The news should come as no surprise. Britain’s Conservative Party made it clear on the campaign trail that, in government, it would “promote” the building of a new generation nuclear power stations, continuing a policy that had been put in place by the outgoing Labour government. Now eight potential sites have been officially rubber-stamped by the UK government. It looks like nuclear is back with a vengeance.

The Liberal Democrats may have been long-standing and vehement opponents of nuclear power, but when the deal that confirmed the new Cameron/Clegg coalition was published, it was obvious that this was an area of policy on which the party had made major concessions. Not even the fact that Energy was one of the ministries snaffled by the Lib Dems made a difference.
“The Minister, Chris Huhne, is now at odds with members of his own parliamentary party and with the grassroots,” says Ben Ayliffe, senior nuclear campaigner with Greenpeace. “He has undergone an atomic conversion on the road to Whitehall for whatever reason. The Conservatives are in favour of new nuclear and Chris Huhne is in the unfortunate position of being in a department that’s trying to make this happen.”
Energy supply is a real issue for the UK. Britain will lose as much as 30% of its power station capacity over the next decade, as antiquated nuclear and coal-burning plants reach the end of their lifespan. According to Ben Webster, environment editor of The Times in London, the reality is that Huhne needs the nuclear industry to start building.
“Britain needs more and more electricity,” he says. “We have to close the old plants and meet our carbon reduction targets, which nuclear can do – it’s a carbon-free way of generating electricity. The irony is, Huhne is now trying to bend over backwards to help the nuclear industry build.”
It was Huhne who gave the green light for eight new reactors, all in the vicinity of existing plants, including Sellafield, the colossal facility on the edge of the Irish Sea, where the high-level radioactive waste from Britain’s 24 nuclear reactors currently goes to be reprocessed or stored indefinitely.
A new generation of plants will mean more waste going into the storage ponds at Sellafield. Ayliffe warns that the waste generated by modern nuclear plants is far more dangerous than that from the older ones currently operating in Britain.
“The problem with building new reactors,” he argues, “is that’s adding to the stockpile of radioactive waste. The problem is magnified because, to get more power, the new reactors burn at a higher rate and the waste is more irradiated – it’s three times more radioactive.”
Nice.

SAFETY CONCERNS
There is some good news: radioactivity in the Irish Sea is currently at its lowest level since the ‘70s, according to a recent report by the Isle of Man’s government laboratory. The Manx scientists found low levels of radioactive contaminants in lobster meat, which resulted, they believe, from the movement of radioactive sediment on the seabed.
Ben Ayliffe is adamant that the construction of a new plant at Sellafield will increase the incidence of this type of sediment-related contamination in the Irish Sea, with inhabitants of the east coming under new threat.
“If they put intake pipes into the Irish Sea to get water to cool the reactors, that will churn up the radioactive sludge on the floor of the sea,” the Greenpeace campaigner states.
And now for the really scary bit: Britain’s safety watchdog continues to report a litany of problems at Sellafield. The most recent report by the Nuclear Inspectorate Division of the Health and Safety Executive, covering April to August 2010, reported two incidents at a storage silo for radioactive waste where “safety mechanisms were not properly connected and in service.”
That conclusion follows a familiar pattern. Following an incident last January when tanks storing highly radioactive liquid waste suffered a dangerous disruption to their supply of cooling water, the inspectors found that Sellafield Ltd was flouting the law in relation to health and safety.
The inspectors were also critical of the time it is taking Sellafield Ltd to decommission old units - the ones that are potentially most unsafe. In addition, Sellafield has failed to meet a requirement to store 90% of intermediate-level waste in modern, stainless steel containers, while progress in providing an emergency pumping system on a radioactive waste storage pond was deemed “disappointing.”
Also in relation to emergency arrangements, the watchdog found that “shortfalls in management/supervision, training and alarm response documentation were evident.”
Ben Ayliffe is unequivocal in his views on all of this. “Sellafield is an atomic nightmare,” he says. “The things that go on there would have to be seen to be believed. It’s going to be very difficult to clean it up, and the obvious problem for Ireland is that it’s just over the Irish Sea.”
Not that our Government seems overly concerned…

KITE-FLYING
Will eight new nuclear reactors in fact be built? The Greenpeace campaigner believes there’s a certain amount of kite-flying going on at the moment. The nuclear industry is making a lot of noise because it wants to retain its position high on the energy agenda; for their part, the British Government clearly needs to look like it’s tackling Britain’s energy needs.
“If we believed everything the nuclear industry said and everything the government said, there’d be 10 or 12 nuclear stations springing up out of the ground in time for Christmas,” says Ayliffe.
“The government haven’t said they’re actually going to build them. It’s up to the companies to do that. In the ‘80s, Thatcher said there were going to be 10 new plants and we got one, Sizewell. For the government, it’s about looking like they’re taking action.”
There’s a risk, however, that while nuclear is being debated, investment in renewable energy like wind will end up on the backburner in Britain.
“If you look abroad at Spain or Germany, there’s a massive clean technology industry. The danger here is that the longer we waste time talking about new nuclear, the less money there will be for new technology,” says Ayliffe.
“Nuclear is presented by a lot of people as a key part of the energy strategy. It’s not. It’s shrapnel. It’s unnecessary because there are better, safer, cheaper technologies. And it’s dangerous. There is the intractable problem of highly radioactive, lethal nuclear waste – and we haven’t found an answer to that.”
This one will run and run…