EDF has ConDems over a nuclear barrel

So much for the so-called virtues of the free market. The Coalition government, desperate to maintain energy supplies at any price, has abandoned its previous policy and will now offer nuclear generating companies cash to build new power stations.

French-owned global energy giant EDF has demanded – and is going to get – 40-year's worth of subsidies in what amounts to an outright state bribe to run new plant in the UK.

The ConDems swore after the election that new nuclear expansion would have to pay for itself. But now the government is frantic because the dash for gas has left the UK frighteningly dependent on a global market where a dwindling supply is meeting a growing demand.

The on-shore dash for gas opened up by the government will allow fracking and coal-bed methane capture. Even fully exploited, however, these deposits are small potatoes, leaving the UK reliant on ever-more expensive gas imports.

There are new sources of gas from wholesale fracking in the US but this won't reduce prices, only temporarily fill the gap left by giant north European fields that are now running down.

Two of the major energy corporations have decided not to bid for the UK's new nuclear plants, so EDF is the last firm standing. From that monopoly position they are demanding "contracts for difference" that guarantee a minimum price. If the market price falls below that, the government will pay the balance.

So as youth centres close, and elderly and sick people die lying in their own excrement, and months of austerity stretch into years to appease the financial markets, EDF will be shouting "Vive l’Entente Cordiale" as they rake in taxpayers’ money.

Alistair Buchanan, head of energy regulator Ofgem, is warning that UK customers face higher bills for years not as a result of subsidies for renewables (Tory Neanderthals take note) but because of reliance on expensive imported gas.

So what the 15 nuclear energy staff currently seconded to government departments (according to campaign group Nuclear Spin), are whispering in ministers' ears is something alone the lines of "come on you might as well agree a subsidy price, because it will probably never kick in. Prices will go on soaring for years, and we'll make a fortune, but the guaranteed minimum will help us borrow the £16 billion we need to build the new plants."

Now the gas plant owners are not happy. If nuclear is getting subsidies, they are demanding the same to build new gas plants to replace the older coal-fired stations that are closing.

And the oil industry – well that is already floating on a sea of tax breaks. A briefing published by Platform shows that BP's pre-tax profits tripled in 10 years from 2001 to 2011 but its UK tax payments stayed more or less the same. Profits went from $13.1bn in 2001 to $39.8bn in 2011 – tax payments from £707 million to £730 million. If the corporation tax payments had risen in line with profits that should be $2.1bn.

Shell actually paid less tax - down from £958 million in 2006 to £783 million in 2011. This despite global pre-tax profits rising from $44.6 billion in 2006 to $55.6 billion in 2011. So profits up 25% - tax to HMRC down 18%.

The energy market delivers nothing but a lose-lose scenario for ordinary people. They pay ever-higher fuel bills, subsidise energy corporation profits through their taxes, get no help to make their homes more energy efficient, and suffer the effects of climate change and pollution. And they watch as the nuclear industry leaves deadly waste lying around in canisters for our grandchildren to worry about. It is, as Buchanan said, a "car-crash of an energy policy".

Access to energy at an affordable price should be a basic right. Profiteering corporations have all but converted that right into a privilege, like so much else in Britain. Lower fuel bills and a transition to a clean, green energy future demand democratic ownership and control of the industry. That’s a goal we’ll have to achieve ourselves.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Radiation sickness is not a myth, George

The nuclear industry exudes confidence when setting out its business plans and tying down government subsidies – but when it all goes wrong it’s as if they never studied or understood the dangers of radiation at all.

Workers then give their lives, using chaotic, unscientific, and increasingly desperate measures. Meanwhile populations are terrified, displaced, their homes and possessions abandoned, sometimes for ever, and their livelihoods and education wrecked.

After radiation more than 7.5 million times the legal limit was found in the sea off shore from Fukushima, the leak was finally halted yesterday using, according to reports, “a mixture of sawdust, newspaper, concrete and a type of liquid glass”. A couple of days earlier they tried “cement, an absorbent polymer and rags”.

