go nuclear?

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The sun is setting on nuclear power plans for the UK

For years the government has placed its faith in nuclear power and the
corporate interests that drive the nuclear industry. Its committment to the
nuclear dream has warped Britain’s energy
policy at the expense of both bill and tax
payers.

In 2006 the last government started
trying to deliver a new nuclear energy
policy. The UK was to have ten reactors at eight sites in England and Wales. But things did not go according to plan. At £5
billion a reactor, nuclear power has turned out to be a very costly means of
producing low-carbon electricity. It would take billions of pounds of subsidy
before it made business sense to build nuclear reactors.

All mainstream political parties have committed to not
providing public subsidy for nuclear power.
But energy companies
will not build them without a hefty subsidy. So
instead of taking full advantage of the UK’s excellent potential for
renewable energy and investing in energy efficiency, ministers have been looking at how
to transfer the spiralling cost of delivering nuclear power
to taxpayers and consumers. This may be illegal under European law. And one of
the energy companies has warned that it risks
damaging investment in renewable energy.

But despite the government’s best efforts, the
nuclear dream is fast turning into a nightmare.

Last year, Scottish and Southern Energy pulled
out of new nuclear in the UK. Last month, E.ON
and RWE cancelled their plans. GDF Suez and Scottish Power have said that
they’re unlikely to build any nuclear plants without
a lot more subsidy. Now Centrica is also trying to get out.

That leaves just one company – Electricite de France, better know as EDF. EDF is very committed
to nuclear power, but it is owned by the French government and takes its cue from the
French president. The French election in May looks likely to deliver a new, more
nuclear-sceptical president, Francois Hollande, whose officials have threatened
to fire the head of EDF for mocking his plans to reduce France’s dependence
on nuclear power.

EDF, whose credit
rating was downgraded earlier this year, could well find it hard to raise
enough money to build any reactors in the UK, especially if it has to find
billions to decommission its French reactors. Investors, who have been
sceptical of nuclear for some time now, are not going to rush to invest in EDF’s
nuclear plant when every other company has pulled out.

The years that could have been spent on delivering
an energy efficient, low-carbon economy,
spearheaded by renewables, have instead been squandered pursuing a fading nuclear dream.

It’s time for energy secretary Ed Davey to admit that the government’s nuclear dream is
failing. He’s now faced with a future of
more imported gas, higher energy bills and
higher greenhouse gas emissions. That would be unpopular with bill payers and bad for efforts to curb climate change.

The government could ditch nuclear, reign back on gas and start taking
advantage of the UK’s potential for investment in clean, renewable energy. They
could put large scale energy efficiency, as well as renewable energy,
at the heart of this year’s electricity market reforms.

It’s not too late for a plan B, but time is running out. Ed Davey needs to
step up and deliver.

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Rainbow Warrior sails 20 miles from the port of Bushehr, Iran. 2007

Kumi’s blog was originally published by IPS, before the Istanbul summit took place.

Disruptive diplomacy may be the only way out of the Iran-Israel nuclear crisis, the only way to pierce the hegemony of hypocrisy dominating the power politics of nuclear weapons control, of those who have them, and of those who are accused of developing them.

Otherwise, this weekend’s meeting on Iran’s nuclear programme is likely to be yet another missed opportunity, yet another exercise in futility.

Who will meet in Istanbul this Saturday? Iran and the ‘P5+1′, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and the only ‘legitimate’ nuclear weapons states under the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – the United States, China, Russia, France and the UK, plus Germany.

Together, their collective history with Iran and Israel is one of complexity, pain and – so far as nuclear weapons are concerned – utter hypocrisy. There is no easy solution. What is needed is disruptive diplomacy in which both sides put forward something challenging, and in which everyone gives something up to win peace.

Only four countries sit outside the NPT: Israel, India and Pakistan never signed, and North Korea withdrew.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: by joining the NPT Israel can pierce the veil of its policy of “ambiguity”, place its facilities under international safeguards, and begin to dismantle its nuclear arsenal. In this way, Israel can help end hypocrisy and build trust. Israel does not need nuclear weapons; these do not offer a safety net, instead they provide a destabilising influence throughout the entire region.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Iran could equally afford to dismantle its entire nuclear programme in favour of smart energy systems, efficient energy use and renewable energy sources. This is not cheap rhetoric. It could be done, and would benefit Iran’s people.

