Another New Dawn

When it comes to infrastructure development, a lot of government planning is based not so much on evidence but wishful thinking. We have no starker case of this than HS2, which looks like it’s going no further than Birmingham. The costs of have rocketed, and the famous ‘cost benefit analysis’ formula that supported the original case will have as much substance now as a slug’s trail, to coin a phrase.

What new white elephants are in the sights of the government (and HM Opposition)? I may live long enough to witness the implosion of The Great Nuclear Renaissance. The industry is wetting itself over the prospects for their new wheeze, Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which are like prefabricated mass produced products which will suffer none of the defects which have held up new big scale nuclear developments (they say). According to Rolls Royce, the UK’s leading wannabe in this new radiant dawn, these SMRs will be contributing electricity within four years of approval, at a cost of £1.8 billion each (that was the figure two or more years ago, before the current inflationary spiral). The government has already committed £100s of millions to their development in the belief that they will help achieve its net zero goals. Sadly, looking at a recent press release, not very much has been committed to decommissioning costs and there was no mention of waste disposal, but then that will be a NIMTO issue (Not In My Term Of Office).
 
The nuclear industry is very keen to be lumped together with renewable energy when it comes to net zero. It’s a marketing con. They’ve certainly captured the imagination of the Labour Party’s policy making machine. When it comes to the party’s green commitment, much has been made of the retreat from a £28billion p.a. spend, which is now couched as a figure to be ‘ramped up to’ by the mid-parliament of a new Labour government. There is no figure put on what the intermediary spend might be, and of course I acknowledge we are not necessarily talking about purely government investment anyway—the private sector will be expected to contribute too. Rolls Royce have plans for 16 SMR’s at £1.8 billion each (original price). That conveniently comes to £28.8 billion. That spend won’t happen all at once, but one can see it would be a huge chunk out of Labour’s ‘green’ commitments.
 
The phrase ‘too cheap to meter’ has long been a bane of the nuclear power industry’s image, since the reality has been so wildly contrary. Nothing has been delivered on time or on budget. The price of the electricity delivered has led to massive subsidies. Thatcher introduced the beguilingly named ’Non Fossil Fuel Obligation’ to support nuclear power in the 1980s which added 10% to our energy bills—more than any genuine renewable subsidy we’ve seen more recently. It must have hurt the self-worth of the nuclear industry’s captains when in his autobiography former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson said nuclear could never be privatised without huge public finance backing it. For him it seemed the idea was a dead duck—and so it is, if we consider the Musk-sized fortune being ploughed into Sizewell C. 
 
The nuclear industry’s self-proclaimed great potential has an eerie feel to it. Another great prospect, equal in allure in the wishful thinking Pantheon of new technologies was (past tense) Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). This on/off, on/off technological fix for climate change was always factored in to future projections of carbon emission reduction scenarios—until enthusiasm waned when reality kicked in. The most efficient CCS technologies delivering carbon emission reductions were also the least efficient in the resultant power generated—the more you cleaned the more energy you used to do it. CCS seems to have lost favour altogether, although I am sure its memory will linger on for a few diehards who want to perpetuate the use of fossil fuels. 
 
As I have remarked before (possibly in my 2009 book on climate change) the transition to genuine renewable energy generation has been impeded by the lack of a longstanding, embedded political influence. The early days of renewables development were characterised as an offbeat, utopian dream of sandal-wearing greenies, whose political presence—the Green Party—never gained traction in the realities of consumer politics. In contrast, the nuclear lobby and the fossil fuel lobby were always well represented in parliament.
 
The economics have now changed—offshore wind competes with anything—and so the nuclear industry’s pitch has changed too. Their prices will remain stubbornly higher than sources of genuine renewable energy, but their promises will still find a receptive audience with politicians who think we have all the time (and money) in the world to address climate change.  

*Rolls Royce can be counted on to deliver on time. This snippet, on Wikipedia, makes that point without further comment from me:

'In April 2021, The Sunday Times reported that delays on the Astute class submarines may impact the Dreadnought class, which will be built in the same dock hall. Related concerns are a 19 month delay to an extension of the Barrow facility and a five year delay to a Rolls-Royce factory which will build the nuclear reactors.' (emphasis added)