In a confidential assessment for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, US engineers helping with the crisis in Japan have warned that desperate measures taken were likely to result in further disaster. Seawater pumped to cool waste nuclear rods clogged pipes, so it didn’t reach the rods at all. A build up of hydrogen and oxygen may cause further hydrogen explosions.

This is advanced science? This is safe? This is the energy source that is going to save the planet from global warming?

The same approach dominated the Deepwater Horizon leak in the Gulf of Mexico, where BP and partners were making it up as they went along. Permitting new coal-fired power stations on the basis that “carbon capture and storage” will work eventually, is a further example of this cavalier approach to the health and safety of populations, whilst real science is totally ignored.

Which brings us to that enthusiastic convert to nuclear power, George Monbiot. After declaring that Fukushima actually helped the case for nuclear generation, Monbiot has now turned on campaigners, claiming that there is no scientific evidence that nuclear radiation causes health problems.


Well George, here’s some evidence, published in proceedings
of the Royal Society.

“Scientists working in Ukraine and Israel have found that DNA of children born to members of the Chernobyl clean-up teams has mutated, with a sevenfold increase in the emergence of new DNA strands. This indicates that low doses of radiation can induce multiple changes in the collection of genes that parents pass on to their offspring.”

The report concludes: "The very fact that much lower doses of radiation than previously generally believed can double the number of genomic changes needs serious attention. This is all the more important when a significant proportion of the human population is subjected to increased mutagenic pressure."

The disaster in Fukushima is happening in one of the world’s most densely-populated countries, within 240 kilometres of Greater Tokyo’s 35 million people. We have no idea what the long-term effects of this uncontrolled experiment will be on the human genome.

Campaigners like Monbiot have accepted that with the kind of growth curves demanded by capitalism for its survival (not for our survival), there is a massive energy shortfall and they fear it will be filled by a huge return to coal-fired power, increasing global warming.

They are not wrong there – but their “solution” is absolutely wrong because it’s based on the acceptance of the unacceptable and unsustainable system of production for profit. Monbiot’s is just another version of the There is No Alternative argument.

The solution is to fight for an end to the capitalist growth mania, and remove energy generation from reckless profit-driven corporations. With research and development of alternative energy, we can stop measuring growth by counting profits from sales of commodities. Instead, better health, plenitude, equality and fairness, food for the hungry, land for landless, and a thriving eco-system can be used as the scientific measures of our success.

Penny Cole
Environment editor



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Nuclear power - the case for decomissioning New Labour

The government’s commitment to nuclear power has everything to do with servitude to the global energy companies and nothing to do with tackling climate change. New Labour has accepted a financial model which will leave the British people paying the price in every way.

The taxpayer will end up financing the decommissioning of the new stations, just as they have the existing ones. In the small print of yesterday’s government announcement it says that the energy companies will pay will pay a fixed amount and we will pick up any deficit. The bill for dismantling the current reactors is £70bn and rising, in addition to the storage costs.

In fact, plans for a new generation of reactors were only made possible by a bizarre programme of bribing communities, with taxpayers’ money, to accept nuclear waste. Just before Christmas the government announced that communities were invited to "express an interest" in hosting waste dumps, bidding for money for schemes that will “enhance their wellbeing”. Truly we are in the age of double-think. The operators of Sellafield in Cumbria are giving Copeland District Council £75m to allow them to expand the national low-level radioactive dump, but would increase that to £1bn if they accept even more dangerous high-level radioactive waste.

The new reactors can only be made attractive to investors because of the discredited European Union carbon emissions trading scheme (EU ETS), where the nuclear companies will be able to claim profitable credits. And the government promises to “keep open the option of further measures to reinforce the operation of the EU ETS in the UK should this be necessary to provide greater certainty for investors”. That means they will underpin the cost of carbon, pushing up the price of fuel overall.

