A Princely Endorsement

Who said it?

“It’s a great pleasure to be back here again and a real pleasure to open something that’s going to have serious and important consequences in the years to come.

“Something is going to have to be done to supply the huge increase in the amount of energy we need. There has to be some part of the energy sector delivering nuclear. It’s not just about the UK. Nuclear will be used globally.”

Okay, we know he’s British and he gets invited to open things – in this case the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.

Give up?

The Duke of York said that it would make a significant difference to Britain in the future if it didn’t build up its own civil nuclear manufacturing capabilities.

“We must deliver at least some part of the supply chain. The ability to harness the knowledge, skills and innovation of the UK in a facility like this is hugely important,” he said.

Prince Andrew is currently fourth in line to the throne of England and is probably better known to Americans as the former husband of Sarah Ferguson. He has also been keenly interested in promoting British trade, which likely contributes to his interest in the workforce and supply chains.

So good for Prince Andrew. When I read something like this:

Anti-nuclear power campaigners dressed as “Radioactive Royals and nuclear guards” protested in front of Buckingham Palace on Thursday, 5 February as nuclear industry bigwigs were wined and dined by the Duke of York, Prince Andrew.

What I think is: Wine and dine away, Prince. He doesn’t have much political clout to invite corruption (plus he’s the one funding the wining and dining, not the industry) and he’s keenly interested in the nuclear industry and people will come around to eat with him. Wouldn’t work here, and to be honest, it limits the effectiveness of his pulpit, but you know, we lack princes.

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Nuclear Energy, The Wheat and The Green

The British Green Party tried something interesting this weekend:

About 200 anti-GM activists have protested outside an agricultural research centre where a genetically modified wheat crop is being grown.

Scientists at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, had been concerned that members of campaigning group Take The Flour Back would attempt to destroy GM wheat crops.

GM in this case means genetically-modified. The wheat in Harpenden has been modified with a gene from the peppermint plant in the hope that the wheat can better resist aphids. The test crop is intended to test that idea. The Guardian provides some of the questions the scientists want to answer:

Does a crop that produces a steady waft of aphid alarm pheromone repel the pests? Or are the insects indifferent if the chemical is not released in bursts, as happens in nature? Does the pheromone attract aphid predators to the crops, as suspected? Can the wheat be grown with less pesticide? What are the knock-on effects on other organisms?

The protestors have their own concerns. Tom Fenton, from Take The Flour Back, said: :

“In reality we don't really know what the effects of GM are because there's not been adequate long-term testing.

"Safety tests that have taken place have indicated things that are concerning but that haven't been followed up.

"Also, we hear a lot about how GM is going to feed the world but the majority in the developing world don't want this technology as they can see it's not going to help to feed them."

That last is just a bald assertion. If the developing world doesn’t want them, it would be because the UK Greens are preventing a market to develop. And stopping a test that will help Fenton know “the effects of GM” seems rather short sighted.

Why this attention in a nuclear blog? Well, the Greens seem –awfully – anti-science, don’t they? – luddites, even. Genetically modified foods have been accepted in North and South America, among other places, and it hasn’t raised quite such a stink (The Guardian article mentions some clumsy statements from GM specialist Monsanto that didn’t help the case for GM at all.)

There’s always the possibility that this has an anti-commercial element – the cruel insensitivities of companies and all that – and perhaps even a Day of the Triffids-like fear that the wheat will sprout legs and go on a killing spree.

This 2004 Nature article explores the issue intelligently.

Still, for me, the Green Party attitude toward GM wheat explains this better:

The Green Party is fundamentally opposed to nuclear energy, which we consider to be expensive and dangerous. The technology is not carbon neutral, and being reliant on uranium it is not renewable. We consider its use, moreover, to be elitist and undemocratic. There is so far no safe way of disposing of nuclear waste. To a degree unequalled by even the worst of other dangerous industries, the costs and dangers of nuclear energy and its waste will be passed on to future generations long after any benefits have been exhausted.

This is from the Green’s energy policy. Most of it is anti-nuclear blah-blah, but the part that’s striking is “elitist and undemocratic.” This has always seemed an inexplicable argument, false on its face. Kings and commoners both benefit from electricity – it’s as democratic and non-elite as can be – unless you mean that nuclear energy is an unholy creature of science exploited by business – the undemocratic elites. Whereas you can yourself put solar panels on your roof or a windmill in your yard.

So sinister, so silly – whether about wheat or nuclear energy.

It’s wheat.

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The British Energy Plan: Nuclear and Renewables

The U.K. government Tuesday published its long-awaited draft energy bill, which contains mechanisms and incentives designed to encourage around GBP110 billion investment in low-carbon energy such as offshore wind farms and new nuclear power stations.

That sounds good. The Nasdaq story shows that the government really wants to sell it:

"If we don't secure investment in our energy infrastructure, we could see the lights going out, consumers hit by spiraling energy prices and dangerous climate change," said U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Edward Davey.

The story doesn’t really make a case for nuclear – except that it is absolutely necessary if the country wants to achieve its emission reduction goals:

The government needs to ramp up low-carbon power from offshore wind farms, nuclear power stations and gas and coal plants fitted with carbon capture technology to meet legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2020 from 1990 levels.

A recent report by our Energy Information Administration indicated that coal with ccs likely won’t be ready to contribute to carbon emission reduction by 2035 much less 2020, so this seems extremely optimistic. But we’ve seen with Japan that shutting down nuclear plants can make a dramatic difference rather quickly, so if Britain gets some plants built and windmills set up in the next eight years, it could at least make good progress toward its goal. Here’s how the report itself puts it:

The three families of low carbon electricity generation - Renewables, Fossil Fuels abated by Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and new Nuclear - could all play a role in our future energy mix, even though they each present their own challenges and have their own uncertainties. Yet our existing electricity market makes it more difficult for such low carbon technologies to develop and deploy, because they all have much higher upfront capital costs than unabated fossil fuel competitors like gas.

One has to grant that nuclear and coal plants are big projects, but wind mostly needs a land buy (or lease).

Around a fifth of existing capacity is expected to close over the next decade and more intermittent (wind) and less flexible (nuclear) generation will be built to replace it.

The draft doesn’t explain that odd description of nuclear – I think it is referring to the fact that nuclear reactors generally don’t ramp down once ramped up, making it a poor source to spell wind’s frequent failure to blow. In other words, there’s no benefit in pairing the two. “Less flexible” doesn’t seem to capture that, but there it is.

Much of the report’s nuclear content regards spinning off the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) as an independent regulator similar to our Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Japan is considering something similar.).

As a statutory body, the ONR will retain the best of current practice whilst creating a modern independent regulator based on the better regulation principles of transparency, accountability, proportionality and consistency. The ONR will build on its current strengths as a world-class regulator and will be better placed to respond quickly and flexibly to current and future regulatory challenges, while retaining its focus on the protection of people and society from the hazards of nuclear generation.

And there is some discussion of an incentives program that sounds a lot like cap-and-trade.

The bottom line is: the U.K. sees nuclear and renewable energy sources as the way forward (and all right, coal with ccs too). Davey notes that electricity rates will go up in the coming years regardless, but that this mix will keep that increase lower than it would otherwise be. That’s some comfort against the specter of “consumers hit by spiraling energy prices and dangerous climate change.” We’ll see how this legislation does.

Edward Davey. Hopefully, he’s not referring to carbon emission levels or the cost of electricity in this picture. Maybe he’s answer how much nuclear power will be put in use over the next few years.

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