Imagine, for a moment, that the terrifying secrets of nuclear fission did not wait until the wartime dash for knowledge under Robert Oppenheimer. Let’s imagine, instead, that the basis for nuclear energy was developed closer to Einstein’s breakthrough, maybe just before the Great Depression.
Ask yourself, what would the Chamberlain government have done with nuclear energy in the weeks after the outbreak of war, expecting at any time the drone of Nazi bombers? It doesn’t take much imagination. They would have abandoned such tempting and potentially devastating targets, just as they abandoned BBC television because its transmissions could guide bombers.
So how are we to understand the Brown government’s determination to press ahead with a vastly expensive investment in nuclear energy, with all the concomitant transport of plutonium and nuclear waste, at a time when we are supposed to be facing an unprecedented external threat? Are we really facing such a terrorist threat after all? Or is modern government hopelessly in thrall to departmental divisions, to the extent that one department deals with risks and another deals with something else entirely?
Ask yourself, or better still ask Gordon Brown: how can you possibly expect us to believe both these propositions?
- The terrorism threat to the UK is at unprecedented levels.
- We need have no fears about expanding our exploitation and transport of plutonium to fuel a new nuclear energy programme.
Either one of the statements must be false, or else they have a peculiarly blinkered understanding of public risk. Or maybe they believe terrorists would be too gentlemanly to steal plutonium and target reactors?
More decentralised energy is not just common sense, it is also a good deal less of a terrorist threat.
Or can we really imagine Chamberlain and Churchill discounting the threat to nuclear power stations from Nazi bombers or rockets, on the grounds that it was the responsibility of a different set of ministers? That’s not my department, said Werner von Braun.
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7 Comments
Or maybe global warming is an even bigger threat than all of that.
A term like “decentralised energy” obviously presses all the right emotional buttons, but this is not sufficient to make it a good idea any more than decentralised mathematics.
It refers to lots of good ideas relating to microgeneration, CHP and so on. But instead of allowing those good ideas to stand on their merits, the word “decentralised” is used to package them as a concept in opposition to nuclear power. This is not an entirely honest way of framing the debate.
Now maybe renewables alone can deliver the goods. It looks unlikely at the moment, and we are still building fossil plant. I don’t ask for nuclear before renewables. Let’s put renewables first, and nuclear before fossils. If we don’t, I don’t see how we can be serious about reducing carbon emissions.
I think global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism. You and the Daily Mail can, of course, disagree.
Of the objections to nuclear power, terrorism is the biggest red herring.
Nuclear power stations are built to withstand huge blasts, the fuel containers used to transport it will withstand a full spead train hitting them with only a few dents (the train is destroyed).
We would also not be transporting plutonium for fuel, the most likely fuel is uranium oxide. Perhaps a mixture of uranium and plutonium oxide.
Lastly, we alredy have nuclear power stations, surely more do not increase the risk appreciably (especially considering the risk of terrorist attack succeeding on such targest is miniscule).
Argue on economics terms (are they cost effective – surely that also largely stands upon what the costs of climate change are). Argue that the waste problem is too large. Using the threat of terrorism to argue against nuclear power is just fear mongering.
We should not let the terrorists win – why help them by using them for other causes?
I’d just like to refer the author to what I wrote on this subject 11 months ago;
“On the matter of security, how feasible is it that terrorists will intercept a nuclear fuel transport and extract the plutonium from it? Well, even if we assume that they can evade all the spy satellites ever built with sufficient forces to overwhelm a fully armed transport vessel in the middle of the ocean, break open the thick steel transport cans and remove the fuel, consider that in order to remove plutonium from uranium, Britain has constructed a factory bigger than most cathedrals. Are we really to believe that while it costs us £2 billion, they could do it with the chemistry kit they got at Toys ‘R’ Us?”
http://auberius.blogspot.com/2006/10/nuclear-option_04.html
Sadly, this discussion continues to ignore the progress being made in other countries that have more effective public sectors. It needs to develop further the proposals already made by Chris Huhne et al: Climate Change Starts at Home (April 07) about more energy efficient housing is just one of those papers – except I cannot find that paper now on the LD web site. Start at http://www.libdems.org.uk/environment/index.html
And we really need to have some nuclear capacity, but we are stuck in the gap between our near term requirement and the 4th generation much cleaner technology currently being developed by several countries (but not by us). See the Argonne Lab http://www.ne.al.gov and the Idaho National Lab http://nuclear.inl.gov/gen4/
When I joined the party in 1983 the green economist Fritz Schumaker had a big influence on me, and I felt at home in the Liberal Party. He did not know about global warming of course, and since then James Lovelock has been saying the opposite.
In truth the arguments are so complicated, with so many variables I do not know what to think. It is hard to have a serious debate about it on this forum. Out of interest I am curious to know what would happen if a plane was to fly into a nuclear power station?
One concern that I do have is that if the pro-nuclear wing of the party were to get it’s way, it would simply be another step towards the party becoming a party of boring subburban accountants who read the Times.
In the overall scheme of things, I shouldn’t let that sway me I know.
Geoffrey,
That’s a very interesting point. It is hard to see nuclear power as one of the good guys, to be passionate about it. Dry logic can be depressing if it doesn’t give us the answers that feel good.
I remember reading Schumacher in the 80s. I forget most of the details but my impression today is that although he saw through a few conventional idiocies, he also installed a few of his own.
He argued against computers – that they were putting clerks out of work – but it is unthinkable now that we would prefer all arithmetic to be manual.
Small is beautiful, yes, but at the same time it limits what can be achieved with a division of labour. Smallness should not be a virtue to enslave ourselves to.
We discussed the conference agenda at a special meeting of Sheffield Hallam Lib Dems, and spent some time on the nuclear question.
A majority were in favour of at least keeping the option open for further nuclear power, including one chap who clearly understood energy policy inside-out and had long been an opponent of nuclear but is now a supporter because of the impending energy crisis and global warming.
One of those remaining opposed pointed out, quite rightly, that it is very difficult political positioning to support nuclear on environmental grounds, when all the environmental groups will just damn us for it. If we bow to this threat, is that called ‘selling out’?
Rarely is politics well-informed by engineering considerations. Or, for that matter, science or economics. Ah well.