As for the global impact of the rush to nuclear power, it will give fresh impetus to the most polluting form of mining. At current use levels, there is enough uranium to sustain the nuclear industry for about 70 years. But the rate of extraction, and exploration for new resources, will now be stepped up. Uranium mining poisons land and aquifers, leaving them toxic for hundreds of years. It poisons livestock, animals and humans too. Native Americans from the Black Hills in Dakota and from Canada, and native Australians are already engaged in long-term battles against the mining industry which has destroyed great swathes of their land.
Building 10 nuclear reactors would save just 8% of Britain's emissions of carbon dioxide, which need to be cut by 10 times as much as that, at the very least. The emissions that result from the building of the new power stations will be enormous. The new Climate Change Bill fails to enforce any actual reductions, allowing Industries and firms to meet soft targets through carbon trading and offsetting. So big business is extremely pleased. French nuclear giant EDF declared themselves delighted by the announcement – so they should be since they designed the financial model! They aim to have their first new reactor ready by the end of 2017.

The Tories immediately fell into line and once again the political system is being manipulated to implement a policy that enjoys no popular support. It is long overdue to decommission the current political and state system, cut the emission of New Labour lies, and opt instead for a system of safe, non-polluting, democratic power - for the wellbeing of all the people.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

50 years of nuclear cover ups

Fifty years ago this week, scientists at Windscale nuclear fuel plant in Cumbria finally brought under control a fire in a stack of fuel rods that had been raging for days. By then the fire had already pumped out an estimated 20,000 curies of radioactive iodine, plutonium, caesium and polonium, sending a toxic cloud over the north of England and Ireland. It was an accident waiting to happen and occurred as a direct result of speeding up production of tritium needed for Britain’s nuclear bomb. Warnings that production methods were unsafe were ignored by a government desperate to stay in the arms race.

A similar plant at Chapelcross in Dumfriesshire suffered a meltdown in 1967. The public was told that the Windscale and Chapelcross plants were producing electricity but both were primarily manufacturing weapons grade nuclear fuel. At one point Windscale was actually drawing power from the national grid. These are just the highlights of a long history of leaks, accidents and cover-ups by the nuclear industry and the state. Only last month, the Douneray site in Scotland imported seven tonnes of irradiated uranium oxide from France without getting proper permission.

At Chapelcross, Windscale, Douneray and across the country the clean up operations for Britain’s first generation nuclear facilities continues. The overall cost of decommissioning is estimated at £37bn, a figure that is frequently revised upwards. Every one of Britain's current nuclear installations is on a site threatened with flooding as sea levels rise. Yet later this month the New Labour government plans to give the go-ahead for a new generation of privately-run nuclear power stations in the UK.

They will use the results of a phoney consultation to support their decision. On one Saturday in September, nine groups of people met in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Exeter, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Newcastle and Norwich to “input their views”. Background materials did not mention any of the facts set out here. There was no reference to costs and it was implied that, apart from Windscale, nuclear accidents are a sort of foreign thing.
At the end of the day, people were asked to balance the potential benefits, risks and implications of continuing nuclear energy in the UK. On balance, 44% agreed that, in the context of tackling climate change and ensuring energy security, it would be in the public interest to give energy companies the option of investing in new nuclear power stations. Some 37% disagreed while 18% neither agreed nor disagreed.

Over half (51%) of those who took part were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the government’s proposal to manage new nuclear waste and 83% were either concerned or very concerned about safety and security issues associated with nuclear power. And “there was general agreement that renewable sources should feature strongly in the UK’s energy mix” and for that nuclear should play even less of a role than it does currently” and “whilst recognising the risks, the public who took part believed that, if the UK continues to have nuclear energy, this should be an interim measure only”. Not exactly the ringing endorsement the government was hoping for.

Energy policy is now dealt with by the Department for Business and Enterprise. These new power stations will only happen if they can generate profits for the big energy companies. Anyone like to put a bet on who will be paying for cleaning up the waste at the end of the day? Or on the strong possibility of a devastating accident and/or cover-up?

Penny Cole

AWTW environment editor