In 2007 the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior embarked on a Nuclear Free Middle East tour to address the threat of nuclear weapons in the region and the threat of another “weapons of mass destruction” war.

Greenpeace commissioned a study showing that a combination of decentralised energy systems, renewable energy use and energy efficiency would allow Iran to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, end its nuclear programme and meet the development needs of its people.

At the same time, Greenpeace activists demonstrated outside Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, arguing, “Nuclear developments and nuclear weapons in any country provoke proliferation and undermine security region-wide.”

What about the so-called P5? The high-handed posturing of Iran’s principle accusers requires some scrutiny. They are the permanent members of the UN Security Council. They are proof that nuclear weapons provide a seat at the top table of global security and thus power politics. Why else would Britain and France still have their own chairs? What right do any of them have to discuss illegal, so- called preventative attacks on a country?

Together they stand for over four decades of bad faith. Under the NPT they promised to disarm in return for all other signatories forgoing nuclear weapons. The P5 committed to negotiate away their deadly nuclear arsenals. They have not done so. Instead, they continue to invest; they continue to modernise their nuclear weapons and delivery mechanisms; they continue to undermine global nuclear non-proliferation efforts.

Before accusing Iran of duplicity, the nuclear weapons nations need to stop and reflect. In reality, the grand bargain of the ‘atoms for peace’ pact at the heart of the NPT was always a dangerous lie. A diplomatic deceit promising to control the spread of nuclear weapons in return for support in developing nuclear power, an abundant power source that was supposed to be clean, safe and reliable, though it turned out to be dirty, dangerous, and expensive. A pact that Iran agreed to, but Israel has not.

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are the Janus faces of nuclear technology: you cannot have one without the other. No amount of agreement, treaties and inspection will ever remove the risk and temptation of a nuclear power state becoming a nuclear weapons state.

It can be made harder, but never impossible. Just as the risks of meltdowns are present at every reactor site, the risk of nuclear proliferation is attendant in every nuclear programme and the temptation to balance the possession by others of nuclear weapons is always there. The temptation to enter the arena of mutually assured destruction (MAD) is ever present.

The world does not need nuclear power. Greenpeace’s Energy [R]evolution – developed over many years with leading scientists and engineers – shows how we can avert catastrophic climate change, phase out nuclear power and transition to a clean energy system based on smart, efficient use and renewable energy sources.

As the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear crisis passes, it is even more significant to note that this crisis was man-made, predicated on the inherent failures and risks of civil nuclear power. The earthquake and tsunami may have been natural in origin but the profit-before-safety ethos that pervades all industrial activity left the people of Japan and the world vulnerable to multiple nuclear meltdowns. For all its so-called reliability Japan is down to only one operating nuclear plant.

It is hard to see how any plan to bomb Iran into submission will do anything other than protract the problem and threaten to ignite a powder keg of conflict in the Middle East. As The Economist has noted, bombing Iran will not eliminate the nuclear threat.

In truth, only a world free of all nuclear technology will help to build a workable trust on which to build a lasting peace. In Istanbul, governments should dare to disrupt the endless cycle of hypocrisy, accusation and counter-accusation and take real steps towards peace.

If we are really concerned about human security, if we are really concerned about our children and grandchildren’s peace and security, then we should be mustering all investments to move us in a direction of green, clean, renewable energy options. We must recognise that our quest for nuclear energy, the attendant threat of nuclear proliferation, and our reliance on fossil fuel-based energy have been the major drivers of conflict, war and flawed foreign policies.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: those from whom we borrow this world, for whom we keep it in trust and who are always caught up as collateral damage in foolish wars and sanctions – our children – deserve a clean, green future free of the threat of nuclear accidents and nuclear war.

This morning two more energy companies abandoned their plans
to build new nuclear power stations in the UK. It’s left the government’s
energy strategy in tatters – and it’s time for them to admit that the future is not nuclear and start
investing in cleaner, safer renewable energy.

Today’s announcement by RWE and E.ON isn’t really a surprise.
People working in the energy sector have been saying privately for months that
it was just a matter of time before they pulled out, because the economics of
nuclear didn’t stack up without billions of pounds of subsidy.

Building nuclear reactors requires lots of money up front
and has a very long payback time, which isn’t a very attractive prospect for
investors – as E.ON and RWE admitted this morning.

The government is determined to pretend that it’s business
as usual, which isn’t a surprise. They’ve been too close to the nuclear
industry for years. When the energy companies and private investors said they
were reluctant to build nuclear, the government response was to push the risk onto
bill payers – saddling millions of people with the risks of massive delays
and inevitable overspend.

