Foley / Buren Nuclear or Not?

Choices for Our Energy Future
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4831-6310-9
Verlag: Elsevier Science & Techn.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten

Nuclear or Not? Choice for Our Energy Future documents the proceedings of a Royal Institution Forum held in October 1978. The Forum brought together the Friends of the Earth and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to discuss their opposing views concerning energy policy and nuclear power in the UK. The volume begins by presenting the opening address given by Dr John Cunningham, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the UK Department of Energy, where he emphasized the Government's commitment to open debate and the need to 'ensure that the development of nuclear power does not outstrip public acceptance and understanding of what it involves'. The remainder to the text is devoted to the papers presented and discussions held during separate sessions on the energy problem, strategies for the future, alternative energy sources, the technological demands of nuclear power, the international proliferation of nuclear weapons, and policy steps for the UK. The text concludes with a review of the Forum.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Foley, Gerald

Buren, Ariane van

Leseproben

Introduction

Gerald Foley and Ariene Van Buren

Publisher Summary

This chapter discusses that the proportion of energy consumed as electricity is a determinant of the energy policy adopted. Although electricity provides its benefits at the flick of a switch, it also entails large energy losses in generation. Million tons of coal equivalent provides a convenient measure of the total energy a country consumes. However, it conceals the diversity of end users to which fuels are put. The single-line projection of energy demand conveys a totally spurious impression of uniformity. It conceals critical dependencies on particular fuels; oil for example would be extremely difficult to replace as a transport fuel; it may also conceal ways in which a concerted effort at conservation might yield benefits greater than 10% to 15%. There is no doubt that huge energy savings are technically possible. The role one attributes to conservation is probably the largest single factor determining the energy demand one projects.

In Britain, so far, the nuclear debate has remained calm. North Sea oil has removed a great deal of the pressure to find new ways of supplying the country’s energy. Moreover, there is an embarrassingly high amount of electricity generating capacity already available. The latest power station, Drax B, was ordered despite the Central Electricity Generating Board’s protests that it was not yet needed. Total electricity consumption in 1977 was just 0.17% higher than in 1973, whereas power station ordering through the late 1960s had been based on anticipated growth rates of 5% or 6% per annum.

Britain has thus been spared the urgency felt in other countries, where government determination to press on with major nuclear programmes is driven by their heavy, or total, dependence on imported oil. Britain’s position, with a mature nuclear industry and no great urgency to expand it, permits it to hold a relatively relaxed debate on its own policies and on the effects of nuclear development in the rest of the world.

The Windscale Inquiry into a proposal by British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) to build a thermal oxide reprocessing plant (THORP) lasted a hundred days over the summer and autumn of 1977. Substantial cases presented by the main environmental groups took the arguments well beyond the details of fuel processing and queried the justification for any British nuclear power programme at all. In preparing their evidence and presenting it to the Inquiry, the protesters attained a formidable level of expertise and forensic skill.*But Windscale was a long drawn-out affair, at times tediously legalistic and technical, and it lacked the immediacy and public appeal of a face to face confrontation.

Friends of the Earth and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority had been considering such a debate for a long time. In the spring of 1977 they agreed with Sir George Porter, Director of the Royal Institution, to hold it as a two-day Forum in the following October. It would also be an opportunity to update the Windscale arguments and test them in front of an audience. The Royal Institution has long been concerned with the relationship between science and the public and was an ideal place for the event.

As a neutral organising team, we had to obtain the agreement of the two sides to the structure and format of the debate and the topics to be discussed. This required a gradual synthesis of quite different views and a certain amount of ‘shuttle diplomacy’. Detailed specification was necessary if the debates were to have the sharp focus everyone wanted, but the more precise the definition the more difficult it became to agree the titles and the brief to the invited opposing speakers. The choice of a topic and its description can too easily suggest the conclusion: for example, the subtitle of Amory Lovins' recent book is Towards a Durable Peace'; a lecture by Edward Teller published in the UKAEA journal, , February 1977, was called ‘Pollution by Poverty: the Need for Nuclear Power’. Neither side was prepared to concede that kind of advantage to the other.

