![Ansel%20Adams,%201984[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/ansel20adams2019841.jpg?quality=83)
Go back and re-watch Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth from 2006 and you’ll find that he never once voices the word “nuclear” although there is a long visual scene of a nuclear warhead exploding and the subsequent mushroom cloud filling the screen. Early AGW enthusiasts never seemed to acknowledge that if fossil fuels were the problem, nuclear power would be the solution that would work.
But now it seems environmentalists are being told that nuclear power is not so bad after all. The current movie, Pandora’s Promise (http://pandoraspromise.com/), has as its major theme that nuclear power and radiation are not so scary, really. This is of course true, reiterating arguments that pro-nuclear advocates have been making for 70 years.
The selling point is that nuclear power will not lead to global climate change. Another webpage from the Breakthrough Institute is entitled Liberals and Progressives for Nuclear (http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/liberals-and-progressives-for-nuclear/). Quoting such luminaries as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, it argues for the coming “Atomic Age,” again, because of the “urgency of climate change.” Even Al Gore (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/) seems to be slyly acknowledging nuclear’s possible role.
As a long-suffering nuclear engineer, I have to ask (in a conservative webzine, American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/nuclear_powers_new_friends.html), is it in nuclear power’s best interest to make public alliance with the climate change crowd? I say no, citing the growing awareness of the “tells” on display, i. e. signs of fraud, we see documented here on WUWT and elsewhere. “Lie down with the dogs and get up with fleas” is my warning. Of course, any rational environmentalist SHOULD embrace nuclear just on its relative conventional pollutant profile and would be welcome to say kind words about nuclear – just don‘t ask that the support be reciprocated.
Yet, others in the nuclear power community disagree (http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2013/08/progressives-for-nuclear-progress.html#.Uf7Ly23pySr) (and here (http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/)) and embrace our new Best Friends Forever (BFFs). Many are sincere believers in climate change themselves, as I had been until I read the 2001 IPCC technical reports. Others just seemed hopeful that we might no longer be the pariahs of polite (PC) company.
Yet, my simple question is, should nuclear reactor manufacturers like Toshiba, General Electric, Areva, Bill Gates, Hitachi, Rosatom, etc publicly advertise that their products can help prevent climate change? Besides the expectation of further public trust deterioration for climate change, one has to look at the companies that would buy a nuclear power reactor. Almost without exception, they also have substantial fossil fuel powered generation assets.
Plus, environmentalists, like revolutionaries, have a habit of changing their minds as to who was good and who was bad. Probably the most infamous event was when Ansel Adams resigned from the board of directors of the Sierra Club over his support of nuclear power (http://www.anseladams.com/ansel-adams-the-role-of-the-artist-in-the-environmental-movement/).
The Sierra Club had been generally pro-nuclear although they could oppose specific plants on specific grounds, like the Bodega Bay nuke to be build about 400 yards from the surface trace of the San Andreas fault in the bay‘s headlands. To this day, the foundation diggings are called “the hole in the Head.” But a tide of anti-nuclear feeling swept over the organization and Adams gave up his seat on the board in 1971 due to the ill will and back biting.
My take-away lesson is political winds change, and so do the policies of environmental groups. I’d rather nuclear power not get involved.
@Patrick
If we were to have processing plants on site with nuclear plants there would be no need for enrichment and no need to transport highly radioactive material around at all. Only natural (or even depleted!) uranium would arrive on site. Using a fast neutron reactor, this would be exposed to the neutron stream and enough of the U-238 would be converted to P-239 to use as fuel with enough P-240 “pollution” to prevent it being used for nuclear weapons. The way current nuclear fuel works is that there is just enough U-235 to fuel a stable chain reaction. Some of the neutrons convert the U-238 to P-239. By the time a fuel rod is considered “spent”, most of the energy is being created by fission of P-239 and most of the U-235 is gone.
After use, the fuel rods are processed to remove fission products and recover the P-239 and remaining U-238 for manufacture of new fuel rods. Some of the fission products with long half-lives can be exposed to the neutron stream and transmuted to elements with shorter half-lives.
There really is no need for thorium reactors or other esoteric designs. We have the technology right now to provide abundant and cheap energy for everyone.
pat says:
August 6, 2013 at 10:17 pm
“weather patterns from the past can no longer be used to predict the future”!!