This simply isn’t good enough. There are better, faster and cheaper ways to save us from climate change. It takes too long to build new reactors. Even if new companies stepped in to replace RWE and EON, it would be years before they got any project of the ground. Gas, despite the best efforts
of a very vocal lobby, isn’t going to help either.

The only solution is to start investing in a wide range
of sustainable energy options that are much faster to build at scale. They also need to start taking energy efficiency seriously.

Last October, research by WWF showed that
renewable energy was the key to cutting CO2 emissions from the power sector.
They calculate that renewables could provide 60% of our electricity by 2030. Not
only would that be cheaper and less risky than nuclear power, but it has the
potential to get our flat-lining economy off life support.

But the only way that this will happen is if the government
wakes up to the fact that its nuclear dream is crumbling.

The meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi
plant one year ago was all the more terrible because it struck Japan as a
natural disaster was unfolding.

Around 20,000 people were killed by the
earthquake and tsunami. Countless more were injured or forced to flee their
homes. Instead of being able to concentrate on responding to this natural
disaster, the Japanese authorities had to divert resources to the Fukushima
plant.

150,000 people were forced to evacuate
their homes. A 20km exclusion zone remains around the plant. High levels of
radiation have been recorded in staple food products, such as rice, beef and
baby formula. The Japan Centre for Economic Research calculated that
compensation and decommissioning would cost between $520bn and $650bn. This
will be largely picked up by Japanese taxpayers.

Across the world, the nuclear industry
has stalled. Costs are soaring and governments, such as Germany, are phasing
out reactors and instead building renewable energy plants.

This year, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have
the opportunity to overhaul Britain’s electricity system with a new Energy Bill
in parliament. They should use the Fukushima anniversary to challenge some of
the vested interests that are serving us so badly.

Even before the tragedy in Japan, major
investors, such as Citigroup, were questioning the economics of nuclear new
build. Now the economics look even worse. The French Audit Court concluded that
the new French reactor design was too costly and could not be built in time to
solve France’s energy crisis. No wonder President Sarkozy was so keen to
offload those same reactor designs to David Cameron at a recent meeting in
Paris.

The front-runner in April’s presidential
election, Francois Hollande, has promised to phase out one-third of France’s
nuclear fleet by 2025. And as European politicians have turned increasingly against
nuclear, they have started taking energy efficiency seriously. In Germany politicians
plan to reduce electricity demand by 25% by 2050 through energy efficiency.

But the coalition government here in Britain
is planning for electricity demand to double over the same period, even though Ministers
accept that energy saving is cheaper and greener than building new power
stations. The new Secretary of State for Energy Ed Davey is up against the “big
six” energy utilities which, unsurprisingly, want greater demand for energy,
because they profit from selling more heat and electricity, not less.

The world is on the
verge of a renewable energy boom. More money was invested in renewable
electricity generation worldwide in the last two years than in conventional
power. This is driven by Germany but similar investment in Britain could
benefit manufacturing here and create much needed jobs.

But first the government has to face down the
vested interests and vociferous lobbying of the fossil fuel and nuclear industries. The big question is whether they will set Britain on a course to be a
leader in the global race for affordable, modern, clean energy? Or will they
turn their back on Britain’s renewable energy resources and the potential for
thousands of home-grown jobs?

This piece orgininally appeared on Huffington Post.

This Sunday is the first anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan. This natural disaster left 20,000 people dead and missing and thousands more homeless. The tsunami also flooded the back-up generators that were powering the cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, causing several of the reactors to go into meltdown.

Instead of being able to concentrate on responding to the natural disaster, the Japanese government was forced to divert resources to the stricken nuclear plant. This nuclear disaster was preventable, because Tepco, the company that ran the plant, had had plenty of warning. In 2008, the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organisation warned the plant was at risk of being flooded by a major tsunami.

Instead of improving their flood defences, Tepco chose to ignore the warning – as did the government agency responsible for monitoring Japan’s nuclear industry and protecting the public.

This week, Greenpeace activists from around the world have been taking action to expose their governments’ failure to take nuclear safety seriously. From Indonesia to Istanbul, Bangkok to Belgium, Greenpeace activists took action in 19 countries.

