Should we build new nuclear power stations?

Jan 30 2008 by Darren Devine, Western Mail

More than 25 years ago when a group of Welsh women helped make Greenham Common a symbol of global nuclear weapons’ protests every local authority in Wales declared itself opposed to atomic power. But long after the dust has settled in the Berkshire peace camp the nuclear debate rages on following the announcement that a new generation of atomic power plants is to be built in the UK. Darren Devine reports

TERRY and Eirlys McDaid know better than most in Wales how the destruction wrought by a nuclear accident lingers through the generations like radioactive waste.

Every year the couple, from Waunfawr, near Caernarfon, take the children of Belarus into their home in the hope that the rejuvenating air of Snowdonia will help them fight the health problems that are the legacy of Chernobyl.

Though it’s now almost 22 years since reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in the Ukraine, exploded the ripples created by the tumult are still causing havoc in Eastern Europe.

These ripples include the children who, though yet unborn at the time of the disaster, now bear a burden of deformities and year-round flu-like symptoms.

No-one knows precisely how many people died after Chernobyl went into meltdown in April 1986. The Soviet authorities forbade doctors to record the word “radiation” on death certificates after the accident.

But the World Health Organisation estimates at least 4,000 died of cancer after the catastrophe.

Terry and Eirlys, members of the Chernobyl Children Lifeline, believe there is no stronger argument against building new nuclear power stations than the youngsters who arrive from desolate Belarusian villages every year.

Children like 12-year-old Katya Buldenko struggling with the kind of heart murmur that is all too common for youngsters reared on the produce of soils left contaminated by Chernobyl.

Mr McDaid, 52, said, “I’d love the Government to go down a different road, but the Government will only do what they want to do.

“They’ll take no notice of us.”

As recently as a year ago, 349 farms in Wales were still under restrictions because of the radioactivity carried from Chernobyl by the wind.

But Mr McDaid suggested the problems in North West Wales had as much to do with nuclear power stations here, like the now decommissioned Trawsfynydd, near Blaenau Ffestiniog, and Wylfa, on Anglesey, as Chernobyl.

“Look at the cover-ups they had in Ffestiniog where they blame Chernobyl on the radiation fall out, but it was there anyway.

“There were a lot of cover-ups and they blamed Chernobyl for a lot of things. But nuclear power is going to happen, though I disagree with it, because the general public don’t realise the consequences.”

Maintenance engineer Mr McDaid says for children like Katya the annual journey to North Wales can add a couple of years to their life expectancy.

“Many children have flu-like symptoms all-year round because their immune system is not strong enough to fight it.

“But when they come here their immune system recovers a lot. It gives them another two years extra life because they can then go back and fight another day.”

Mr McDaid also believes health officials have attempted to play down the significance of substantially higher- than-average rates of childhood cancers around Cumbria’s Sellafield nuclear plant.

Research in 2002 showed the children of men exposed to radiation while working at Sellafield had double the normal risk of developing cancers like leukaemia and lymphoma.

Debate has long raged about possible links between the Cumbria plant and suggestions there is a local cluster of childhood cancers.

But critics have suggested an apparent increase in cases could be due to the large numbers of people moving in and out of the area, increasing the likely spread of cancer-causing infections.

Also other researchers have suggested the late professor Martin Gardner, who first suggested a link between the doses of radiation received by fathers and the incidence of leukaemia among their children, over-estimated the effect by a factor of four.

And nuclear power’s supporters say comparisons with overseas plants like Chernobyl are spurious because the monitoring regime here is far more rigorous than in Eastern Europe.

Also, the leader of Anglesey County Council Gareth Winston Roberts believes the economy of North West Wales would be dealt a devastating blow by the loss of Wylfa.

Wylfa supplies the nearby Anglesey Aluminium plant with cheap power, saving the company up to £4m a year.

Between them the companies employ around 1,500 workers or one in ten of the island’s entire workforce.

Two years ago a study commissioned by Anglesey Council and the Assembly Government said the loss of Wylfa would cost the economy £42m.

Mr Roberts is concerned the potential closure of Wylfa could also mean the end of Anglesey Aluminium.

“The closure of Wylfa and the possible closure of Anglesey Aluminium would mean the loss of £42m.

“Losing Wylfa would mean losing top quality jobs and more young families from Anglesey, which is obviously a problem for us.

“A new Wylfa would create around 1,500 jobs over the eight years that it would take to build.”

Mr Roberts has been in discussions with energy companies about building a new station on Anglesey.

He believes that with nuclear power accounting for a fifth of the country’s electricity generation the Government had little choice but to sanction the building of new stations.

He said, “You have to think about the security of our national power supply for future years.

“It’s important that we don’t become dependent on some rogue state deciding to put the oil price up to the point where we can’t afford it.

