Facing two ways at once

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I agree with those campaigning against the dumping of ‘nuclear mud’ off the cost of Wales that we should not allow Wales to become a dumping ground for waste created by others.  There’s some question over the extent to which the waste is, in fact, radioactive, but whether it is or isn’t is irrelevant to the question of whether we should be accepting it or not.

We need to be wary, though, of double-edged swords.  If the starting point is that a country or territory creating toxic (including nuclear) waste needs to find its own method of disposal within its own territory, then it follows that anyone supporting the construction of a facility likely to create such waste must be willing to retain and dispose of the waste created once that facility is completed and operational.  Assuming that the waste is a problem for ‘somebody else’ to resolve is simply hypocrisy.

In Wales, and in the case of nuclear waste, this is a particular problem for Plaid.  Whilst some members of the party are actively campaigning against the dumping of mud from Hinkley off the coast of Wales, others are openly arguing for the construction of new nuclear power stations in Wylfa and Trawsfynydd, without ever seeming to say anything about what happens to the radioactive waste which will be produced.  But if it is wrong for England to dispose of its problem in Welsh waters, it is surely equally wrong for Wales to assume that the waste arising from any new nuclear power stations in Wales can simply be exported – whether to England or to anywhere else.

Those who support the construction of new stations – and I include in that category those who try to argue that extra facilities built on new sites are somehow not ‘new’ at all – need to be prepared to explain to people how and where they intend to dispose of the waste.  Anything else is just dishonest.

Managing our legacy

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Yesterday’s Western Mail contained an outline of the processes involved in decommissioning a nuclear power station.  I can’t find the story online, but it doesn’t really matter – with a few changes of verb tense, it was identical to this story published in the same paper in December last year.  (As I commented yesterday in relation to another issue, I suppose it saves on the cost of journalism.)

The article itself set out the steps which need to be taken to decommission a nuclear power station, in a process which is planned to take a total of 90 years.  In the case of Trawsfynydd, we’re already more than 20 years through the process – only another 70 to go.  In the case of Wylfa, we’re just starting; almost all of the people born this year in Wales will be dead before the job is finished, to put things in a human perspective.

Wylfa 2, if it is ever built, is scheduled to produce electricity for 60 years before its own 90 year decommissioning process starts.  According to the plans, the company which runs the site for those 60 productive years will be paying for the 90 years’ decommissioning process at the end of that.  I doubt it – that’s not the way capitalism works.  The belief that any profit-driven company will put enough money aside over six decades to fund an essentially unknowable cost over the following nine decades strikes me as being akin to believing in fairies.

But worse still is that no-one knows what to do with the waste recovered in the decommissioning process.  As the report to which I linked above puts it: “Meanwhile, everyone is crossing their fingers and hoping that someone will find a safe place to bury it before [the 2040s]”.  Yes, that’s right – it depends on a vague hope that someone will come up with a solution which has eluded us for the past 50 years.

We can’t do much other than hope for a solution in relation to the nuclear stations which were built so optimistically in the 1950s and 1960s.  We’re stuck with the legacy of nuclear waste bequeathed to us by those who took the decisions at the time.  We can do something, though, about the legacy that we leave to our great, great, great, great, great grandchildren in relation to Wylfa B.  We could resolve not to leave them the same legacy that was left to us, by not building the plant in the first place.

Keeping Wales tidy

Tweet Back in the 1970s, one wag produced a poster which read ‘Keep Wales Tidy – Dump your rubbish in England’.  It was intended to be humorous, although the extent to which it actually raises a smile probably depends on your sense of humour.  I didn’t think, though, that anyone actually took it seriously.  Perhaps I was wrong on that after all.

The question of Wylfa B and nuclear waste is one that I’ve referred to before.  One of the problems that supporters of Wylfa B have is that the construction of a new nuclear power station will inevitably lead to the production of more nuclear waste.  We can’t have new nuclear stations without generating more waste, and that waste has to be stored and handled somewhere.

Trying to wash their hands of any responsibility for the consequences of their support for a new nuclear station means that supporters of Wylfa B are following the advice of that spoof poster – keeping Wales clean by demanding that someone else takes our rubbish.  But wanting the (alleged) benefits with none of the downsides is an irresponsible and selfish approach; hardly the sort of approach which would make an independent Wales a good world citizen.

My nationalism is based on wanting to see Wales taking her place in the world, taking our own decisions, and accepting both the consequences and the responsibility for them.  There’s something very odd to me about nationalists seeking to avoid responsibility for the consequences of the policies they espouse. 