Here in the UK, on Saturday 10 March people from across the country will be heading down to Hinkley Point, where EDF wants to build the first new nuclear reactor in almost 20 years. There will be a rally and a 24 hour non-violent blockade of the existing nuclear power stations – for more information, check stophinkley.org.

The actions were designed to bring attention to the fact that the 400-plus nuclear reactors around the world pose an ongoing threat to the hundreds of millions of people who live in their shadow.

Hundreds of activists marched through Jakarta dressed in radiation suits, whilst others cleaned up a mock nuclear waste spill in Cape Town. Banners dropped in Antwerp and Liège highlighted the inadequacies of evacuation plans in the case of a nuclear emergency.

Last week, an international team of Greenpeace campaigners carried messages of support for the people of Japan to the summit of Mt Fuji and deployed a banner calling for an end to nuclear power.

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EDF wants to build nuclear reactors in the UK but is facing problems back home in France

If you took the forced bonhomie of last week’s pact between David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy on civil
nuclear power at face value, you’d think that we were heading for a nuclear renaissance. But this won’t be enough to put the wheels back on the nuclear gravy train.

The story starts across the water in France – but long before Cameron and Sarkozy dreamt up their photo opportunity.

France gets 75% of its electricity from
nuclear, and the current French government sees its state-owned nuclear industry as a golden goose. Electricite de France (EDF) and reactor manufacturer Areva toured the globe, trying to sell an expensive new reactor, the European pressurised reactor, or EPR. The Finns bought one EPR and the Chinese bought a pair of them. EDF began building one at Flamanville across the Channel in Normandy. EDF set its eyes on Britain, buying our existing reactors and employing Gordon Brown’s brother as a lobbyist.

But it’s one thing to sell an EPR, and quite another to build one. The Finnish reactor was
delayed: and the cost started rising: from 3bn euros to 5bn, then 6bn. It was meant to open in 2009, but late last year the Finns announced that it was delayed until to 2014. Then things started going wrong in France and China. Flamanville is now four years late and will cost 6bn euros – twice what EDF promised it would.

People started asking why was it was so hard to build EPRs. The French government asked Francois Roussely, a former director of EDF, to investigate. He concluded that the EPR was too expensive and too complicated to build. He recommended that the safety features – one of the key selling points – should be pared back to make the reactor cheaper.

Then the Fukushima disaster happened and everyone remembered just why it was such a good idea for nuclear reactors to have safety features.

Like that notorious episode of Dallas, it turned out that the French nuclear renaissance was just a dream. EDF and Areva started blaming each other for failure. EDF threatened to shack up with Areva’s rivals, Westinghouse, who had designed a smaller and cheaper reactor. The credit ratings agency Standard and Poors downgraded EDF’s credit rating, making it more expensive for it to borrow the £20bn it would need to build four new reactors in the UK.

Then the French audit court announced that the EPR was too expensive and took too long to build. It recommended extending the life of the existing ones instead of building new EPRs.

All of this will give Vincent de Rivas, head of EDF in the UK, a bit of a headache. In the past, EDF has relied on the French government to bail it out. But
French presidential frontrunner François Hollande wants to reduce his
country’s dependence on the risky technology. He’ll find it hard to commit French taxpayers’ money to help EDF build reactors abroad if he’s closing them at home.

David Cameron wants to build new nuclear plants, but he has promised not to provide any public subsidies. That means he has to hide all the subsidies by rigging the electricity market – pushing up bills and asking taxpayers to cover the cost of the inevitable and costly delays. Cameron wants to get the private sector to invest in nuclear, but the bankers – not generally known for their caution – have said they wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.

Their latest plan to to persuade Centrica – the parent company of British Gas – to invest in EDF’s plans for new nuclear plant. But unlike EDF, Centrica has no ideological committment to nuclear. Why would it – and its shareholders – want to risk billions of pounds on the French nuclear dream?

17 February, 2012

Statement by Dr Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK

“No amount of talking up of the French nuclear industry by David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy will cover up the fact that the economics of new nuclear reactors don’t stack up. The track record of EDF in building new nuclear power stations on time and to budget is appalling. Recently the independent risk agency Standard and Poor downgraded EDF’s creditworthiness. All this came just a few months after a French judge sentenced a number of EDF senior executives to prison for unscrupulous acts of spying. French nuclear power is no longer popular even in France.
 
 
So instead of using UK taxpayers’ money to prop up failing French industries, David Cameron should follow the lead of Germany and concentrate on securing vast numbers of jobs and economic growth in the rapidly expanding clean energy industries such as wind and solar power.”

