Using the wrong arguments

Tweet Last week, the Druid hosted a keen debate about Wylfa B after posting on the government’s attitude to a consumer-funded levy. It looks increasingly as though the framework being set by the UK Government for a new generation of nuclear power stations makes the proposed Wylfa B an unlikely prospect.

If the power station never gets built as a result, I’d see that as good news; but it seems to me to be the wrong reason for stopping the development – just as most of those arguing in favour seem to me to be using the wrong arguments. I suppose there’s a certain irony there, though. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with subsidising nuclear power if we think it’s the right energy policy - after all, we subsidise renewables on that basis.

But I've never understood why so many of those who support the building of new nuclear power stations do so primarily on the basis of the jobs it would create. I think I could make a much stronger case on other grounds.

It's not that it wouldn't bring good, well-paid jobs; nor that we don't need such jobs. It's more that those jobs could equally be provided on the basis of a policy of using renewable energy, so the need for jobs is not a valid argument for favouring one energy policy over another. Coal mining also provides jobs; but it's not a reason to build new coal-fired power stations.

There are a number of arguments against nuclear energy. For me the single most important one has long been that we simply don't have a worked out solution to the issue of nuclear waste. (And, associated with that, there is the little matter of economics. If we don't know what we're going to do with the waste, we don't know what it's going to cost either – and that means that we really don't know the cost of nuclear energy. I am utterly convinced that, whatever the politicians say, the taxpayer will end up picking up the cost for decommissioning and waste management.)

But there are arguments in favour as well, and if I was going to make a case for supporting a new nuclear station, I'd make it on the basis of energy security and on environmental grounds, not jobs. I still don't personally believe the case to be strong enough, mind; but I'm conscious that I'd then have to argue against the likes of James Loveluck and Sir John Houghton, both of whom have come to the conclusion that nuclear energy is something we have to embrace. And I've certainly heard Sir John make a powerful case.

What would it take to convince me?

I have to admit that I'd start to waver a little if the UK Government were to announce that it would decommission all the UK's nuclear weapons and use the plutonium therein as a nuclear fuel. That would be a real case of 'swords into plough shares'.

It still wouldn't be enough though. What I would really need is to be satisfied about the management and disposal of waste; and we're nowhere near achieving that. Without that, the abiding problem of nuclear energy is that we buy plentiful secure electricity today at the cost of leaving a dangerous and costly legacy to the future. And that's why I believe that it's still right to argue against nuclear energy.