Talk by Andy and Phil, both professors but I have long lost their proper titles, research for Salisbury CND talk 2nd April 2021.
Asking why is the UK government so committed to civil nuclear power, Andy gives the background.
As the years go by it is getting progressively more and more difficult to understand. This is especially in relation to their main argument that nuclear power is the way to achieve Climate Change mitigation goals.
In criticism of the Energy policy, the existing nuclear power is manifestly slow in reducing climate change. The Hinkly Point C project is running very behind schedule. The government promised that Christmas dinners 2017 would be celebrated using power from the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant. And if not ‘the lights would go out’. It is already running 10 years late and it is the same in France and for Finnish nuclear projects and many have not yet been started.
The Modular reactors and other ‘New Generation’ nuclear projects proposed have not been piloted or tested. Now there is not even time for a development plan let alone delivery, as the UK government have promised a 68% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 – just 9 years away.
The government has, as well, made a commitment for Britain to be net zero by 2050 and has installed 10 gigawatts of offshore wind, alone. This does not account for on shore wind or solar. But it does already amount to more power than would be generated by ten of the new modular reactor plants in the proposed programme. Radical acceleration of renewable energy programmes is clearly possible.
The costs further compound the issue: For Hinkley Point C electricity, consumers will be forced to enter a 35 year contract. Even at current prices, charges will be £102 per Megawatt/hour. Current contract prices, in off-shore wind in comparison, are still going down and are already at £40 per MW/h. The problems of intermittency and inter-seasonality of renewables are talked about as a problem but found to not actually affect the cost greatly. The figures of 56-73 MW/h for on-shore wind, 53-56 MW/h for large scale solar and 69-85 MW/h per MWh for off-shore wind are ‘enhanced levelized costs’ by BEIS, which means that they include any pessimistic calculations as to intermittency of supply. Therefore, the argument is over on cost but the government, instead of revealing these figures, released its Energy White Paper in December 2020 with no costs on it. This is the first time such a White Paper has been delivered.
Speculative nuclear programmes have always included escalating, not falling, future costs. There is very little evidence in history or experience that suggests that oncoming nuclear plants, which have always been more expensive, will turn out to be less so.
Another cost problem is that spending on nuclear takes money away from spending on renewables, which could achieve the climate change goals faster.
Looking at trends and patterns over time also demonstrates that the efficacy gap of nuclear, for delivering electricity and mitigating climate change, is growing. Another group studying levelized costs note that solar and wind have gone down massively in the last ten years. In fact solar has gone down by 900% in its cost. Wind has gone down by 70%. In contrast, nuclear costs have gone up by 26%. So, over the passage of time, they are not going down.
Then there is this idea of firm nuclear power or baseload that the British are particularly caught up with. This idea proposed that the inflexibility of nuclear power, that it can’t go up or down in its output, is somehow an advantage. The CEO of the National Grid NGC called it an out-dated idea even back in 2015 and actually rigidly inflexible nuclear power is actually a disadvantage in smart grid sytems.
On the other hand, the UK’s renewable resources are far larger than their foreseeable demand. This means that we cannot only deliver the electricity needs of the country but also the transport needs, via electricity, of the country from the available, viable renewable resource.
There's often a clash between what they publish in background documents and what senior figures and scientists say. Official data confirms that renewables, with their intermittency, are capable of supplying the smart grids, which are being investigated by all sorts of demand management techniques. They show that the inflexible nature of nuclear power plants, becomes much more of a disadvantage. The idea that small modular reactors can be more flexible is actually also speculative. Even though modular reactors are already used like that in the military, there are safety implications in ramping up nuclear power and turning it up and down. France is already using nuclear in that way and we have yet to see what the regulatory repercussions are actually going to be.
In short, renewables provide a domestic power supply that is safer, they are more diverse and they are more secure than nuclear power.
Renewables and energy efficiency investments are also much more productive of UK jobs. So the picture really is stark, even when looking at the government's own data. So, why is it that the UK is so committed to nuclear power? It is actually obvious.
It is the military who perceive a need for the civil nuclear programme. It is not actually for nuclear weapons, but actually for nuclear submarine propulsion. These are very difficult artefacts to build. They need a massive nuclear industry. The companies and engineers for civil power are all involved in building the propulsion systems as well. What is remarkable is if you look at any of the Defence documents in the UK. The military are very clear that they need the civil nuclear power ‘at any cost’, in order to be able to build nuclear propelled submarines. In contrast, in the Energy Policy literature, there is a total silence. It is not acknowledged that it is the military that are the drivers. The UK government stick to their untenable and spurious argument that nuclear power is justified as an energy strategy and that nuclear is there for climate change.
