Suppose you are a dedicated campaigner against all things nuclear. It’s not just Trident you object to. You are ready to campaign vigorously against the building of any new nuclear power stations, and you are quick to issue flesh-creeping warnings about the health risks resulting from the disposal of radioactive waste. Your sincerity is unquestionable.
Yet every time you switch on an electrical appliance there’s a better than ever chance in much of Scotland that the power that drives it has been supplied by nuclear energy. I don’t say your own reliance on nuclear power makes you a hypocrite, but I would suggest that campaigning against a source of energy that, in your daily life, you use unthinkingly and on which you rely, places you in a pretty odd mental condition.
Of course you are an enthusiast for other sources of renewable energy, notably wind power, unreliable though it is. You would be quite happy to see wind factories defacing, as many of us think, our most beautiful landscapes. But the fact is that at present wind power supplies only 1% of Britain’s energy needs, and the idea that a quarter of Scotland’s future energy needs can be met by this and other emerging technologies is an expression of hope rather than probability.
Another fact: for more than a quarter of a century now Scotland has been heavily reliant on nuclear power, and despite scares, such as that at Dounreay, where radioactive particles have been found on beaches, there has been no serious accident. There has, however, been much less pollution than there would have been if we had continued to rely on coal-fired power stations. Nuclear power has proved safe here, just as it has in France, where it generates more than 70% of electricity.
Nevertheless scares — notably that inspired by the Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union — and the influence of the anti-nuclear lobby have deterred governments from commissioning new nuclear power stations to replace those coming to the end of their life. Consequently we are faced with the likelihood of a shortage of energy, probably in as little as 10 years.
It is in this context that the Scottish Affairs Committee of the House of Commons has called first for “a proper debate” on energy, which would include an audit of the costs and risks of nuclear and coal power, and also, anticipating the outcome of such a debate, for the “most controversial decision the government could take: the rehabilitation of nuclear power”.
This is bold. It is also sensible. At the very least, the committee’s willingness to come up with the proposal justifies the existence of that often maligned body of men and women — Scotland’s members of the Westminster parliament. So, for instance, John Robertson, the MP for Glasgow Anniesland, says: “We ignore nuclear energy at our peril. We can meet our emissions targets very easily if we look to nuclear power.” Likewise his colleague David Hamilton, the MP for Midlothian, says: “The key issue is to ensure we safeguard our future energy supply.”
This puts the environmentalists on the spot. They, after all, are the people most insistent that we meet the Kyoto requirements. But of course they cling to the notion that this can be done by wind factories. This is further evidence of a retreat to cloud-cuckoo land.
That, I’m afraid, is where some of our MSPs live. So do dissenting members of the committee, the Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael and the nationalist Mike Weir. The first says he “cannot foresee any circumstances in which my colleagues in the Scottish parliament would be prepared to support that decision”, while Weir says “we don’t need any more nuclear madness” — a nicely considered judgment, wouldn’t you say?
The point about the Scottish parliament’s role is this: that, while the UK government will make the decision whether or not we need more nuclear power stations, the granting of planning permission to build any in Scotland rests with the parliament in Edinburgh.
It is all but certain that the decision to embark on a new programme of building nuclear power stations will be made by whichever government is in office after the general election. The government’s senior scientists have told Downing Street that this must be done. They say that to reduce carbon emissions and secure future power supplies sufficient for our needs, nuclear power should account for at least a third of the UK’s electricity. The present figure is 23%.
Officially the executive’s position is that stated recently by a spokeswoman for Jim Wallace, our enterprise minister, and then endorsed by Jack McConnell. This is that, until we have a solution to the problem of safe disposal of nuclear waste, no new nuclear power stations will be built here. Well, I suppose it all depends on what you think that problem is.
Unofficially the executive may prove to be more flexible. There are realists — the health minister Andy Kerr is said to be one — who are more alarmed by the imminent shortage of energy when the present nuclear power stations have to be decommissioned than by the rather more remote dangers posed by “the rehabilitation of nuclear power”.
This is moreover going to be given a boost by the recommendations due to come from the independent Committee on Radioactive Waste Management. These will be that new nuclear power stations should be built on existing nuclear sites. The favoured one in Scotland is said to be Hunterston. The site there is scheduled to close in 2011, but the Scottish Affairs Committee believes that a “new-build nuclear power station” could be built in five years.
The SNP and the Liberal Democrats will continue to object. Yet what is the alternative? It’s not, surely, to listen to the likes of Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, who calls nuclear power “polluting, expensive and dangerous” and who asserts, contrary to all evidence, that it is “one of the least effective ways of reducing climate emissions”.
Tell that to the Finns, who have just decided to build Finland’s first new nuclear power station in decades. The choice is not between nuclear power and renewables, because almost everybody agrees renewables will play a part. But the notion that within the next 10 or 20 years these can supply 50% of the energy that Scotland now derives from nuclear power is implausible.
This being so, the choice is very different. It is between nuclear power and reverting to fossil fuels. To choose the latter would render impossible the reduction of carbon emissions to which we are committed. The advocates for renewables may squawk indignantly. They may advocate defacing our countryside but it’s no good; or rather it still wouldn’t be enough.
The reality is this: we press ahead with the nuclear option or we suffer either more pollution or a shortage of energy. We choose light and energy or darkness and economic decline.
