is:
“dead in the water”.
(“Search
for an underground radioactive store is over, says council leader,” Whitehaven News, 15 February 2013http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/search-for-an-underground-radioactive-store-is-over-says-council-leader-1.1035511?referrerPath=home/2.2837)
Despite
this DECC’s minister responsible for nuclear waste, Baroness Verma, clearly
cannot take no for an answer.
In response to a letter from Councillors who
ruled Cumbria out of the running to host a nuclear repository, she
patronisingly asserted they had
“misunderstood the process”
She
added:
“In responding, I also feel it is
necessary to note there were a range of errors in your letter and to draw
attention to some key points, which I believe betray a misunderstanding of the
process and the Government’s position.”
One
reader called Stu commented on the newspaper’s web site:
“Any misunderstanding that has
occurred has been on the part of Baroness Verma, her department, our MP and
Copeland B C who thought it was a done deal. They neglected to appreciate that
there was a silent majority who came out of the woodwork when they started to
see the smoke and mirror approach to a so called democratic process.
'O what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive'”
'O what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive'”
(“Councillors misunderstood nuclear dump vote
– minister,” Whitehaven
News, 13 March 2013 http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/cumbria-councillors-misunderstood-nuclear-dump-vote-says-minister-1.1042022?referrerPath=home)
And in a letter to the Whitehaven News on 7 February,
Dr Ruth Balogh, the Nuclear issues campaigner
for West Cumbria & North Lakes Friends of the Earth, commented:
“We congratulate Cumbria County Council on its brave decision to
withdraw from the MRWS process. The closing stages of this process, however,
were marred by the behaviour of those who saw they might lose the vote – and some
of our representatives are even trying to overturn it.
I wish to put straight the record over accusations of “scare-mongering”
on our part, and an “anti-nuclear bandwagon”. The MRWS was dealing with highly
complex and technical issues. There are more than 300 documents on its website
– small wonder that people were not well-informed. But those who took the
trouble to examine the issues seldom came away with any comfort – mostly the
reverse. “
Just after the Coalition Government was formed, they asked the Office
for Government Commerce to review the nuclear waste programme. The OGC report
said in August 2010:
Indeed, in December 2011, at the request of ministers, the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority published a review of the programme for implementing
geological disposal of higher activity radioactive waste
“with a view to bringing the date for first waste emplacement forward from
the planned 2040 date to 2029.” (http://www.nda.gov.uk/news/geological-disposal-timescales.cfm)
So the ministers, far from accepting the Plan A was not
implementable, actually wanted to speed it up!!
The current bill for dealing with the
radioactive waste stockpile - our legacy from past mistakes, including
running the Magnox nuclear reactors flat out during the miners’ strike in 1983,
as Mrs Thatcher did, creating an additional nuclear waste nightmare for
Sellafield, which is coming back to
haunt today’s management -
is now put at over an eye watering £70 billion…. and rising fast.
“It’s an issue of national urgency. The longer
we leave this material without a proper long-term solution the more expensive
it’s going to be.”
(“Sellafield nuclear plant set to become Europe’s
biggest building site,” Whitehaven
News, 6 February 2013; http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/sellafield-nuclear-plant-set-to-become-europe-s-biggest-building-site-1.1033089?referrerPath=home/2.2837)
The
body responsible for overseeing the UK’s chaotic nuclear waste policy is the Committee
on Radioactive Waste Management, or Corwm, whose new chairman Professor
Lawrence Williams, is sitting alongside me.
One
of the first things Professor Williams did when he took over chairing Corwm was
to review its terms of reference, in consultation with its sponsors
(DECC and the devolved Administrations), according to a written answer I
received on 7 March from DECC. The minister answering, Mr Hayes, added:
“This
review, now nearing completion, considered whether plenary meetings open to the
public should remain a feature of the Committee's stakeholder engagement
activities. CoRWM concluded and sponsors agreed that given the very low
attendance by members of the public in recent years, such meetings no longer
offered value for money.”