The upshot of this, because nuclear is so much more expensive than alternative zero carbon options, that consumers and taxpayers are paying tens of millions of pounds, hundreds of billions of pounds over the decades, of these contracts. This is in order to subsidise an industry that is only needed for military purposes. Remember that these contracts for electricity are regressive. It is the poorest households that are disproportionately charged for their electricity.
This picture of costs is without even looking at the massive costs of development, research, decommissioning, waste management or security provision, such as the dedicated armed police force. They don’t include the cost of anti proliferation measures and to stop diversions of fissile materials that could complete a nuclear reaction. These are additional costs that are covered by all the UK nations including Scotland, where there is very strong opposition to nuclear power, which may become more significant.
So investing in nuclear, rather than investing in renewables and efficiency is clearly impeding progress on climate change. Providing affordable energy and achieving climate targets are actually a legal duty on government. So, the official position of prioritising nuclear power is not only unjustified by evidence, it is actually arguably unlawful.
The use of nuclear power, even where it is happening, is slow and it is costly. It is dishonest because the real reasons for pursuing it are not being given. It is undemocratic and it is unlawful.
Phil will look in more detail at the civil military links. One of the first places to look is at the broader international picture. There is a correlation between nuclear ambition and different types of geopolitical status. The leading global military powers are the most committed to large scale new nuclear bills. There is no global or regional military power that does not hold an active history of very strong pressures for civil nuclear power. No country, either with or planning nuclear weapons or submarines, is currently pursuing either a nuclear moratorium, or phase out. There really does seem to be a relationship and it becomes irrefutable when we look at the specifics.
The president of France, Emmanuel Macron says to oppose civilian nuclear, in terms of production and research does not make any sense for a country like theirs, because without civilian nuclear there’s no military nuclear and without military nuclear there’s no civilian nuclear. That was in December 2020.
The Atlantic Council, which is a large security think tank, describes how the US has a large educational Research and Development and industrial support system that underpins its civilian nuclear power sector. The same report goes on to actually quantify the level of subsidy that civilian nuclear power makes to military nuclear power; at least $42 billion is gathered annually, in the pursuit of US national security priorities.
If there was a sustained decline in the commercial industry, it would also have a negative impact on the US nuclear naval programme. This is what was reported at the energy innovation reform project 2017 at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
A former energy secretary said, in 2018, that naval nuclear capability is tied to the fate of the commercial nuclear sector, as long as a strong domestic supply chain is needed to provide the nuclear Navy requirements. This supply chain has a very strong overlap, which is very clear in France and in the US. It is a bit more hidden in the UK but if you get into the defence documents, you will find its acknowledgement. The Royal Academy of Engineering in 2009 said skills required in the design, build, operation and disposal of naval nuclear reactors are in short supply and the increasingly expensive decline of civil nuclear programmes, has forced the nuclear submarine programme to develop and fund its own expertise to remain operational. This points out that some of the costs were, before, being covered by the Civilian programme.
Rolls Royce, in 2009, talked about skill synergies and said that skills are considered to be transferable between military propulsion and civil programmes. They said a larger involvement in the broader industry will also have a spill-over benefit to military capability, in skills, development and experience exchange.
Doulton Institute says UK is not now in the position of having financial or personnel resources to develop either civilian or military nuclear programme in isolation. Rolls Royce, in their 2017 report, concluded that links between the civil and naval sector need to be encouraged – even though this has now been taken off their site. The report also described the advantage of small modular reactor systems for civilian nuclear power development as a subsidy to the military, to relieve the Defence Ministry of the burden of developing and retaining the skills and capability on the military side. That burden relates to costs.
So a lot of the documentation or the information is to be found in the defence side of the policy documents. There is a crisis in military nuclear skills across the enterprise. The availability of deep specialist expertise is key and suitably qualified staff appear to be at the bare minimum necessary to deliver the programme. This was revealed by the Ministry of Defence in 2014, in a redacted Freedom of Information secret report, written for the submarine development programme.
So, part of the crisis is in research capabilities. The Ministry of Defence's programme had been underwritten by civil nuclear research that has been dismantled and commercialised and expertise in these activities has atrophied. This was also in that secret documentation, only exposed through the FOI.
The government response was to say that the programme should seek imaginative methods to better engage with the emergent civil nuclear programme, to the benefit of defence. A research programme group was established to look at leveraging civil nuclear investment to maximum effect. The Ministry of Defence revisited the possible option of utilising other nuclear facilities, including those in the civil sector. This was taken up by the government in their nuclear sector deal that actually committed to increasing the opportunities for transferability between the civil and defence industries, to increase mobility to ensure resources are available.
