A Nuclear Renaissance for Scotland?
At an exciting launch in Glasgow tonight where Sam Richards (CEO Britain Remade. Ex No10) will lay out his plans for new nuclear power in Scotland:
“Looking forward to speaking at the launch of this later. A nuclear renaissance is taking place across the world and Scotland shouldn’t be left behind.”
Tonight will see the launch of something called ‘Scotland for Nuclear Energy’ with support from groups like ‘Nuclear for Scotland‘, which has no information about itself on its own website, and Home | Minerva Health Physics Ltd which ‘are a dedicated team of experts in radiation protection and radioactive waste management’, and the North Highland Chamber of Commerce. Home – Caithness Chamber of Commerce
The launch was nicely timed in the week when it was revealed that the UK Govt has buried “almost 200 containers” of radioactive material underground in Scotland.
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Today Britain Remade announced: “Today we’re part of the launch of Scotland For Nuclear Energy – a coalition of communities, businesses and campaigners calling on the Scottish Government to lift the ban on new nuclear power in Scotland.”
It’s not clear exactly who the ‘communities’ are, but maybe that will become clearer at the launch.
According to ‘Britain Remade’: “We are not affiliated with, or part of, any political party.”
But Sam Richards is the Director of the network of conservative environmentalists and caucus of green Conservative MPs, and was the Special Advisor to the PM on Energy & Environment (2019-2022). He’s a Boris SPAD. And Jeremy Driver (Head of Campaigns), is a former Lloyds Banker and Parliamentary Assistant to Ann Soubry. Sam Dumitriu is Head of Policy at Britain Remade who formerly worked at the Adam Smith Institute. Jason Brown is Head of Communications for Britain Remade, a former No. 10 media Special Adviser and Ben Houchen’s comms Adviser.
These are Tory SPADS working on their own campaign to support new nuclear in Scotland: Lift The Ban On New Scottish Nuclear Power.
Jeremy and Sam are a bit shy about the costs of nuclear power, and so they should be. Anas Sarwar and Labour energy minister Michael Shanks are enthusiastic. But, as John Proctor has pointed out, they too aren’t very up front about costs.
Proctor writes [I spent decades in energy. Here are the problems with UK nuclear plans]:
“They of course don’t want to talk about the European Power Reactor (EPR) configuration being installed at astronomical cost at Hinkley C. This project is forecast to cost around £45 billion when it finally comes online sometime next decade.”
SCRAM (Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace) have issued a rebuttal to all this astroturfing.
Pete Roche, spokesperson for SCRAM said: “As renewable energy-rich Scotland heads towards an election, it is all too predictable that nuclear lobbyists are again arguing that Scotland needs new nuclear power stations. They misleadingly present them as cheap, clean and ‘green’ – yet this is as far from the truth as it was 70 years ago when it was promised that nuclear energy would be ‘too cheap to meter’.
“An energy system built around renewables is already happening. Meeting all our needs this way is not just possible, but it’s quicker and cheaper without the costly distraction of new nuclear. Low-cost renewable energy combined with storage, flexible power to balance the grid and smart local energy systems will make the best use of our incredible renewable resources and engineering know-how. Why dilute that by backing eye-wateringly expensive nuclear power stations?”
“The highly skilled nuclear workforce will be kept busy for decades in decommissioning the sites at Torness, Hunterston, Chapelcross and Dounreay – and completing a sustainable renewable energy system is already bringing huge demand for skilled energy professionals. The renewables sector is the future, and where the focus for skills must remain.”
”A 100% renewable-based energy system will be cheaper, better for jobs and energy security, and be truly green and sustainable. We hope the information we have provided will be useful to all political parties and voters, and help to balance out the misleading propaganda of the nuclear PR machine.”
One of the other myths that SCRAM is keen to dispel is the notion that new nuclear power is a solution to climate change. They state:
“Nuclear power stations are not resilient to climate change. They are usually on the coast where sea levels are rising and storm surges could threaten installations. They require large quantities of water to keep cool and avert meltdowns. [see Nuclear Energy isn’t a Safe Bet in a Warming World – Here’s Why, by Paul Dorfman, The Conversation https://theconversation.com/nuclear-energy-isnt-a-safe-bet-in-a-warming-world-heres-why-163371 ]
“Using nuclear plants to address climate change involves unacceptable risks. Risks include the possibility of serious accidents; an unsolved radioactive waste problem; the environmental damage caused by uranium mining, yet another nuclear target for terrorists or in armed conflict and increased nuclear weapons proliferation. Renewable energy risks none of these.”
“Tackling climate change is urgent, so requires the fastest and cheapest solutions. We must spend our limited resources as effectively, quickly and fairly as possible. Amory B. Lovins, adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, explains that saving the most carbon per pound, as quickly as possible, requires not just energy generation that doesn’t burn fossil fuels, but also generation that is deployable with the least cost and time. That rules out nuclear energy as an answer to climate change. In fact, nuclear worsens climate change by spending valuable resources on a solution which is much too slow and too costly.” [see Why Nuclear Power Is Bad for Your Wallet and the Climate].
There is no case for new nuclear in Scotland.
These front groups and astroturf projects are attempting to paper over the cracks about Britain’s ageing and decrepit nuclear programme [Revealed: 585 cracks in Torness nuclear reactor ]. They are a costly clandestine distraction which threatens to undermine the urgent need to shift to clean energy and decarbonise the economy.
https://dearscotland.substack.com/p/uk-lobbyists-east-lothian-council?utm_source=publication-search
The other angle overlooked by the ‘renewables-vs-nuclear’ debate is the centralisation issue.
