RECENT REJECTIONS BY GOVERNMENT OF PLANNING APPLICATIONS FOR WIND FARMS IN CUMBRIA. ALONG ITH YET ANOTHER ENERGY REVIE:: HAVE LED MANY TO BELIEVE THAT NE:: LABOUR. FACED ITH SOARING ENERGY COSTS AND A NEED TO BE SEEN TO RESPOND TO GLOBAL #ARMING. WILL TAKE THE NUCLEAR OPTION. HERE PHIL WARD REITERATES THE DANGERS IN SUCH AN APPROACH. NUCLEAR JUGGERNAUL MOVING INTO TOP GEAR In late February and early March, climate change again came to the top of the media agenda, but this time with a new There was the usual litany of bad news about the extent of the problem. This was surveyed briefly in Socialist Outlook 8 (Winter 2005/6), but it is worth mentioning a couple of additional items. Several recent discoveries show that warming has real, measurable effects: glaciers in Greenland are slipping into the sea at a rate that doubled between 1996 and 2000 and the Antarctic ice cap, which holds 70 percent of the world's water, is now losing water at the same rate as Greenland This last observation was not predicted: climate models had envisaged a build-up of ice on this continent. Finally, the report in January that north Atlantic sea currents had declined in volume by 30 percent suggests that Europe may experience major weather changes that could harm agriculture. A leak from the forthcoming IPCC' report says that this body is now putting no cap on its predictions of warming this century, apparently because changes are happening so rapidly that it is very difficult to model 'feedback', the phenomenon where temperature rises cause changes that themselves release further greenhouse gases (GHGs) or lead to greater warming. An example is the melting of Siberian permafrost that releases methane - a stronger GHG than carbon dioxide - and also leads to a landscape that absorbs more solar radiation. The day after the IPCC report, Blair met campaigners from Stop Climate Chaos (SCC)' a new UK coalition of charities and NGOs. This has been dubbed as global warming's equivalent to Make Poverty History. SCC calls for social and economic justice and for countries to act on their own if new international agreements on GHG emission targets cannot be made. In a letter to SCC, Blair rubbishes any idea of a pioneering effort on emissions: 'Action or climate change without America, India and China in agreement and all committed to a framework for reducing green house ga: emissions, is not going to work. That is the brutal truth.' Meanwhile, Bush, in his state of the union address, promise: a lower 'dependence on oil', and promotion of 'renewat. = are geopolitic: Behind this, however, alternatives'. considerations - the need to import less Middle East oil, =: advocating nuclear power. Thus, according to one commenta:: Bush promotes 'expanded use of nuclear power and so-ca. =:
'clean coal' while simultaneously cutting funds for wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, and energy efficiency programs'. The cynical agreement for the US to supply nuclear power technology to India fits this scenario neatly. One by-product could be to revitalise the ailing US nuclear power sector (no plant has been ordered since the Three Mile Island explosion in 1979 and the last completed plant has now been operating for 21 years). Assurances that the Indian civil and nuclear sectors would now be kept separate are false, as they are only planning to allow 14 of the 21 reactors (seven are coming on line in the next two years) to be inspected. Their fast-breeder reactors, which can generate nuclear fuel, as well as plutonium for bombs, are designated as military facilities. Meanwhile, the 2006 UK Energy Review' is predicted to overturn the decision in 2003 not to promote nuclear power as a means to deal with GHG emissions. According to Blair, the US 'has a point' when it refuses to exclude nuclear power as an option to reduce GHG emissions. Government research has already been commissioned into new reactor designs. These moves are complemented in other countries. China has announced it will build 28 new nuclear power stations by 2020. There are over 400 nuclear power stations, operating in over 30 countries and producing 16 percent of the world's electricity" (only two percent of total world energy use) which the lAEA® advocates increasing to 27 percent by 2030. Most of the political and safety arguments about nuclear power have been well covered over the 30 years of the movement opposing this technology. What also needs addressing is its effectiveness in combating global warming. The key difficulties with nuclear power were brought up by Alice Cutler in an article in Socialist Outlook 6 (May 2005): • You may be able to generate electricity using nuclear power, but electricity accounts for only 2 percent of world energy usage (the rest is fossil fuels, biomass and hydroelectricity). The inability of nuclear power to deal with this problem of scale is shown by the fact that China's 28 new plants will account for a mere 4 percent of the country's electricity needs in 2020. • The alternatives to nuclear power are more cost-effective - especially energy conservation. • The preferred technology for the future, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, of which there is a prototype currently undergoing construction in South Africa,' poses several new safety issues. It also is likely to produce larger volumes of waste. Worryingly, the developers consider that the system is so safe that costs can be reduced by building the reactors close to towns and without containment, and that they can have lower staffing levels than current designs.