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With the UK’s domestic oil and gas supplies fast running out (we are now net importers of oil), “the days of cheap and plentiful supplies of indigenous energy are over”, trade and industry secretary Alan Johnson announced this week as he launched a review into the needs of Britain’s energy industry over the next 50 years.
There’s no argument from anyone that long-term we have a problem – particularly as supplies from Russia and the Middle East prove themselves to be increasingly insecure – but in his statement, Johnson also said that the Government was starting the review with “an open mind”, something that has kicked off a great deal of argument, as many commentators took it to mean that nuclear energy was no longer off the UK’s energy agenda.
About time too, says The Times. By 2020, Britain will have lost 30% of its electricity supply thanks to the decommissioning of older nuclear and coal power plants. Yet at the same time, “whatever gains are made in energy efficiency, and no matter how many people remember to turn off that lightbulb”, our economic growth and changing lifestyles mean that by that time we are going to be using 15% more energy than we do now.
The question is how on earth to meet that demand in a relatively secure way while still having a hope of meeting our current targets of reducing the carbon intensity of the economy to 10% of current levels by 2050. Right now there are only two technologies that look like they “fit the bill”: nuclear power and coal gasification with carbon capture (known as clean coal).
Unfortunately, the technology for clean coal has still not been perfected, which means that, like it or not, the best and “cleanest” option available to us is nuclear. None of the other ‘green’ alternatives have the slightest chance of being able to meet our energy needs.
Nuclear energy, clean? Hardly, says The Independent. Currently, we have 2.3 million cubic metres of nuclear waste stored in the UK – “more than enough to fill the Albert Hall five times”. Yet the smallest amount of the most potent type could “kill an adult within two minutes – and it remains lethal for one million years”. The cost of burying what we have is estimated at £85bn, so before we consider creating more of it, shouldn’t we clear up the mess we’ve already made?
Nuclear isn’t safe either, says The Guardian. And not just because of the deadly radioactivity it dumps us with for thousands of years. We also have to take into account that, if we decide to build more nuclear power stations, we will surely lose our moral right “to argue that a nation like Iran should not do the same”. And that’s a dangerous path to go down: let’s not forget that obtaining uranium for energy production was “North Korea’s route to nuclear weapons”. Plus nuclear is very “bad value for money”.
That was once true, says The Times. But not any more. The economics of nuclear energy have “changed with higher oil prices”: today, producing it is a stand-alone profitable business. Those in any doubt about this, points out John Stepek in MoneyWeek’s Money Morning, should bear in mind that the UK Government, one of our “surest contrarian indicators”, is in the middle of selling off Westinghouse, the publicly owned nuclear power station builder. What more evidence could you need that nuclear is “gaining support across the globe”. Investors who want to benefit should get some exposure to “the commodity that fuels it – uranium”, says Stepek.
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Annunziata Rees-Mogg
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