More Nuclear Power Debate.

The Telegraph reports on a new document out from the Geological Society. Yes, we need to build a new generation of nukes.

Dr John Loughead, of the UK Energy Research Centre, said at the launch of the report: "Given that we are going to lose some of the current emission-free sources and assuming we want to stick to our objectives on reducing emissions, we felt that replacement of emission-free solutions would most likely be made by nuclear.

"Looking at the costs, it seems to us that renewables will play a growing role but if we are looking at securing supply over this time period [up to 2050], it is unlikely that they will provide what we need."

The full report is here. No, I haven’t read it in full but it does seem to make two elegant points. One, that they’re not proposing to carpet the country with nukes, rather, we simply need to replace those we already have as they come to the end of their design lives. Two, they’re not suggesting that nukes for ever is the solution. It may well be that at the end of the next generation’s lifespans, around 2050, that renewables will have grown up and that a further generation of nukes will not be necessary. This also sidestepsthat contention that uranium is going to run out in 50 years or whatever.

Greenpeace, as you might imagine, does not agree.

There's a finite amount of money available for government and private investment into developing electricity generation systems. Investment in renewable energy depends on government involvement. Competition with a heavily subsidised nuclear industry would seriously undermine both the future of renewable energy as well as economic growth in the energy sector.

Nice to see that they’re grasping the basics of economics at last, scarce resources and all that. Slightly unfortunate that the report which compares wind and nuclear subsidies (those needed that is), the Oxera report, states that wind needs three times more subsidy than nuclear. So we could in fact have nuclear plus 2/3 of the wind power plans or the wind power alone. Which would reduce emissions most for that same amount of scarce resources?

They also make this blindingly stupid statement:

Nuclear power atoms are no different to the atoms used in nuclear weapons and dirty bombs.

Well, actually they are. (As no one has yet set off a "dirty bomb" it’s a little difficult to know exactly what they would use but the most damaging isotope would probably be Cobalt-60. Used for treating cancer in general and thus little to do with nuclear power stations.) Uranium for bombs is highly enriched, that for power stations low enriched. Plutonium is a product of nuclear power, one that requires a huge amount of processing to get out of the wastes.

Or, if we are to take them more literally "nuclear atoms are nuclear atoms" well, yes they are, as they are also "rock atoms", "human atoms", "fruit atoms" and so on. Objecting to nuclear power because "atoms are atoms" seems to be taking one’s argument with the universe a little far.