In contrast, the UK energy sector displays an odd and contrasting silence on the connection to military nuclear. The Oxford Economics Government Consulting report, in 2013, they state that naval and civil reactor industries are often viewed as separate, and to some extent unrelated. However, the timeline of the UK’s nuclear industry has clear interaction between the two, particularly from a supply chain development point of view. The Nuclear Research Institute says, though, this link does need to be carefully managed, to avoid the perception that civil and military nuclear programmes are one and the same. Nuclear submarines already suffer criticism because their through life costs cannot be absorbed or masked by other programmes as can be the case with fast jets or large standing land forces. The obvious implication, in light of the other information, is that the intention would be to mask those costs.
The Ministry of Defence permanent secretary and lead civil nuclear contract negotiator confirmed that the UK is completing the build of the nuclear submarines, so there is very definitely an opportunity for the nation to grasp, in terms of building up its nuclear skills. He went on to say, he does not think that that was going to be happen by accident but it was going to require concerted government action to make it happen.
After many years without success, this year the link between the military and civil nuclear industries has been covered, in the newspapers in the BBC and The Daily Telegraph. In Scotland, it has been really picked up and there was a parliamentary motion in Scottish Government, where the links were highlighted. And yet, the silence continues from the UK Government.
That is a problem for British democracy, as is the Energy white paper that came out with no costings on it, allowing the enthusiasm for nuclear to continues despite renewables being manifestly cheaper.
It has been highlighted that there are strategic factors beyond Energy policy that explain not just the enthusiasm but the otherwise inexplicable UK policy on nuclear. It is clear that the military rationale is the most likely and yet the government does not officially acknowledge this. At about the same time that the 2020 White Paper came out, buried away in the Nuclear Intelligence Weekly, was a very candid interview with Rolls Royce, where they said that developing a UK small modular reactor programme would help Rolls Royce maintain UK capability for the military nuclear naval programme. It was also stated by an employee of Rolls Royce that it was complementary to have a thriving UK domestic civilian nuclear programme alongside the submarine programme, for the strongest skills base and the strongest supply chain.
The fact that the interview was buried away; the incredible level of lobbying in favour of nuclear in the media and amount of nuclear advocacy - at the time when the case for nuclear is at its weakest – shows the extent of the problem for democracy.
The Greens For Nuclear account was set up in 2019, with the sole purpose of intensely promoting nuclear. It involved a Twitter campaign by failed Green Party leadership candidate, Rosie Sexton, consistently urging the greens to reconsider their position on nuclear. They refused to listen to any evidence, in regard to the cost or the other weaknesses of a nuclear as an Energy solution.
(FM: I couldn’t catch these names right or who was in which group! but I left this paragraph in, in case there was something important there) “In 2020, Lights was employed in the UK branch of nuclear lobbyist, Michael Scallon Berger’s environmental progress group - using the PR trope of the repentant critic. Clay claimed repeatedly without any without any evidence that she changed her mind on nuclear. It garnered incredible media attention in the Daily Mail, The Sun and the BBC News Daily as well. John Humphries wrote a full page for the Daily Mail advocating for new nuclear and giving favourable attention to Light’s change of mind.”
There were several UK pro-nuclear power groups set up in 2020 including Mothers for nuclear energy, Liberal Democrats for nuclear, and Friends of Nuclear Energy. There were demonstrations by activists, such as Nuclear for Net Zero. Isn't it amazing that these activities should start to happen when the case for nuclear energy and for new nuclear is so weak.
The same thing is happening in the US, with the reframing of nuclear. There is the so-called Good Energy Collective making the progressive case for nuclear. In fact, the collective is led by former members of the Brace Institute.
Something very strange is going on in the UK in the moment in regards to nuclear and it is a serious problem in regards to democracy. What is the issue? Nuclear is slow, it is costly and it is dishonest, because the real drivers are not spoken about. This is undemocratic and unlawful. The main points:
Existing nuclear power is slow in reducing climate change, new forms are even slower.
Nuclear power is costly at reducing climate change, new forms are almost certainly costlier.
Renewables and energy efficiency are demonstrably faster and cheaper at averting climate disruption.
The established trend is that the nuclear competitiveness gap is growing, not
diminishing.
Other arguments for inflexible nuclear output are acknowledged by industry to be out-dated.
Whilst UK energy policy is silent, defence sources are clear that major nuclear drivers are military.
In the UK, massive government nuclear support is justified as energy strategy.
The result is that many 10s of billions of pounds are directed from consumers and taxpayers.