a note on nuclear power

Posted on April 18, 2006 by acb

There is an aerated letter in the Independent today from a Lib Dem spokesman in the Guardian complaining that the Finnish government is buying French nuclear reactors. This only makes sense, the writer says, because of huge state subsidies on both sides. But isn’t this one of the things that states are supposed to do? The argument in favour of nuclear power is that the foreseeable alternatives are worse. A world with too much nuclear waste is better than one where electricity is in short supply. Now, we won’t know whether these really are our choices for another 25 years or so. But it is hardly inconceivable that oil — and energy generally — will be come very much more expensive and that in 25 years time nuclear power will be clearly the least worst option. But of course, the power stations take a long time to build, and to integrate. So there is a kind of market failure here. Keeping your nuclear industry going with subsidies until it is profitable seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing for a government to do; if it does become profitable, it will be very profitable indeed. And wouldn’t you rather buy French engineering than American?

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4 Responses to a note on nuclear power

  1. Drew says:
    April 18, 2006 at 12:17 pm

    Seems to me that most of the people who know about these things – scientists by and large – contend that nuclear power isn’t just undesirable because of all the pollution it would produce, but because it wouldn’t even solve the problem it is supposed to solve. Remember “this”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4778344.stm ?

  2. Rupert says:
    April 18, 2006 at 10:23 pm

    I think that depends on what problem you think nuclear power is trying to solve. Reducing carbon emissions before the tipping point, well, perhaps not, but I think that battle’s lost. Keeping the lights burning when for whatever reason we can’t carry on with oil and gas, perhaps. We can (will have to) do without a lot of things we think we need, but any retreat from electricity is going to make Napoleon’s departure from Moscow seem like a sunny picnic on Parliament Hill.

    R

  3. acb says:
    April 18, 2006 at 10:30 pm

    Quite. (didn’t you stand as a Green candidate in local elections once?). I was reading some warhard on an American blog this morning who said, as part of the price he was prepared to pay for the joys of nuking Iran, “The Europeans will have to walk to work for a while” — I think there are still far too many people who think that a real energy shortage will only mean foreigners walking to work.

    Anyone else remember the three day week?

  4. Rupert says:
    April 20, 2006 at 2:06 pm

    The only thing I remember about the three day week was my father getting extra petrol ration stamps (they were never used, but they were issued) because of his job. But we were remarkably self-sufficient anyway, with large parts of the Vicarage garden given over to vegetables, chickens, bees and the like. You thought The Good Life was fiction…

    Yes, I was a Green Party candidate for Newham Council in the 80s, which was the last time the Green Party looked like making a difference (remember the 20-30 percent it got in the Euro elections?) and the last time the mainstream parties suddenly got keen on the idea. Since then, I’ve got more sanguine about the planet in general, more defeatist about what it takes to shift entrenched interests, and far less confident about our ability to spot unintended consequences even with the best will in the world. We have a planet bathed in sunlight and water, so I’m reasonably happy that if we decide to get smart about it we won’t run out of energy or things to eat and drink, and given that the environment managed to survive Oklo…

    R

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