Nuclear Issues

Nuclear power is experiencing a revival due to growing concerns about climate change. The nuclear industry has reinvented itself as an environmentally friendly option, producing electricity without the air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions of coal, oil or gas.

But there are a number of concerns with relying on nuclear power as an environmentally and financially viable option. Nuclear power creates radioactive waste for which there is no accepted method of safely managing or storing. It is also prohibitively expensive.

Environmental problems

Nuclear technology can provide energy without the air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions produced by fossil fuels. The largest and currently unresolved environmental problem concerns nuclear waste. As of 2012, Canada had over 56,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste and nowhere to put it. With a radioactive half-life of 25,000 years, nuclear waste remains dangerous for 250,000 years, posting huge costs and risks for future generations.

Power plants can also leak hazardous materials. For example, a reactor had a heavy water leak that released radioactive tritium into a lake, contaminating drinking water supplies.

Economic problems

The energy source once billed as "too cheap to meter" has proven to be one of the most expensive energy sources in history.

Nuclear cost does not include lifecycle costs to society from the environmental and health damage that would result if an accident occurred, nor does it include the costs of clean-up, waste disposal or plant decommissioning. Nuclear plants are not only expensive, they're also financially risky because of their long lead times, huge cost overruns and open-ended liabilities.

Can nuclear power stop climate change?

Much is made of nuclear power is essential for tackling climate change because it is CO2 free, but even at the most optimistic build rate, 10 new reactors by 2025, the carbon emissions would be cut by just four per cent.

New nuclear’s ability to help meet our obligations is tiny.

We only have so much time and money to spend and must prioritize those technologies with the greatest potential to meet our energy needs and cut emissions.

Energy efficiency, renewable energy and cleaner use of fossil fuels like state of the art combined heat and power stations offer solutions on the scale and timeframe we need to cut emissions.

These options are challenging and require support and concerted government effort to deliver (just like nuclear power), but with that support, this mix has the potential to deliver reliable low carbon energy quicker, cheaper and more efficient than nuclear electric.

We’re campaigning for a low carbon economy that maximizes energy efficiency and puts clean energy at its heart.

Can we keep the lights on without nuclear power?

Since it is likely that not a single new reactor will come into operation over the next decade, new nuclear power can make no obvious contribution to our electricity supply until years after any potential ‘energy gap’ would need to be dealt with.

Rather than concentrating on getting nuclear on-stream at some point after 2020, the government should be focussing on all the sensible alternatives that already exist and can close any energy gap, cut emissions and move us towards a clean energy future.

Large scale electricity generation could be met by developing many different cleaner alternatives, including combined heat and power, using fossil fuels more efficiently and cleanly, and renewable electricity generation such as the wind, wave and tidal power.

If we focused on energy efficiency alone, the single most cost-effective way of making deep cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions, it would help the climate and deliver substantial economic savings at the same time.

Supporting the growth in industries that use the power of the wind, waves, and the sun will not only power our country but also create jobs, new businesses and help make Britain a world leader in cutting-edge 21st-century technologies.

A major study by consultants McKinsey, scientists at Imperial College London and partners in the energy industry showed that it’s entirely possible to have 80 percent renewable power in Europe by 2050, at the same price and as reliable as energy today.

If we used all of these technologies, most of them already at our disposal, we would secure both the climate and our energy supply. All without the need for new nuclear.

Nuclear power as part of the mix?

The problem with including nuclear power as part of a diversified energy system is that it could undermine the solutions that can deliver energy and emissions cuts quicker and cheaper.

New nuclear will lock us into the same old inflexible, inefficient and outdated energy system we’ve had for years. Such a system, with nuclear at its heart, has almost no room for effective, cutting edge and flexible technologies like wind power and CHP.

New nuclear also means that the more cost effective, readily available alternatives above would be hindered because making nuclear a reality requires every ounce of financial, regulatory and political will on the part of the government.

Major utilities EDF and Eon have admitted that nuclear power and major new renewable energy developments cannot coexist. They say they would scale back renewable energy investment to accommodate nuclear.

And then there’s the waste…

Nuclear waste is produced at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining and enrichment to reactor operation and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. Much of this nuclear waste will remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.

The current “solution” for dealing with highly radioactive nuclear waste involves burying it in deep underground sites. Whether the storage containers, the store itself, or the surrounding rocks will offer enough protection to stop radioactivity from escaping in the long-term is impossible to predict.

To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, if the people who build the pyramids had used them to store radioactive waste, today it’d only be 2% of the way through the time it would need to be stored securely. That’s a major commitment that we’d be making on behalf of our children’s children, and their children’s children, and their…