“ remains committed to working in an open, transparent and consultative
way”
I would invite Professor Williams today to justify this return to the
bad old days of secrecy surrounding nuclear decisions, and to tell us just how much
money the secrecy decision will
actually save.
(Hansard,
7 Mar 2013 : Column 1123W)
Weightman Report recommendations
In a letter to David last week from Labour’s party’s
shadow energy secretary, Caroline Flint, to an enquirer on Labour’s nuclear policy,
she wrote:
“the
Weightman report, which investigated the implications of Fukushima for nuclear
safety in the UK, concluded that there were no grounds to restrict UK nuclear
reactors or stop building new ones.”
Tthat is an inaccurate summary.
Dr Weightman’s final 288 page report- released in
September 2011- had many conclusions and recommendations for action by the
nuclear operators (29) and Government.(7)
On its publication, EDF‘s UK chief executive,
Vincent De Rivaz, said:
“We
will review his findings in detail and build them into our plans. We have
already committed to implementing his recommendations for us in full.
DECC said in its December 2011 response to
Weightman, that its Nuclear Emergency Planning Liaison Group (NEPLG) had,
amongst other things:
“Considered in some detail the response required for
faults considered to be reasonably foreseeable and additionally the response
required for ‘beyond design basis’ accidents and recommended that industry
consider the planning assumptions for these. It also recommended that ONR
should enforce a stronger testing regime which includes extendibility
arrangements and overseas nuclear accident response…”
ONR said in a reply to a Freedom Of Information
Request on 17 April 2013 asking for copies of reports prepared of commissioned by the ONR on
destructive testing of vulnerable parts
of nuclear facilities, that :
“It is the licensees who are expected to commission
such work to support their safety justifications for reactors.” And added that the ONR itself
“does
not keep such records.”
That may be honest, but it is equally disturbing. Why is our nuclear
safety regulator relying on the industry to police its own safety?
The American nuclear regulators take a much more
pro-active role.
The
Patriot News in the US recently reported that the Three Mile
Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania – the location of America’s biggest nuclear
accident in 1979 - will be the first in
the U.S. to be tested on its emergency response procedures in the event of a
terrorist attack. The drill will take place in the context of a simulated
attack, perhaps a strike from the air, like an airplane deliberately crashing
into the facility, thought the nature of the fictional scenario is being kept
secret.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been requiring nuclear plant
operators to prepare for such scenarios since 2011, Power Engineering reported.
(“Three Mile Island to be
first nuclear plant tested on terrorist attack response,” Power
Engineering, Apr 16, 2013, http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2013/04/three-mile-island-to-be-first-nuclear-plant-tested-on-terrorist-.html)
)
Meanwhile, the US Government has announced plans to fund to operate a pair
of nuclear emergency response centres, able to rapidly transport vital safety
equipment anywhere in the country.
The Chemical Engineer in mid- April said:
“The idea behind the centres was
developed in the wake of 2011’s Fukushima disaster, where damage caused by the
initial earthquake was made worse when emergency backup generators and other
equipment failed in the face of a devastating tsunami. Even once the problem
had been recognised, the sheer scale of the disaster meant that it took
considerable time for replacements to reach the site”.
(“US
plans nuclear emergency response centres,” The Chemical
Engineer, 16 April 2013, http://www.tcetoday.com/latest%20news/2013/april/us-plans-nuclear-emergency-response-centres.aspx#.UW2OjnBwaM8
Why don’t we
implement something similar here?
And the latest news from
Japan?
A UN nuclear watchdog team last
week began inspecting Fukushima’s crippled nuclear plant, which has been
plagued with radioactive water leaks and other glitches for more than two years
since it was struck by the tsunami. (“IAEA inspects Japan's crippled nuclear plant,”(AP
April 17, 2013, www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10750978}
Subsidies
The current Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, Ed
Davey couldn’t have been clearer over his
party’s policy on nuclear power, when writing on his blog on 17 July
2006:
“A new generation of nuclear power stations will cost taxpayers and consumers tens of billions of pounds. “In addition to posing safety and environmental risks, nuclear power will only be possible with vast taxpayer subsidies or a rigged market.”