7 Aug: ABC Australia: with AFP: Climate report warns extreme weather events are now the norm
The American Meteorological Society has released its annual snapshot of the world’s climate, which concludes disastrous weather events like Hurricane Sandy in the US
The extra-tropical storm that developed from hurricane Sandy was a disastrous lack of city planning event. If the governors and mayors of New Jersey and New York had listened to the warnings (very like those given to New Orleans) then they would not have allowed building of sub-code homes in storm surge areas (all that property tax persuaded them otherwise), would have built barrages, would have set up flood gates on tunnels and put standby generators above flood levels. It was more politically attractive to be involved in National politics and push through legislation on the size of sodas than to carry out mayoral or gubernatorial duties. In many respects the storm highlighted the lack of emergency planning in the same way as the design of the backup pumps of the only Fukashima plant to have problems. If Hurricane Sandy had come ashore in Florida nobody would remember it now.
Lets be honest here, compared to a lot of other industries the nuclear power industry has one of the best safety records. The only deaths to occur from nuclear power plants was due to people doing stupid crap and not following normal procedures and that includes the bad design at Chernobyl. In the US there has only been 8 deaths and of those, 4 are due to workers electrocuting themselves through stupidity, something which can happen at any electrical generating plant no matter the source. Of the other four, 3 were due to one soldier pulling a rod improperly at an experimental reactor that resulted in a steam explosion. The last one is due to an accidental criticality at the United Nuclear Corp where they were making cores and fuel.
If it wasn’t for the stupidity that took place at Chernobyl (and soviet subs) the worldwide deaths from nuclear power plant accidents/disasters would be dwarfed by deaths caused by medical use of radiation. There have been 65 deaths as the result of “Radiotherapy” screwups or the dismantlement /disposal of medical radioactive material including 17 in the US. Those last numbers do not even include the deaths from losing the Radiotherapy material either.
So bottom line: You are more likely in the US to die from radiation poisoning from your doctor that from a nuclear power plant
policycritic says:
August 6, 2013 at 10:01 pm
“Janice Moore says:
August 6, 2013 at 9:30 pm
Re: Germany, until coal and other sources of power are not cheaper than nuclear power (to get it to market), Germany will likely stick with clean coal and other sources of energy, but, when it becomes cost-effective, Germany will do the rational thing: use nuclear power.
Absolutely not. Germany decided to close all its nuclear plants by 2022; they’re shutting them down as fast as they can.”
That is an exaggeration. We are phasing them out over a decade.
We could most definitely do it even faster, if that were politically expedient.
By stretching it over a decade, Merkel can over all this time show the useful idiots of the Green movement that she’s sooo green.
It will not sway a die hard watermelon teacher but neutralize the “nuclear armageddon” fearmongering agitprop the left block normally relies on.
Basically Germany had the choice of falling into the arms of the left block or keep 23 very old nukes.
If you ask me; I’d rather burn lignite than choking under the yoke of the democidal block. There are things going on here that are more worrying than the stupid CO2AGW fraud or the exact price of a kWh.
“crosspatch says:
August 7, 2013 at 12:34 am”
The video I linked to is a classic example of the sort of hype that was in abundance in the UK back in the 80’s. From memory, “Windscale” or “Sellafield”, forget it’s name now, re-processed spent fuel rods on site as well as reprocessed waste from other sites both nationally and internationally. I am not sure if this is the case anymore.
Where’s Roger Sowell? Or did he have a meltdown?
There was a very strange piece on NPR(!) last week about a “Fountain of Youth” spring in Florida, which had been shut down because of the high concentration of radium in the water. It has now been re-opened, and Susan Stamberg, the reporter, said “Well, that sign may be scary but it seems a little bit of radioactivity might not be all bad.”
I almost fell out of my chair, after hearing all the green arguments for the past 40 years that “there is no known safe level of radiation”. I even posted a comment on the NPR web site, but no one has responded.
I agree wih the commenters who think this is just a ploy by the greens to further de-industrialize. They demonized the dams first, then nuclear, then oil, then coal and generally carbon. Now it is gas that is evil (unless it is produced by fairies), and eventually they will “realize” that windmills kill LOTS of birds and want them all shutdown. (“No one told us about this! It is a travesty! Big wind is killing the earth!).