With large power stations, whether nuclear or otherwise, it is easy to meter the output and flog it at the highest price possible, from as few controling hands as possible.
Whereas renewables, despite their flaws, allow de-centralisation of energy supply. Such that each town can have it’s own community led power station, levying local prices that fit in with the needs of that community, and not fitting into the ‘needs’ of off-shore multi-national share-holders.
Electricity supply could even be decentralised to a street block – if a row of terraces had one long array, and the households shared the energy between them, the energy would indeed be too cheap to meter for part of the year, and any excess sold to the grid for a shared profit.
This decentralisation is anathema to neo-liberal economics, and I suspect that this is the biggest reason for the right-wing campaigns against renewables.
As for those promoting nuclear, they are just on the scrounge for government money to profit from the construction, I doubt they give a crap if it actually produces any energy. Like HS2, long-never ending mega-projects are an ideal multi-decadal cash cows for those in the right places.
And building monoliths in an age of climate destabilisation and ecological overshoot is just plain stupid. Everything is going to be localised eventually, regardless of wealth or party political affiliation. Far better to get on with the localisation in a planned way now rather than waiting until it is forced.
Quite right Mark, and i think this is one reason why its popular among Unionists.
Its very very expensive so can be laid out as a ‘gift’ from the UK, but as you say nuclear means centralisation, renewables (could) mean decentralisation of energy.
District heating, for example?
When we think back on Trump’s second state visit confined to Windsor dont lets forget the agreement he signed with Starmer to ‘cooperate’ in building a ‘golden age of nuclear’ and the unproven small modular reactors they are threatening us with. And dont lets forget the unthinkable amount of time it takes to process the nuclear fuel. So unthinkable that noone talks or thinks about it.
I noted that there was a puff piece with people advocating lifting the ban on nuclear power in Scotland on Reporting Scotland last week. There was little of the famed BBC impartiality with hardly any time given to opponents of nuclear power.
There appears to be some sort of concerted campaign to convince us CNNof the need for/benefits of nuclear power. Unfortunately for this lobby nuclear power has always been pretty unpopular with people in Scotland and elsewhere unless they are employed in the nuclear industry. The fact that Scottish Labour are touting nuclear power plants in Scotland, when we are already exporting renewable electricity to elsewhere in UK says everything about their attitude to Scotland and political awareness of Scottish electorate.
The money would be far better spent in Scotland on developing other forms of more consistent renewable power such as wave power etc, storage, upgrading the grid, insulation and reducing energy costs.
Yes there’s a long-term concerted lobbying for new nuclear led by this mob but backed by Labour and the Tories.
Fallout is excellent, by the way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_(American_TV_series)
Also, removing artefact line breaks from PDF copy-pastes is good practice.
Aye, cheers? Aye, right! Mair like…………
“the unproven small modular reactors they are threatening us with… ”
Think it’s true that no civilian SMRs have been built anywhere in the world. Military ones do exist in submarines of course. The UK has 21 old nuclear subs being decommissioned, seven of them languishing at Rosyth. These mini (modular?) nuclear plants are fabulously expensive to dispose of. Check Navy Lookout .com for overview from what you might expect would be a sympathetic source. It isn’t… as costs are so high and threaten purchase of conventional ships.
Meanwhile the Labour party whitter on that more AI server farms should come to Scotland to use up our surplus wind power. But they also say we still need nuclear in Scotland with all its legacy as illustrated with the Rosyth subs. (?)
Apparently the north of Scotland has the most ungreen electricity in the country because it relies on Peterhead power station, and I havent heard the citizens of central Scotland complaining about where the majority of their electricity comes from. However, if Torness closes, a lot of it will come from burning gas. That would include the power for district heat-pump stations if anyone is up for excavating every road in every town for the required super-insulated piping and building very large heat-pump stations. Don’t ask me where the propane required to make a gas compression/expansion heat pump, fridge, or AC comes from.
Sorry, modern fridges use ammonia. AC’s / heat-pumps use propane.
www . carbonintensity . org . uk (remove spaces)
If you check this site and scroll down to the map you will see that the North of Scotland area often runs on 100% wind power. Even when gas goes into the mix it’s a fraction of what English & Welsh regions use. Southern Scotland does use nuclear of course. The overall Scottish mix is very low carbon and even without nuclear it could use surplus wind in pump storage to provide baseload. Other suggestion of making green hydrogen with surplus wind power is a good one possibly.
It’s a very wet, dreich and cold start to the year. So it’s good then to be talking about nuclear, power, sustainability..again!
It’s possibly too simplistic to say ..follow the money.. and the bag carriers..but if you do, you can see just exactly who’ll make money out of nuclear. Whether massive scale, Hinckley, or SMRs, there aren’t “profits”, nuclear is so expensive, it generates subsidies and waste.
The state has to provide the inducement/subsidies/to both build and attract investors. And those investors remove their bonuses, especially when it’s a foreign investor, e.gFrance and EDF. Most candy floss presentations gloss over this, especially since it would remind us that the U.K. state has virtually handed over all control of “energy” to foreign investors,China,Norway just two more.
But the state will have to show some income / alleged profits/ generated, and not just fork out subsidies and other attractions, possibly tax breaks and no penalty clauses if building and actual, production is delayed.
Guess what? That income/profit will become increased prices to the consumer. The output of energy isn’t cheaper and the pricing will stay with central government, currently Westminster. Surely an Indy Scotland wouldn’t choose that?
But if there is a new nuclear programme about to start, will indy come too late?
Seriously asking then how do we get the info over..nuclear bad…think waste disposal and “accidents” before other demerits?
How can the benefits of state control ( partial or total ) local participation, partnerships, c operatives, renewables become the reasoned way forward ?