[ RadSafe ] Nuclear power: a convert

[Susan Gawarecki]

Nuclear power: a convert
by Mark Lynas
Monday 30th May 2005
http://www.newstatesman.com/200505300014

Mark Lynas was sure it would be a disaster - and then he looked at the 
alternatives

Suddenly, it seems that everyone's talking about the end of oil - and 
not necessarily for the right reasons. Take the recent Peak Oil UK 
conference in Edinburgh. Lurking at the back was a delegation from the 
BNP, including the party's odious leader, Nick Griffin. Why were they 
there? Simple, Griffin told my informant. Once oil peaks, the global 
economy will lurch into a terrible recession - just as it did in the 
1930s. Chaos and strife will ensue. "We would expect to come to power by 
the end of the decade."

I wasn't at that meeting but I did attend the Energy . . . Beyond Oil 
conference in Oxford earlier this month. The meeting focused on what 
could replace fossil fuels, and I arrived convinced - as I wrote in 
these pages a few weeks ago - that opting for nuclear power would be a 
disastrous mistake. Before long my comfortable green certainties were in 
tatters.

Don't get me wrong: this was not one of the nuclear PR junkets Jonathan 
Leake warned us against in last week's New Statesman. Advocates of each 
potential non-carbon energy source were invited to speak in turn, with 
geothermal at the top of the list. It seemed like a great idea for 
Iceland, but less so for the UK, where as far as I know there are very 
few volcanoes. Next up was tidal and wave, for which I had high hopes. 
The speaker showed slides of wind-turbine-like things that sit under the 
surface of the sea and generate power from tidal currents. In theory. 
None has actually been built yet. There is one wave-power prototype 
being tested somewhere off Orkney. "Wave technology is in the same state 
as wind was 20 years ago," the speaker said. Sadly, he was being optimistic.

By this time, I was getting desperate. What about solar? The use of 
photovoltaics is increasing at a rate of 30 per cent per year, with 
Japan taking a lead. But it remains hopelessly uneconomic, and the 
speaker, Michael Gratzel, called for a Manhattan Project-style global 
drive for a materials breakthrough. Biological solar (biofuels) needs a 
breakthrough, too: if we want to feed our cars there will not also be 
enough land available to feed our people.

Thank God for wind, then. The UK is the windiest country in Europe and 
could produce up to a fifth of its electricity from wind turbines. 
Except that vitriolic campaigns spring up wherever turbines are 
proposed: Whinash in Cumbria is merely the latest. Offshore wind would 
help, but it is more expensive and less accessible. There's also the 
problem of variability - even greens don't want their computers to shut 
down when the wind stops blowing.

Then came Sue Ion of BNFL. Carbon-free nuclear power produces nearly a 
quarter of our electricity, she reminded us, but the stations are 
closing and by 2020 only one will be left, supplying just 3 per cent. 
What can replace them? I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Even 
with crash programmes for wind, wave and tidal, with nuclear stations 
closing we would still have the same greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020 as 
we do today.

Energy efficiency could make up a large part of the gap, but it's a long 
shot. People want the latest energy-hungry techno-gadget more than they 
want insulated lofts, while almost the entire political class holds 
economic growth as an article of faith. And don't even mention energy 
reduction to India and China. Hydrogen would be great if only we could 
find some way to generate it without using fossil fuels. Oh, and it's 
difficult to store and no use at all for aeroplanes.

I'm not suggesting that nuclear is a panacea. It can reduce carbon 
emissions only as part of a combined dash for renewables and energy 
efficiency, buying us time while truly clean energy systems are 
developed. True, renewed nuclear power could lead to Chernobyl-style 
accidents or terrorist attacks and will leave a legacy of toxic waste 
for millennia. But have you considered what five or six degrees of 
global warming would do to the planet? Something far worse, I assure you.

And just in case we also find ourselves running out of uranium, here's 
another idea. Why not burn up all the nuclear warheads currently 
stockpiled in the US and UK (and Israel)? That would deal nicely with 
the WMD problem while keep- ing us all in carbon-free energy for a few 
decades. If you ask me, anything is preferable to planetary climatic 
meltdown combined with a 1930s-style collapse into political darkness. 
Even nuclear power.

Mark Lynas is the author of High Tide: how climate crisis is engulfing 
our planet (Harper Perennial)

[http://www.marklynas.org]
This article first appeared in the New Statesman.