Then they will figure out how to demonize the elements in the solar panels and get them banned. They have been practicing this line of argument for a while – Pu, U, Cl,Pb, As,Cr, Cd, Hg, Au and Ag (Money, of course, is pure evil), Al, and now even C. You can be sure that Si will turn out to be deadly too – it does have similarities to C.
They are just trying to suck people into obeying them.
And the last thing the nuclear industry needs is a crash program to develop a new type of reactor, or to construct a bunch of reactors quickly. There are not enough people or companies with the right skills to support a big program. It takes time to build up a base of support that has the rigor to build and operate these things properly. The French are re-learning how to pour nuclear-grade concrete after stopping their construction programs for decades. Instead, we should continue to build a small number of gen-4 plants, and steadily increase the construction rate over a couple of decades. We could also start up a few test reactors to gather information about new fuel designs that people think might be promising, but those sort of experiments take at least a decade to conduct.
Nuclear is a long-term solution. The greens had been very close to really pushing the genie back in the bottle, as the experienced people retired and died, and facilities closed, but they pounced on CO2 too quickly, and nuclear appears to be coming alive again.
Mike Borgelt:
At August 7, 2013 at 12:54 am you ask
He is spouting Off-Topic nonsense about nuclear power on another thread; i.e.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/06/about-the-unusual-warming-event-in-extratropical-north-pacific-sea-surface-temperature-anomalies/
I find it hard to believe anyone is really interested in his posts but – since you have asked – I have provided the link to the thread where he is active.
Richard
Patrick:
At August 7, 2013 at 12:52 am you write
I live in Germany, and while the “Greens” currently have the whip hand, the mood is changing. More and more small towns and communities are mobilising to prevent the building of more wind turbines. Carbon “capture” technology is being planned to allow the building of new coal plants, and more gas plants are planned, but there is another element, subsidising the “wind farms” has caused a massive hike in the cost of electricity, which is also causing a rethink. I suspect that nuclear will come back when the political climate is right.
Greenpeace, the Green Party (Bundes90/Gruene) and other “environmental” groups have made much of the issue of storage of nuclear waste at Gorleben in Sachsen Anhalt, with a lot of bandying about of photos supposedly “secretly taken” in the facility of rusting and leaking containers. What they fail to say is that these were a legacy of the former GDR (Communist East Germany) and have long since been cleaned up and sorted out with proper storage arrangements. Our neighbours, France, get roughly 80% of their power from nuclear plants and simply ignore Greenpeace (or sink their ships and prosecute their activists) so maybe it is time to start prosecuting the news outlets that continue to promote their junk science and propaganda. Cut off their ability to promulgate their trash and you can solve some of the antipathy.
The anti-nuclear lobbies in most western nations constant conflate nuclear weapons and nuclear power, most don’t know how a nuclear power plant actually generates the power, and many ignoramuses who support the anti-nuclear campaigns think that each reactor somehow magically generates power by a sort of self-sustaining nuclear explosion. Unfortunately one cannot fix “stupid” and probably 60% of humanity are either ignorant or “stupid” despite being supposedly “intelligent”. In the UK the likes of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament have long exploited this, promoting the concept of Britain being turned into a nuclear desert with less than 6 minutes warning if a nuclear war was started – hence the Labour faction that want unilateral nuclear disarmament. “Better Red than Dead” is their slogan and they are firmly convinced that only by eschewing ALL nuclear weapons and power can we hope to survive. In short, should Iran become a nuclear power, these morons would simply surreder to the Ayatollahs as soon as they threatened a nuclear attack.
The nuclear industry does need to avoid being “endorsed” by the AGW mob, they can and should make a case for themselves. I do not believe “climate change” can be stopped or reversed by the efforts of mankind. The planet is changing as we speak, it has been doing this for billions of years. Our focus needs to shift to adaptation and nuclear can certainly help us do it.
@Patrick Guinness
Yes Monbiot wrote in The Guardian about his frustrating talk with the UK Green Party leader, highlighting her nonsensical objections.
Gradually the environmental debate separates those with rational beliefs from those with irrational beliefs. It isn’t irrational to say there’s a scientific consensus, when various bodies make statements claiming it is so, but it is irrational to reject nuclear “just because” and cling to a little quiet green marxist village ideal, when there’s no evidence that can be made to work. I do oft wonder that whist some survival problems are real, we have many religious types in disguise, taking their atheist but still Judeo/Christian outlook and making environmentalism all about human sin.
noaaprogrammer says:
August 6, 2013 at 9:14 pm
What will Germany do if most of the rest of the world goes nuclear?
