Nuclear Energy is neither carbon-free, nor is it a secure energy, yet our government representatives appear to be drinking in everthing the Nuclear Industry offers them.
This morning on the BBC’s Breakfast Television programme we were treated to an interview with Alan Johnson MP, the Trade and Industry Secretary. The interview follows coverage of the the announcement that the government has ordered the Health and Safety Executive to assess all UK nuclear reactors.
In the interview Mr. Johnson ignored the questions and instead answered several easier ones that he felt the interviewer should have asked. During this dalliance into happy nuclear thoughts, Mr. Johnson repeated two statements that are so unbelieveably incorrect that I felt compelled to make a note of them, so that when he (and his political and business associates) at some point in the future venture that “nobody ever said X“, I will remember that he did indeed say it most emphatically.
Mr. Johnson’s incorrect assertions are:
- Nuclear energy is carbon-free.
- Nuclear energy is secure energy.
Later, Keith Parker (of the Nuclear Industry Association) was shown in a recorded statement saying that
Nuclear contributes to the long term security of energy supply as part of a diverse mix of energy sources, and it’s also a clean source of electricity generation, it doesn’t produce the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
It looks like our elected representative for Hull (Mr. Johnson) has been fully briefed by Mr. Parker; both are indefensibly wrong.
Keith Parker and Alan Johnson are spouting fallacies in advance of a public consultation, in order to sway the public to their way of thinking – they’re attempting to influence the consultation. From Mr. Parker’s perspective, it makes sense, he’s representing the nuclear industry which has a rather definite vested interest in the continued usage of nuclear power. But to hear these fallacies argued so strongly by an MP was utterly repugnant.
Nuclear Energy is not Carbon Free
I’ll tackle the “nuclear carbon free myth” with a small analogy.
Twins Bob and Jimmy are chatting in the pub and agree to enter the local 10Km fun run. Several weeks later the day of the run arrives and Bob takes his place at the start. Jimmy joins him shortly afterwards and explains that he needed to fill his water bottle up. Bob teases Jimmy that they’re not running a marathon so water will be unnecessary. The race begins, and every kilometer, Jimmy takes a swig of water. Bob and Jimmy run together, and finish together. Bob and Jimmy’s family are waiting at the finish and are surprised at how Bob gulps down the water that they have with them. Jimmy, in comparison, appears fresh and needs no water at all.
The fact is both runners need water, but only Bob’s water usage is conspicuous because it occurs at the stage where it can be noticed.
Similarly, only one part of nuclear energy production, the part that is most visible to the public is “carbon free”. The process as a whole which involves the manufacture of enriched uranium is anything but “carbon free”, but industry representatives like Mr. Parker conveniently ignore this issue in their televised filibustering.
Mr. Johnson should know better. It’s certainly the case that the amount of CO2 generated in the process as a whole will differ for each source of energy, but to present nuclear energy as a carbon free solution as Mr. Johnson did this morning, and to do so with a blatant disregard for valid questioning on national television, is wandering into the realms of negligence.
Nuclear Energy is not Secure Energy
The second major point that both parties covered was the fairly straightforward issue of energy security. The UK’s requirement is an energy industry that is capable of scaling it’s output to meet the needs of the public. The industry must therefore have a surplus of energy, or we will face the rolling blackouts or brownouts that have recently affected North America. To achieve this kind of surplus the UK must either generate or import energy.
The problem of importing energy is that that if you become reliant on it, market forces will drive the price up, a scenario which is increasingly likely as North Sea Gas fields are depleted. The Russia-Ukraine gas pricing row is a perfect example of this. The UK government is therefore forced to look to insular energy generation, and thus, the supposedly clean nuclear power is presented as a solution to our energy requirements.
Thus if importing energy is so insecure, generating it at home in nuclear power plants is the secure solution. This incidentally is a non-sequiteur.
There is an angle in the energy security debate that cannot be avoided due to our unavoidable involvement in international military operations through UN commitments. The arrest of ten terrorist suspects in Australia last November who, it was suggested, were planning to attack Australia’s only nuclear power plant, highlights the fact that such installations are certainly on the list of targets that “bad people” might select.
Distribution is Key
Knocking out a couple of nuclear power facilities is certainly unthinkable for normal people, but it is potentially possible for a few well equipped nutcases to achieve. Knocking out a distributed network with multiple energy sources is far more difficult however, and therefore far more secure.
This is the underlying theory behind the Internet, it was designed by DARPA to be a resilient network that could continue to function at near full capacity if one, or multiple nodes were to be destroyed through thermonuclear war.
So, if Nuclear Energy is not carbon-free, and not a secure energy source, what is in it for our government representatives? Does Alan Johnson MP know something we don’t or is he being deliberately naive?