I remember hearing Gwynfor arguing that Wales will be free when the people of Wales start thinking and acting as a free people.  Assuming that someone else will deal with our problems on our behalf falls more than a little short on that score.

Let’s dump nuclear waste in Ynys Môn

Tweet That’s only a half joking suggestion.

Talking about fracking just before Christmas, I noted that it was dishonest for anyone who supports greater use of gas in generating electricity to then oppose fracking.  If we use gas, we need supplies of gas; assuming that we can get them elsewhere is simply dumping our environmental problems on someone else.  The total availability of gas – and therefore the world price – has been transformed by fracking in the United States; and energy policy based on gas thus depends explicitly on fracking, either at home or abroad. 

There’s a similar problem with nuclear power.  Building new nuclear power stations depends on there being facilities available for storing, processing, and disposing of nuclear waste.  It’s equally dishonest for proponents of Wylfa B to make – as many seem to – the implicit assumption that those facilities will be available “somewhere else”.  Supporters of Wylfa B would sound much more honest to me if they were also lobbying to have nuclear waste stored and dumped in Ynys Môn.  I won’t hold my breath on that.

Those of us supporting renewables can’t escape a similar problem either, although some seem to believe that they can.  Building wind turbines means we need infrastructure – power lines and substations – to get the electricity into the grid.  Whilst there’s always scope for debate about the detail, such infrastructure has to go somewhere.  Arguing for wind power and then opposing the infrastructure would again be dishonest.  So as someone who accepts the need for that wind energy, I also have to accept the need for that infrastructure as a consequence of my preferred energy strategy, and I’m prepared to argue for that.

Politicians arguing for any of those three approaches to energy policy and then opposing the inevitable concomitants are not simply dishonest; they are in a sense promising something which they know to be impossible. So let’s hear the argument for nuclear waste storage on Ynys Môn.

Nuclear Reassurance

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Three councils in Cumbria have been consulting on a proposal construct an underground nuclear waste dump for the last four years.  They seem to be quite keen on the idea of acting as host for the UK’s nuclear waste; or rather on the millions of pounds’ worth of ‘sweeteners’ promised by the UK Government.

It was the comments of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s engineering director which caught my eye.  After talking about the need for the facility to keep the waste secure for hundreds of thousands of years, and of having to ensure that the material could be prevented from getting out even if Britain was hit by another ice-age glaciation, he told the Sunday Times that “The upside is that after 2m years, it should be mostly harmless”.

Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it?

Look what the wind's blown in

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Yesterday’s publication of a report on the comparative cost of different electricity generation scenarios by AF Consult (available by following the link from here) was well-trailed in advance.  It was also well-knocked in advance, as the government and renewables industries got in their pre-emptive first strike. 

The headline from the report is a suggestion that the UK’s binding carbon reduction targets can be met more cheaply by building gas and nuclear power stations rather than wind turbines.  It will be like manna for those opposed to wind turbines, of course.  But then, if it really is possible to meet the UK’s targets by a cheaper means than governments are currently pursuing, why wouldn’t we want to do that?

As ever, it isn’t quite that simple, and although ‘if’ is a small word, in this case it represents a large caveat – or rather, series of caveats.

The first, and most obvious, is that it assumes that the targets set for the proportion of electricity which must come from renewable sources can simply be ignored.  Breaking an international obligation – the target is a binding one – is not exactly a minor issue.  For sure, if the target is the wrong one, then one can argue that it should be renegotiated; but simply to assume that it can be ignored is not a safe assumption to make.

And it is assumptions which go to the heart of the problem with this report.  It’s based on a complex mathematical model.  There’s nothing wrong with that; lots of things are based on mathematical models.  But models are only ever going to be as good as the assumptions with which they start; and in this case, my main argument with the conclusions isn’t the methodology or the calculations performed, it’s the assumptions which act as the starting point.  And if the assumptions are wrong, it's hardly likely that the conclusions will be very robust.

Not all the assumptions are explicitly stated; nor would I expect them to be.  But four in particular are worth more attention.

The first is the question of future fuel prices, and the comparison between fuel prices.  They have used the central estimates from a DECC study.  That’s an entirely reasonable thing for the report authors to do; they have to start somewhere.  The question, though, is whether the DECC have got it right, and on that point, I’m sceptical. 

One of the big advantages of renewables is precisely that they are not vulnerable to fuel price shocks during their operational life (although, obviously, variations in fuel price can affect construction costs, this is a small factor in the overall cost comparison).  Gas prices, on the other hand, can be much more volatile.  The volatility is generally upward as world demand increases, although I’d accept that shale gas – if we decide to exploit it – could change that equation.  But to what extent do we want to gamble on the price – or, potentially worse, put ourselves in a position where we are dependent on fracking?