“At the moment the oil price is $100 a barrel. Now if you compare the costs of nuclear power from generation to waste it’s comparable with most other fuels because oil has more than doubled and coal has its problems.”

But irrespective of the rights and wrongs of nuclear power the prospect of a new Wylfa is firmly in the balance.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which owns 20 UK nuclear stations including the Anglesey plant, says Wylfa is “more suitable than some other sites”.

A spokesperson said, “Certainly from some of the early work that has been done it would suggest Wylfa is a more suitable site than some of the others.

“There are considerations in the South of England that some of the sites there are more likely to be prone to coastal erosion and climate change than sites elsewhere.

“There is a whole balance to be taken into account.”

At the moment the NDA is trying to get permission to extend Wylfa’s licence for a further six months until the end of 2010.

Beyond this the NDA say a feasibility study will be conducted to see if Wylfa can remain open beyond 2010.

But in order for Wylfa to stay open after 2010 the Sellafield reprocessing plant, where waste fuel rods from the North Wales plant are sent, would also have to continue functioning. However, the UK Government is a signatory to the Ospar convention, which has ruled nuclear discharges from Sellafield will end by 2016.

Jackson Consulting, the firm employed by the Government to look at the future of nuclear power, has said Anglesey would be suitable for the development of one new reactor.

But this would be only after Wylfa closes because of limited potential for connection to the national grid in North Wales.

The consultants said a twin reactor post Wylfa would require planning consent for a new connection to the national grid.

But First Minister Rhodri Morgan is a long-standing opponent of a new nuclear station on Anglesey, saying that with Prenergy Power’s plans for a major biomass plant in Port Talbot, Wales can avoid the atomic option.

However Mr Morgan’s views may have no impact on the eventual outcome as, unlike the Scottish Executive, the First Minister’s Government does not have the power to determine energy policy.

Across the UK there are 19 reactors at 10 power stations, but all except one is due to close by 2023.

The last one, Sizewell B in Suffolk, is scheduled to close in 2035.

The nuclear industry employs around 40,000 workers in the UK and supports another 40,000 jobs indirectly.

Major energy firms such as E.On, EDF, Centrica and RWE have expressed an interest in being involved in new nuclear projects.

The link between the military and civil applications of atomic technology was unbroken in the first generation of nuclear power plants.

When the nuclear industry began life with the arrival of the first station Calder Hall, at Sellafield, in 1956, reactors were designed to produce both weapons grade plutonium and generate electricity.

Britain was determined to be a world leader in putting technology associated with the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II to a peaceful purpose. But the brave new world of nuclear power that held out the chance to provide a cheap power source that would reduce dependence on oil and gas never quite materialised.

Both Government and the industry itself underestimated the costs associated with the technology and the time it would take to deliver new stations.

Workers finished their careers on Dungeness B, construction of which started in 1965 but was not completed until 1983. The plant did not make its first contribution to the electricity market until two years later.

Uncertainty over the disposal of nuclear waste and the costs of de-commissioning (£72bn) meant the taxpayer had to bail out British Energy, the company which owns many of our nuclear stations, at a cost of £3bn in 2004 .

As a result, critics say an industry that began life with hopes of enabling the UK to become a world leader in selling energy overseas ended up as a heavily subsidised burden on the public purse.

Across Europe there are those who have embraced the technology, such as France, which has 59 reactors generating 78% of its electricity from nuclear power, and others committed to abandoning it, such as Germany and Spain.

Following the Government’s recent announcement, Friends of the Earth Cymru director Gordon James said the notion that the lights would go out without nuclear power is misleading.

“The energy shortfall can be made up by other options, such as the planned gas-fired power stations, offshore wind farms and combined heat and power systems. The proposed nuclear expansion programme will only ever cut the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions by 4%.”

And academics and research bodies have backed the idea that security of energy supplies is possible without going down the nuclear route.

In November 2007 the Institute for Public Policy Research said the country could cut its CO² emissions by 80% by 2050 without building any new nuclear power stations.

Energy economist Dr Catherine Mitchell, from the University of Warwick Business School, has warned that building a new generation of nuclear stations will undermine support for renewables.

But Government and the business community are sticking resolutely to the position that nuclear must remain a significant part of UK energy production.

David Rosser, director of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Wales, says the environmentalists have ironically helped to win the day for nuclear by arguing so vehemently for the need to reduce carbon emissions.

He said, “Ironically for the environmental campaigners, their very success in getting the message out about climate change and the need to reduce carbon emissions in our power generation has created the climate in which nuclear power is seen as largely inevitable.

“The case has not been made well enough that wind power and other forms of renewables can generate power in such quantities and with sufficient reliability to keep the lights turned on.”