E3G

Decoding nuclear nonsense: 7 myths and their antidote

By Tom Burke

The second element follows: the way the government will cheat to ensure its favoured outcome. The most likely way to cheat would be by offering to provide a framework for the pricing of carbon that offers enough stability to encourage long-term investment. Put in plain language, it will propose a floor price for carbon. Given that the current price for carbon is less than €1 ($0.75) a tonne and the floor price needed to make new nuclear attractive would be much more than €20 ($27) a tonne this would commit the Treasury to very large future expenditures.

It will also cheat by making the taxpayer bear an unspecified share of the cost of radioactive- waste disposal (see Rob Edwards, “Nuclear-waste politics”, 18 May 2006). The minister responsible, Alistair Darling, has consistently refused to specify what he means by “full share” of these costs.
If the cost is to be shared at all then the generators are not being asked to bear the full cost. That means they will be getting another subsidy.

The third element of myth-making is the language used in the debate. Watch and listen, and beware of words like “allow” in relation to the construction of nuclear facilities.This can be interpreted to mean “should not be prevented from”; although, as there is no prevention anyway it is more likely that what the government means by “allow” is “should be actively assisted to”.

The three obstacles the government is intending to help the generators with are: the time it would take to subject the reactor design to a proper examination of its safety case; the time it would take for the need for the reactors to be examined properly by the public; and the uncertainty about the future price of electricity.

The fourth element is the question of whether nuclear-power stations are really necessary. The proposition that they are is a return to the supposed “generation gap” much favoured by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) before Margaret Thatcher sold it.It is simply an artefact of forecasting. No “generation gap” will appear.It is true that Britain’s existing generation capacity will decline in the future, including its nuclear-generation capacity. As it does so it will be replaced in the future, as it has been in the past, with new capacity decided on by the generators. That is how markets work. There is currently a margin of more than 20% of capacity over peak demand. Why would anyone expect the generators to build new power stations before they are needed?