The second big assumption concerns the cost of decommissioning nuclear plant and nuclear waste management.  Again, the report’s authors have, entirely reasonably, used the assumptions to which the UK Government is working, and which were detailed in a DECC report from Parsons Brinckerhoff in 2011.  They had to start somewhere; my problem with that, however, is that since no-one is yet entirely certain how waste will be managed for the long term, there is a high degree of uncertainty about the costs involved.  Experience suggests that they are more likely to increase than to decrease.

The third big assumption is that at least some of the new gas plants can be fitted with CCS technology.  This assumption is key to achieving the required reduction in carbon emissions, but as the report itself conceded, the technology is to date unproven on the large scale required.

And the fourth is that we do not expand the production on electricity to increase its use in heating and transportation.  If we do make such an increase, then the carbon reduction targets cannot be achieved with the fuel split used in their scenarios.  We would have to use renewables.

I agree with the UK Government assessment that this paper is badly flawed.  The tragedy is that it will, nevertheless, be recycled regularly in the local and national press by anti-wind campaigners who will claim that it ‘proves’ that we shouldn’t be building new wind turbines.  It actually proves no such thing (and didn’t even set out to prove that, merely to compare the costs of alternative approaches of meeting a target).

Over-riding local views

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One of the cornerstones of my own political outlook is the idea that democracy should be both as local as possible and as participatory as possible.  But one of the big stumbling blocks is “what happens if, or rather when, local people take the ‘wrong’ decision?”.  It’s when nice idealistic theory meets hard practical reality.

The UK Government has got itself into a bit of a corner on the question this week, over the establishment of a site to bury low level radioactive waste.  What makes it harder for them is that the minister who’s taken the decision is the same Communities Minister who’s trumpeting localism as a principle, and piloting the Localism Bill through parliament.

Unfortunately for the government, albeit entirely predictably, the people living in the area of the proposed tip don’t want it.  In a local referendum, 98% of them voted against it; and the local county council voted unanimously against it as well.  I suspect that most, if not all, local communities would react in similar fashion to such a proposal.

The government have, of course, relied on ‘expert advice’ that the site will not be ‘harmful’ in coming to their decision to ignore local opinion.  Well, yes; but the experts aren’t necessarily local, and decision-making on the basis of expert advice isn’t the same thing as empowering local communities.  Nor is ‘expert advice’ in itself sufficient reason to disregard local opinion.

It’s not a situation which is unique to the question of nuclear waste.  There are parallels with the protest earlier this week outside the National Assembly against the infrastructure which will be needed to transmit power from mid-Wales windfarms to the National Grid.  In both cases, the government is trying to implement a cohesive overall policy, whereas local opinion is opposed to the impact on themselves.

By stretching the point just a little, we could also draw a parallel with some EU decisions, where ‘local’ opinion – even if ‘local’ means the UK – sometimes opposes those decisions.

In every case, the larger body, I am sure, would argue that it is acting for the greater good of the whole.

In the specific, it’s clear that nuclear waste has to be disposed of somewhere, and ultimately it is the responsibility of government to identify where.  But they shouldn’t expect the waste to be welcomed with open arms, wherever they decide to put it.

The underlying quandary is one with which I’ve long struggled.  How local is local, and how much decision-making should be local?  And, for those of us who believe that power is not something which comes from the centre and can be passed down, but something which belongs to the people in the first place, on what grounds should other people ever over-ride local wishes?

The legalistic answer would be that parliament has determined which powers reside where, and parliament has given the minister the right to over-ride local opinion in this case.  My problem with that is that parliament’s right to decide is predicated on the assumption that the power belongs to parliament (on behalf of the sovereign, naturally) in the first place.

Some suggest a ‘financial’ answer, based around an input of cash into the local community from either the government or the developers so that they see some direct benefit from accepting an unwelcome proposal.  Others see that as a form of bribery.

A more honest answer is that communities sometimes have to pay a price for belonging to a greater whole; membership of a wider community has both benefits and costs.  Building a more localised society and maintaining the consent of the governed requires rather more work in spelling out that balance, and that communities accept it.  What governments generally do in practice, though, is to simply carry on regardless.

If it is to be more than a mere slogan, building a more localised and empowered network of communities requires a complete change of approach, which seeks the active participation and support of local communities rather than just using raw power.  It depends on a more informed populace as well. 

It’s about more than simply persuasion; it’s a different paradigm.  Believing that it can be achieved by passing legislation or offering cash rewards simply shows how little some politicians really understand the issue.