NUCLEAR POWER AND THE CO2 REDUCTION STRATEGY

Nuclear Power and the CO₂ Reduction Strategy - by Dr. Brian John, Trustee, West Wales ECO Centre

As we must all be aware, the Prime Minister is personally committed to a great expansion of nuclear generating capacity over the coming years as part of his CO₂ reduction strategy. He and other ministers continue to talk of nuclear power stations as if they are more benign than renewables with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. Just the other day I heard a government minister on the radio refer to the nuclear industry as a "zero CO₂ emitter." Sadly, he was talking nonsense.

The West Wales ECO Centre has always opposed any expansion of nuclear generating capacity, on the grounds that the technology itself is inherently dangerous and liable to catastrophic failure, and that the nuclear industry makes the world a more and more dangerous place as it expands.

An expansion of nuclear power will also result in an increase in centralized control over personal freedoms, and since nuclear power plants are so inflexible (i.e. you cannot switch them on and off) they will have a tendency to pull up demand to meet supply. That is absolutely not the way to encourage energy saving in the population at large, or to reduce national electricty demand.

To return to nuclear power and CO₂ emissions. Nuclear power stations are responsible for the emission of vast quantities of CO₂ into the atmosphere when one undertakes (as one must) full life-cycle measurement. A typical 1,000 MW plant is a highly complex machine with double and even triple safety systems built into it. It will take 8-10 years to build, and during that time the "energy cost" of construction will have to be paid through our existing energy providers. Then there are other energy and CO₂ costs, including the cost of uranium mining, transport and processing, and on the closure of the plant the cost of decommissioning, waste disposal and site remediation. It is culpably dishonest to omit these costs, as the nuclear industry and certain politicians are wont to do. It is widely accepted that the CO₂ cost of construction of the Sizewell B nuclear station was 3,740,000 tonnes of CO₂. The total energy costs of nuclear power station construction and decommissioning are put at 80 PJ. So although a nuclear plant, up and running at full load, will emit relatively little CO₂, it will still take take ten years of efficient operation to achieve energy payback.

So is a nuclear programme involving perhaps ten new reactors in the UK going to do anything to help us to meet the new CO₂ reduction targets? No way. The average modern nuclear plant (even with a speeded-up planning process) will take 5 years to go through the planning system and then at least 8 years to be built, and another 10 years to reach its energy payback point. That translates into 13 years of massively increased CO₂ emissions nationwide, and ten years of energy recovery, just in order to support the nuclear building programme. That does not look like a "quick fix" solution to me. By 2020, the Government wants us, as a nation, to emit up to 32% less CO₂ than we did in 1990. That sounds to me like a scenario dreamt up by somebody who has never read "Nuclear Power: the Energy Balance" by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith.

And if we don't want nuclear power? Well, the average large modern wind turbine reaches its energy payback point in around 6 months, and from that point on it runs fuel-free and emits no CO₂. NOW we're talking about a technology that might make sense to those who really do want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade............

Follow up links:

http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/reports/ptgp/3-3/Pgp33text.asp

A PJ is a joule with 17 zeros after it:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)

Role of Nuclear Power in a low carbon economy, Uk Sustainable Development Commission:
http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=344

Dr. Brian John is a founder member of the ECO Centre, a committed environmentalist he has campaigned successfully against Oriumulsion in Pembrokeshire and the growing of GM crops. He is also an author of many books of local interest and the internationaly published Angel Mountain series.

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