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
We’ll buy the abundant chinese, australian and american coal for a few Nickels a ton, when the other countries in the world will finally have shut down their coal-fired powerplants.
FYI: Last year alone, six new, huge coal-fired powerplants have been approved here in Germany
“Probably the most infamous event was when Ansel Adams resigned from the board of directors of the Sierra Club over his support of nuclear power.”
Did anyone else read the linked Ansel Adams article? I didn’t recall him resigning from SC, and see no mention of an actual resignation in the article. I found this, “… Diablo Canyon in California started an internal debate in the Sierra Club that eventually grew into a controversial board election in 1969 and the resignation of Executive Director David Brower.” … ” Adams continued as a Sierra Club director until 1971, when he voluntarily retired after 37 years of continuous service on the board.”
I spent as much of my youth as possible in Yosemite, from the early Sixties until my last visit in 1969, on leave from the Navy before my Nuclear Power School class convened. I met and walked with Ansel Adams on two or three occasions. But it’s been almost fifty years and my memory fades, occasionally refreshed by repair to Yosemite and the Range of Light.
Answer to Janice Moore:
August 6, 2013 at 10:16 pm
Dear Janice,
despite it’s not my own oppinion, I would bet quite an amount (of sugar of course) of You being wrong:>((
First, Chancellor Merkel is not alone in the field. If she was, You might be right.
Second, the average price for a kw/h is already about 27 eurocent, and the majority in parliament and population is still over 80 percent against nuclear power.
Third, as I experience every day, the germans are not even open to discussion, when it comes to nuclear power and its waste. The next turn-over would be political suicide for Merkel her CDU and any other major party. Please excuse my rusty english, greetings from strike
Here is novel idea how to reduce CO2 footprint for the public transport, further improvement would be to ventilate exhaust fumes through base of the mini-garden.
http://www.pcnen.com/portal/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/vrt-na-autobusu.jpg
Greenies would love it.
Crosspatch is my hero…reading some of the responses reveal the ignorance of many posters. I was going to respond but Crosspatch is a far more eloquent writer.
Think about what happened at Fukushima…massive earthquake followed by a tsunami. Followed by a hydrogen explosion. The radioactive release was negligible. Heck if it wasn’t such a political issue those plants could be refit and back online in 18 months.
Nuclear power is a proven technology. It is safe and reliable. Could it be improved? Of course, what couldn’t? I have been an operator at both PWR’s and BWR’s. Done initial start up and commisioning, refueling outages, steam generator replacement and other fun stuff.
Nuclear power is a robust technology, but all things robust fall victim to The Black Swan hiding in the Pareto distribution of natural phenomena. There is a chance of the next Chicxulub object falling on a pile of lithium, thorium, fluorine and beryllium.
The nuclear energy question is starting to be discussed due to the climate sub wars. There are sub climate wars starting to breakout due to engineering and economic reality related to green scam energy vs the extreme warming fanatics’ goal.
The problem is that green scam energy can only reduce carbon dioxide emission by 10% to 20% without storage systems (Ignoring costs, assuming Western countries have unlimited money, which is silly, ridiculous, Western countries will go bankrupt if they try to meet mandated green energy targets.) …. …..There are no viable storage systems. Carbon dioxide capture is a fantasy based on economics and 40% of the energy produced would be required for the capture.
Storage Problem – Show stopper for Green Energy
1) Intermittent sources require power storage or back-up natural gas single cycle power plants (Single cycle natural gas power plant 40% efficiency, Combined cycle power plant efficiency 60%. Single cycle power plant can be turned on/off/on/off/on/off, as is required to provide back up for wind.)
Wind and solar are intermittent sources. The power quoted for wind and solar is installed capacity not average produced power. Ignoring the green scam cost issue, the maximum reduction in carbon dioxide emission using wind and solar is around 10% to 20% as a massive backup single cycle natural power plants are required. There are two problems the natural gas power plants produce CO2 and a single cycle natural gas power plant is roughly 40% efficient compared to 60% efficiency for a combined cycle power plant.
