Dismissing nuclear concerns will not get rid of the waste
Sunday May 27 2007
THE British media have no doubts. They believe that a decision has been made, regardless of the promised public consultation. "Nuclear to play large role in Britain's future," proclaimed the Daily Telegraph's website as soon as the UK Government published its new energy plans last week.
And across a political divide, the leftist Guardian agreed: "Government pushes forward nuclear plans," it shouted, while The Times rudely declared: "Minister dismisses 'daft' anti-nuclear lobby".
You might not guess it from the greenish tones of the UK Government's official press release, but Britain's moratorium on building new nuclear plants is about to end. Prime Minister Tony Blair warned last week, "Flicking a switch and the lights coming on is something that we take for granted. Yet we should not be lulled into a false sense ofsecurity."
The implications for Ireland have as much to do with nuclear waste as with nuclear power. That is because there are two distinct issues and both of them are important.
You can be in favour of nuclear power as an energy option, but still deeply worried by Britain's failure to dispose of its heavy nuclear waste in a better fashion. Bullying supposedly "daft" opponents of nuclear power will not bury the long-term nuclear waste which remains a danger to humanity for millennia.
Right now, US authorities are building a deep and relatively safe storage area for their high-risk nuclear waste, under Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. The Swedes bury theirs in rock under the Baltic Sea. And Finns are making a deep dump at Olkiluoto.But the UK Government is doing no such thing. It talks about future dumps while continuing to stack up high level nuclear waste above ground, primarily at Sellafield. It is a hazard that is potentially far more serious than anything that now seeps into the Irish Sea from that recycling and storage plant in Cumbria.
The nuclear consultation document issued in London last week envisages no deep geological storage facility being opened before about 2045. Meanwhile, there are to be certain vague "interim" solutions that seem to involve continuing to stockpile hazardous material above ground.
New nuclear plants are especially attractive for Britain, an island that in two world wars has found itself almost cut off and starved of resources. Its old nuclear plants are clapped out and North Sea oil is running low. The UK does not fancy becoming dependant on energy imports.
But British nuclear energy is also attractive for Ireland's Government, which needs new sources of power before our lights start going out. Ireland old-style ESB stations are polluting the atmosphere.
The Taoiseach and government ministers may pledge their opposition to nuclear generation but we already buy nuclear power from the United Kingdom. Just as the UK can be relied upon to do our dirty work when it comes to abortion, so too the big bad Brits generate nasty nuclear power of which we avail.
Electricity generated across the Irish Sea has been arriving indirectly in the Republic, since 1996, via the Moyle interconnector between Scotland and Northern Ireland. Such electricity has been generated partly by nuclear power plants. That Northern Ireland link accounts for more than one in 12 units of all electricity consumed in the Republic.
And if you must have a nuclear neighbour, then Britain is far from being the worst. Its parallel commitment to alternative forms of renewable energy seems genuine. UK Trade and Industry Secretary (minister) Alistair Darling last week promised to triple by 2015 the amount of electricity from renewable sources such as wind and sun. And UK incentives for reducing carbon dioxide emissions are being stepped up.
But Darling also threw open a short period of consultation on the significant role that new nuclear power stations can play in cutting emissions and diversifying supply. He left British observers in no doubt that the UK Government wants such power stations built.
When I forecast in my book on Sellafield four years ago that a Labour government would reverse the nuclear slowdown after the General Election, even some environmental activists scoffed my prediction. Asked to speak at a conference of the Green Party for England and Wales, in Lancaster, I found great resistance to my suggestion that they had not yet won their battle to consign nuclear energy to history. They were indulging in wishful thinking.
Nuclear power provides a source of energy that is both efficient and usually clean, so long as the nuclear facilities do not melt down or suffer a traumatic terrorist attack. For governments genuinely committed to reducing green house gases and global warming, this makes nuclear an attractive option. Windmills and sun panels are still not seen by most governments as adequate alternatives.
A spokesperson for Energy Minister Noel Dempsey told me last year that there is no way of identifying where our electricity has come from (ie. whether it is from Great Britain or not, nuclear-generated or not), "as all the electricity generated goes into one central pool".
If the Government buys even more electricity directly from Britain, via a planned east-west underwater connector, it will become further implicated in the nuclear option that it so loudly opposes. But, by comparison, building conventional power plants in Ireland itself is economically unattractive.
Our growing dependence on British energy should not blind us to the related dangers of nuclear waste. And there is a real danger that governments could turn a blind eye to that danger because it is politically and financially awkward.
Opposition leader of the Liberal Democrats party, Sir Menzies Campbell, has accused Tony Blair of appearing to "disregard the issue of risk and cost and toxic waste". Our new Government must not do likewise.
Prof Colum Kenny of DCU is the author of Fearing Sellafield (Gill & Macmillan, 2003). For the UK 'Future of Nuclear Power' consultation document see http://www.dti .gov.uk/
- Colum Kenny