If further proof was needed of the unhealthy relationship between the Government and the nuclear industry then it can be found here in the release of a tranche of documents from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that show they are working hand in glove to thwart our legal challenge to the decision to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that on a number of different occasions, the government discussed our legal case. On the 7th of September the government went so far as to hand over the papers we had lodged with the courts to the Nuclear Industry Association, a body that represents the interests of over 100 nuclear operators, including EDF.

The sharing of this information breaks legal protocols and shows that there is an unhealthily close relationship between the government and the nuclear industry. More fundamentally, if the first port of call for the government is the nuclear industry, what happens to democratic accountability?

Read the released documents here.

1 December, 2011

Responding to the parliamentary written answer from Charles Hendry at Decc announcing the building a new Mox plant, Dr Douglas Parr, Policy Director at Greenpeace UK said:

“This is crazynomics – the reality is that the nuclear fairytale is a nuclear nightmare. Having announced the closure of a Mox plant because it was colossally inefficient and because there was no market for its service the government now wants to build another one that will fast become a hugely expensive white elephant.

“This proposal will lead to a subsidised plant creating subsidised fuel so that subsidised operators can produce subsidised electricity and then receive subsidised waste disposal. The only winners in this are the nuclear operators already rich with their 18% domestic fuel price rises this year.”

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Our Jakarta office remains open, allowing the forest and nuclear power campaigns to continue

Since our office was threatened with closure by the South Jakarta
district authority last week, our staff pulled out all the stops to keep
the office open. We have had great support from Indonesian civil
society leaders who see this attack on Greenpeace as an attack on the
rights of the wider movement. We have worked closely with other
organisations like Indonesia’s Legal Aid Foundation and WALHI/FoE
Indonesia to get clarity from the government about the situation.  

We
have also provided the government with the paperwork that proves our
legal registration to operate in Indonesia. and our building use permit,
approved by the local sub-district and our landlord.

Our meetings with government officials over the past few days have been
friendly and our explanations have been welcomed. They said that they
were not specifically targeting us; rather, it was part of their drive
to improve enforcement of building use regulations in the wider area.

Of course, given our recent experiences of attempts to disrupt our
work because of the pressure we’re putting on companies like Asia Pulp and Paper – who
are destroying Indonesia’s forest for toilet paper – we take this with a
pinch of salt. We support government efforts to improve urban
management, but it does appear that we were being singled out – despite
having the right paperwork.

Yesterday morning, national media carried stories about
how the South Jakarta authorities would come to ‘seal’ our office
between 10am and 12pm. Our staff had quickly prepared for the worst-case
scenario, and we had taken up some of the generous offers we’d received
for temporary accommodation to ensure that Greenpeace had a base to
continue its operations in Jakarta – although we can work from pretty
much anywhere.

While some staff focused on preparing our office for the expected
closure, the rest of us continued our campaign work over the weekend in
several different parts of Indonesia, including running a workshop in central Sumatra with a local partner organisation to support
palm oil smallholder efforts to increase productivity.

We also ran a citizen’s journalism workshop in Bandung, West Java,
for local communities living on the banks of one of the world’s most
polluted rivers to equip them with the skills to report
industrial toxic pollution.

And we celebrated the government’s decision
to postpone the construction of a nuclear power plant on Bangka Island
(located between Java and Sumatra) with local groups and communities, and told members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations ahead of this week’s summit in Bali:
“Don’t nuke Asean!”

So on Monday morning, following a very busy weekend of preparations
and activities, we waited at the Greenpeace office for the officials to
come and close us down – but they did not come.

We held a short press conference in front of the office for the many
assembled media, explaining the situation and emphasising that we had
been co-operating with officials and had complied with all local and
national regulations. We also said that we were planning to move in 6 months anyway to more suitable premises. The journalists then continued
to another press conference down the road at the district offices,
where officials told the press that we’d co-operated and that they would
give us the extra time to move.

On this occasion, we have disappointed the people who want to silence
us in Indonesia – those who desperately want Greenpeace to stop
campaigning. They should know by now that they will never stop us
publicising their destruction of this beautiful nation’s last remaining
forests, because we are fighting for a future for Indonesia’s people and
are directly supporting President Yudhoyono’s commitment to stop
deforestation by the end of his presidential term in 2014.

Those who try to stop us should just divert their energy to cleaning up their act instead.

Nur Hidayati works for Greenpeace South-East Asia