Comments:
1) A combined cycle natural gas plant is 50% more efficient than a single cycle natural gas power plant and costs roughly twice as much. The combined cycle plant cannot however be turned on/off/on/off/on/off as is required if wind power is used. Wind power produced is at the cube of wind speed. The German wind power installation produced power is 20% of the name plate capacity (varying of course from 100% to 0%, 20% to 60% and so on, think of wind speed varying hour by hour, now imagine massive wind farms feeding into an electrical grid with no ability to pass power from region to region), unfortunately the wind blows when power is not required and coal power plants, nuclear power plants, and combined cycle natural gas power plants cannot be turned on/off/on/off, so there is an in your face problem as the amount of wind power in an electrical grid increases. The problem is particularly acute during low electric demand periods when all of the single cycle natural gas power plants are turned off.
2) Germany requires 4000 km of high voltage power lines to transport green energy from where it produced to where it is required and has constructed 300 km due to public resistance to high voltage power lines. The cost of ‘green’ energy needs to include the cost of ‘smart’ grids (more high voltage power lines and very, very expensive DC to AC and AC to DC convertors) and needs to include the cost of single cycle natural gas power plants. Roughly 30% of the electrical power losses is due to transmission loses and conversion loses. There are engineering and economic limits that limit the distance electrical power can be transported.
Money Does not Grow on Trees, Western Countries face bankruptcy – Show stopper for Green Energy
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323716304578482663491426312.html
Going Green? Then Go Nuclear
We’re environmentalists, but pretending that solar power is ready for prime time is delusional.
The cost of building and operating the Finnish nuclear plant over the next 20 years will be $15 billion. Over that time period, the plant will generate 225 terawatt-hours (twh) of electricity at a cost of 7 cents per kilowatt hour. …. ….Since 2000, Germany has heavily subsidized electricity production from solar panels—offering long-term contracts to producers to purchase electricity at prices substantially above wholesale rates. The resulting solar installations are expected to generate 400 twh electricity over the 20 years that the panels will receive the subsidy, at a total cost to German ratepayers of $130 billion, or 32 cents per kwh. …. …..In short, solar electricity in Germany will cost almost five times more for every kilowatt hour of electricity it provides than Finland’s new nuclear plant….. …..Over its 60-year lifetime—which can be extended by relicensing—the Finnish plant likely will generate more electricity than Germany’s solar panels ever will. That’s because solar panels only have an expected lifetime of 25 to 30 years and lose about a half a percent of their efficiency every year. Compared over their full lifetimes, the Finnish plant will produce power at a cost of about 4 cents per kwh, while Germany’s solar panels will produce electricity at a cost of 16 cents per kwh. … ….Does that mean we should give up on solar? Of course not. Thanks to several decades of public support, solar panels have gotten better and cheaper. Continuing efforts to develop better panels deserve our support. But the insistence that solar is ready to play a major role in meeting our energy needs today is both delusional and irresponsible.
Messrs. McKibben and Kennedy, for instance, have boasted that on one day in 2012 half of Germany’s electricity came from solar. They neglect to mention that it was a cool and sunny day over a weekend, when demand was unusually low. The real story is much more sobering. In 2012, solar generated less than 5% of Germany’s electricity despite a decade and over $100 billion spent in subsidies.
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/pandoras-promise-wins-nuclear-converts/
Why is nuclear power being promoted as green now?
The answer is that it has been promoted as green for a few years by Monbiot in the Guardian (and a few others) for one reason only – to save the world from Climate Change.
The dangers of cAGW have been hyped so much (to permit the use of the Precautionary Principle) that nuclear becomes permissible.
Think about the Precautionary Principle: The dangers that are to be averted must be an order of magnitude worse than any cost and irreversible – otherwise we wait for the evidence.
That means nuclear comes into play – so why now?
Because the pause in temperature rise means the Precautionary Principle is being dusted down and taken out of the cupboard.
There is no other evidence so they have to say we can’t wait for the “pause” to stop.
insanity…with ***nuclear on the side:
6 Aug: UK Telegraph: Peter Dominiczak: Lib Dems: ban petrol and diesel cars from UK roads by 2040
The Liberal Democrats want to ban millions of ordinary cars from Britain’s roads
Nick Clegg’s party has unveiled proposals to only allow ultra-low carbon vehicles on UK roads by 2040.
The controversial measures would mean millions of petrol and diesel cars being forbidden.
Only electric vehicles and ultra-efficient hybrid cars would be allowed on UK roads under the Lib Dem plans.