® • The richest sources of uranium are becoming exhausted and the enrichment process is very energy-intensive. For these reasons, the carbon dioxide emissions reductions that result from using nuclear power may be grossly over-estimated. This is a hotly contested issue? and difficult to judge for a layperson. In some respects, it is a secondary matter, especially when the argument put forward is that reliance on any technology to reduce GHGs plays into the capitalists' hands, when the need is for massive social change. The question then arises of why many governments are now pursuing nuclear power again. The obvious first answer that it will make lots of profits for the nuclear industry, including those building the stations. But an essential part of this is also the need to maintain centralized control of the energy supply industry. Because of its dangers, nuclear power has the additional attraction that the workforce can be placed under quasi-police state discipline. Finally, a small number of companies operate in the sector, and these require protection. This applies particularly to BNFL, which undertakes reprocessing for large parts of the nuclear power community."° Nuclear power reveals in stark terms many of the problems of other technologies advocated by capitalist governments as their answer to climate change. Thus, sequestration technologies - separating carbon dioxide from the combustion gases from fossil fuels and pumping this into oil or gas wells or under the sea - will mainly be add-ons to existing power stations. Biomass for cars (for example palm oil, sunflower oil or 'bioethanol') is adding a huge agribusiness to current oil refining and distribution industries. Many renewable electricity technologies will involve massive, environmentally damaging plant, plugged into the national electricity grids." Developing countries, while having the option of seeking alternatives to this approach, are simply aping richer nations instead. All the energy-realising technologies presented as alternatives to fossil fuels have significant negative environmental consequences, especially if applied on a scale to meet current energy demands - let alone those of the future. There will also be issues of centralisaton and control of these large-scale technologies. The only feasible way to cut GHGs is a massive cut in energy demand, " combined with judicious, planned and community- controlled introduction of alternative energy technologies. To do this, while at the same time improving the quality of life of 95 percent of the people on this planet, will ultimately mean a direct challenge to the capitalist system. 1. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2. http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/ 3. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0602/S00497.htm 4. http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/review/energy_review_intro.pdf 5. New Scientist, 18th January 2003 6. International Atomic Energy Authority 7. BNFL and Westinghouse are the largest foreign investors in the project, which is run by the S African power company ESKOM. 8. Safe New Generation Nuclear Power? http: // www.i-sis.org.uk/ SNGNP. php 9. In http://www.stormsmith.nt/, it is argued that nuclear power stations could end up producing more GHGs than efficient gas-powered stations, while http://www.nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower claims that, over a 40-year period, a particular nuclear plant produces 93 times the energy as it consumes. 10. At great cost to 'the taxpayer" it should be added, along with considerable safety risks. In May 2005, BNFL announced that it had had at its THORP reprocessing plant in Sellafield an acid leak over the previous 4 to 8 months. In this time, sufficient plutonium-laden waste to construct 20 nuclear warheads, and 20 tonnes of uranium, fell into a concrete-lined cell, See http: //www.i-sis.org.uk/ESIGW.php. BNFL is a state company (we described it incorrectly in Socialist Outlook 8), currently being sold off. Its plant company, Westinghouse, went to Toshiba and BNG America (reprocessing and clean-up) to Energy Solu- tions. BNG (UK) is up for grabs. 11. New Scientist, 25/2/06, reports research into "hydrogen farms" consisting of algae, genetically engineered to photosynthesise the gas. Another scheme is to use algae to photosynthesise captured carbon dioxide from power stations to make biodiesel and algal "cake" (ISIS - http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GAFCCAB.php). Both look interesting, but (as ever) as an alternative to energy conservation and social change, questions of scale and consequent environmental damage come into play. ISIS says algal diesel requires 40,000 square km of desert to sat- isfy (current) US demand. That is one sixth of the UK's total land area, and probably doesn't include spaces between plants, service roads etc which would at least double the area. Hydrogen damages the ozone layer and burning of all fuels creates nitrogen oxides. Human activity has now completely overwhelmed the natural nitrogen cycle and is causing major pollution problems (New Scientist, 21/1/06). 12. Paul Roberts: The End of Oil, Bloomsbury, 2004. Roberts shows how government deregulation of the energy supply companies has increased the incentives to sell energy (renewable or not) rather than conserve. 13