But both were willing to compromise so that the debate should include all the subjects that people wanted to discuss. Nevertheless — or perhaps as a consequence — their rather different conceptions of the logical structure remained unresolved. Friends of the Earth saw the first day as an elucidation of the context and critera — economic, social, and political — for choosing between energy strategies; the second day was to examine the difficulties and dangers associated specifically with nuclear energy. The AEA, on the other hand, wanted the first day to subject the so-called ‘renewable’ energy sources and strategies based upon them to the same sort of criticism that nuclear power would be receiving on the second day.

The result was that, during the first day, most speakers attempted their own definition of the energy problem and their own strategy for the future. Although this frustrated the attempt to provide the debate with a logical progression it certainly enriched the discussion. The diversity of arguments demonstrates how many ways there are of combining and optimising the variables. The future is not predestined: it is a matter of deliberate policy. In the words of one member of the audience, ‘Planning is not so much about prediction and forecasting, but about trying to make the future happen in a way that we want.’

The pro-nuclear speakers argued that a satisfactory future will require greatly increased energy supplies — rising demand was essentially taken as given and unalterable without unacceptably restricting people’s freedom and lifestyles. The other side suggested that a change in attitude towards wasteful consumption was essential and that demand forecasts should be based on a thorough investigation of how much energy we actually need to sustain our standard of living. It is not enough just to try to provide energy in ever increasing amounts. Equally, if not more, the problem is one of rate, and of objective: how quickly and towards what ends we use the energy we have. Throughout the debate, there was this fundamental difference in attitudes towards consumption but for the most part it remained implicit. Although many people declared the need to focus on future lifestyles, few attempted to describe exactly what they meant by this.

Even if we agree that the economy will have to expand how should this expansion take place? Should new industry be capital intensive, energy intensive, or labour intensive? The proportion of energy we intend to consume as electricity is a determinant of the energy policy we adopt. Although electricity provides its benefits at the flick of a switch, it also entails large energy losses in generation. Whether electricity demand is projected on the basis of past trends or tailored down to just those activities it suits best, such as lighting, motive power, and electronics, makes a huge difference to the amount of energy we have to dig up out of the ground or harness from the world about us. Alone, it dictates the size of any nuclear programme.

The level of aggregation of energy forecasts also makes a difference. ‘Million tonnes of coal equivalent’ provides a convenient measure of the total energy a country consumes. But it conceals the diversity of end-uses to which fuels are put. The single-line projection of energy demand — whether or not it points to a ‘gap’ which needs to be filled — conveys a totally spurious impression of uniformity. It may conceal critical dependencies on particular fuels; oil for example would be extremely difficult to replace as a transport fuel; it may also conceal ways in which a concerted effort at conservation might yield benefits greater than the 10% to 15% which is usually thought plausible when looking at the aggregated total. There is no doubt that huge energy savings are technically possible. The role we attribute to conservation is probably the largest single factor determining the energy demand we project.

Although their starting points were widely different it is surprising how much agreement the speakers established. Both sides have made significant concessions when one compares what they are saying now with what they were saying a few years ago. There is a growing awareness of the difficulties inherent in any energy strategy; changes in the patterns of energy supply carry implications for the whole economy and may put at risk much of what we take for granted. The readiest consensus was that we should keep all our options open. Any technology which has a chance of being developed into a reliable and reasonably economic means of harnessing energy should receive support in funds for research, development, and demonstration. Solar, wind, and wave power proposals are now taken seriously by nuclear spokesmen where they were formerly treated as fantasies. No one was suggesting closing down the nuclear industry. We were, in fact, slightly disappointed by the lack of fireworks which all had expected when planning the debate.

The opening address to the Forum was given by Dr John Cunningham, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the UK Department of Energy. Political figures are well-known for saying nothing of substance on occasions like this, but Dr Cunningham’s contribution was unambiguous and forthright. He emphasized the Government’s commitment to open...