However, petrol and diesel vehicles would still be allowed for freight purposes.
The plans will be voted on by members at the upcoming Lib Dem conference in Glasgow and could become party policy if approved…
The Lib Dems also want to replace air passenger duty with a “per-plane duty, charged in proportion to the carbon emissions created by that journey”.
As part of the party’s plans to create a “zero-carbon” Britain, the Lib Dems could also embrace ***nuclear power and shale gas exploration…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/10224801/Lib-Dems-ban-petrol-and-diesel-cars-from-UK-roads-by-2040.html
The end game seems to be to make nuclear as unprofitable as other “green” solution to make them look good by comparison.
“richardscourtney says:
August 7, 2013 at 1:19 am”
Maybe not with Japan (Thanks for reminding me) commercially in the period I mention (1980’s), but certainly with the US for military purposes prior to that after all, that was it’s primary reason for construction. Electricity generation was a convenient by-product.
“He that goeth to bedde wyth Dogges, aryseth with fleas.” – James Sanford (The Garden of Pleasure, contayninge most pleasante tales, worthy deeds, and witty sayings of noble princes and learned philosophers moralized, 1573)
sceptics haven’t been paying attention:
30 July: Fox News: John Roberts: Mini-nuclear plants the next frontier of US power supply — or the next Solyndra?
A boon to the economy? Or a boondoggle?
That’s the debate raging over a new nuclear technology that — depending on your perspective — is either a game-changer in electrical generation, or a failure-in-the-making that will fleece taxpayers for a half-billion dollars. …
In his June speech on climate change, President Obama talked about shutting down dozens of older coal plants, which left open the question of how that electricity would be produced…
TVA was expected to apply for a construction permit last year. But that application has been delayed until 2015 at the earliest.
That’s not the only controversial point with SMR’s. The federal government has pledged more than $500 million to help develop the technology. B&W has so far received $79 million for R&D, with the possibility of an additional $150 million…
That’s not sitting well with the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. It points to the long history of expensive failures in the nuclear industry, backed by 60 years of subsidies.
Ryan Alexander, president of the group, sees the potential for a nuclear version of Solyndra, the solar power company that went belly up after taxpayers poured a half-billion dollars into the company…
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/30/mini-nuclear-plants-next-frontier-us-power-supply-or-next-solyndra/
March 2012: UK Daily Mail: Nick Enoch: Britain’s (and the world’s) oldest nuclear power station closes … but it will take 90 more years and £954m to clear it completely
As well as the time factor, it will also cost £954million for the 175 acre site to be completely cleared, with the final stage anticipated to take place between 2092 and 2101…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2108218/Oldbury-Nuclear-Power-Station-closes-90-years-954m-clear-completely.html
another dodgy poll:
29 May: UK Independent: Emily Beament: 43% back UK nuclear plant subsidies
Among those who backed new nuclear reactors, almost three-quarters (72%) thought that the Government should subsidise their construction, the poll for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers found…
Nuclear is one of a number of low-carbon technologies benefiting from reforms to the electricity market, under which they will get a guaranteed price for the electricity they generate under contracts drawn up with the Government…
Without an agreed guaranteed commercially attractive long-term price for the electricity from new nuclear plants, and a suitable source of investment finance, there can be no progress on building new UK reactors…
More than half (55%) said they supported nuclear because it was low carbon, while half said it was reliable and the same proportion said it provided jobs…
A recent report by the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee warned that the legacy of nuclear waste from previous generations of reactors had been allowed to build up, with the cost of decommissioning Sellafield’s nuclear waste site now running at £67.5 billion.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/43-back-uk-nuclear-plant-subsidies-8634273.html
24 April: Financial Times: Sylvia Pfeifer: MPs point to £2.3bn annual nuclear subsidy
The nuclear industry enjoys a subsidy of at least £2.3bn a year and is in line for more public support under government plans to offer guaranteed prices for low-carbon power, a new report says…
The government, which has repeatedly insisted there will be no subsidy, believes the UK needs to build reactors to help “keep the lights on” and meet tough carbon reduction targets.
Reforms in the coalition’s energy bill, which continues its slow passage through parliament, include measures to support low-carbon sources of power such as nuclear and wind…
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fda9ea9a-ac29-11e2-a063-00144feabdc0.html