“A new generation of nuclear power stations will cost taxpayers and consumers tens of billions of pounds. “In addition to posing safety and environmental risks, nuclear power will only be possible with vast taxpayer subsidies or a rigged market.”
In 2006 Ed Davey was in charge of developing energy spokesman for the
Lib Dems. Four years later, when the Lib
Dems formed the Coalition government with the Conservatives, the Coalition
Agreement included the following statements and pledges
“Liberal Democrats have long
opposed any new nuclear construction.”
and
“the replacement of existing nuclear power stations [
will be allowed ] provided that they receive no public subsidy.”
The first
Coalition energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, now languishing in jail, attempted to
clarify what was meant by the simple
word ‘subsidy’ with this Jesuitical casuistry in a statement to Parliament on
18 October 2010, asserting:
“Arguably,
few economic activities can be absolutely free of subsidy in some respect,
given the wide-ranging scope of state activity and the need to abide by international
treaty obligations. Our "no subsidy" policy will therefore need to be
applied having regard to proportionality and materiality.”
He added by way of explanation:
“We will not rule out the Government
providing support to industry in the normal course of the business of
government, for example through the activities of the Office for Nuclear
Development in taking forward the actions to facilitate the deployment of new
nuclear power in a similar manner to the facilitation of other energy types.”
(www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm101018/wmstext/101018m0001.htm#1010183000119}
And Lib Dem Ministers have spent the next two and a half years adding more and more subsidies for nuclear, while verbally wriggling to attempt to justify they are not subsidies.
This embarrassing political charade has been
kept up, despite many attempts by MPs, including myself, to point out the absurdity, hypocrisy and
frankly and dishonesty of the Coalition
policy on nuclear subsidies.
There have even been covert subsidies to nuclear
operators arising from implementation of
the Weightman report on lessons to the
UK from Fukushima. Paul was told in a written answer in December 2011
“Nuclear safety is a
top priority and as such any associated costs to the Department will be borne
out of the overall departmental budget.
The Government are not able to comment on any
associated costs to the nuclear operating companies, as such costs are part of
the overall and ongoing costs of ensuring the safe operation of nuclear
facilities.
The latest news on direct subsidies is that the UK's contracts for difference (CfD) scheme could be
delayed by EU state aid rules, as the Government has confirmed that it will
have the power to change the terms of subsidy agreements without public disclosure.
The UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change
(DECC) has revealed to ICIS that it will have the powers to change the terms of
subsidy agreements brokered with low carbon energy generators without public
disclosure through its electricity market reform bill
Section 3 sub-paragraph 3 of the bill states that information can be
kept confidential if
"the disclosure of which, in the opinion
of the Secretary of State at that time, would or would be likely to prejudice
the commercial interests of any person."
(“EU approval for UK CfDs
could be delayed by lack of transparency,” ICIS, 11 April 2013, www.icis.com/heren/articles/2013/04/11/9658263/eu-approval-for-uk-cfds-could-be-delayed-by-lack-of.html)
This
attempt to conceal subsidy details from Parliamentary scrutiny is undemocratic
and unacceptable.
And finally, The Sunday Telegraph revealed on 21 April that Amyas Morse, the controller and auditor
general of the National Audit Office, has written to MPs suggesting that he may
investigate any deal done between the Treasury and EDF.
Mr Morse,
who produced a report into the Government’s energy policy last year, said:
“I expect to follow up my earlier
memorandum with further reviews to support parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s
implementation of its energy policy and in particular I will consider the case
for a review of the negotiation of the Hinkley strike price if one is agreed.
If the Government reaches
agreement with EDF an audit could review the process and outcome of the
negotiations and whether they have secured value for money.”
{“Delayed
nuclear deal faces inquiry,“ Sunday Telegraph, 21 April 2013, www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10007825/Delayed-nuclear-deal-faces-inquiry.html)
Our prediction
is he will conclude the deal is a subsidy, contrary to the Coalition Agreement,
and rule it out.
This is all
the result of ministers dissembling on
nuclear subsidies for many months.
