The 'voodoo economics' of the nuclear industry have been laid bare in a new report, writes Frank McDonald.
NO NUCLEAR power station has been built anywhere in Europe without public subsidy. So Irish taxpayers should be very concerned about talk of building one here because they will have to foot the bill - both to subsidise its construction and underwrite the long-term liabilities of decommissioning and radioactive waste disposal.
That's one of the many lessons to be drawn from Voodoo Economics and the Doomed Nuclear Renaissance, a major report published last week by Friends of the Earth - compiled by Paul Brown, former environment correspondent of the Guardiannewspaper who has kept a sharp eye on the British nuclear industry for more than 20 years.
Inevitably, media interest in Ireland focused on the report's revelation that Sellafield now has the world's largest stockpile of highly-toxic plutonium (103 tonnes) and uranium (30,000 tonnes), as well as vast quantities of other radioactive waste, which the industry is "struggling to deal with" despite billions of pounds of investment.
The broader context was the British government's decision last January that four new "third-generation" reactors would be built at existing nuclear power stations, probably Hinkley Point (Somerset), Bradwell (Essex), Dungeness (Kent) and Sizewell (Sussex) - ostensibly in the interest of energy security and to help fight climate change.
However, as the report points out, this new nuclear programme would cut gas imports by just 7 per cent and carbon dioxide emissions by only 4 per cent.
Brown also says that British ministers are "trying to dupe the public" into believing that massive subsidies won't be needed this time "although all the evidence is to the contrary".
He cites the French-designed evolutionary pressurised water reactor (EPR) currently under construction in Finland, which will be the largest built to date at 1,600 megawatts. It was to have started producing electricity in 2009, but is two years behind schedule and (though no one will say) the cost over-run is believed to be around €1.26 billion.
The Finnish EPR was to be delivered at a fixed price and has had to be heavily subsidised.
"This is being done by a guarantee by heavy industry to buy the electricity output, and by export credit guarantees by the French and Swedish governments. The extra costs will, therefore, fall on French and Swedish taxpayers."
In France, which generates 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power, the report says the public "pays for the nuclear industry twice, through its electricity bills and again through its taxes. The true cost of nuclear energy in France is a state secret and has never been disclosed."
Britain's first choice for a new generation of nuclear reactors is likely to be the French EPR following an Anglo-French summit deal last March to co-operate on nuclear matters.
"This was interpreted by Downing Street officials as meaning that the UK would rely heavily on French expertise to help build its first new nuclear stations," it says.
But the report notes that, without government underwriting and financial guarantees, commercial reactors "cannot get the backing they need from investors...Attempts to privatise Britain's nuclear industry by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s were abandoned, and only went ahead in 1996 because the selling price was so low..."
Within six years, British Energy, the company that acquired eight advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs) for less than the cost to taxpayers of building just one of them, "faced bankruptcy and had to be bailed out by the taxpayer. British Energy was rescued because to shut nuclear stations down would have meant power shortages.
"The privatised nuclear industry got such a good deal it is now in the happy position where the shareholders get the profits but if anything goes wrong a second time the taxpayer picks up the bill."
As Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office put it in March 2006, "the taxpayer is responsible for underwriting a large and uncertain liability".
At Sellafield "technical failures across all its operations are driving costs up rapidly. Targets for reprocessing spent fuel, producing new fuel and dealing with wastes are being missed. Despite government assurances otherwise, the site has become the world's nuclear dustbin as increasing quantities of foreign and British nuclear detritus pile up."
It continues: "On the figures available, with the size of the known undiscounted liabilities rising, it may need a remarkable juggling act and a great deal of the nuclear industry's voodoo economics to keep the company [British Energy] afloat while a new generation of nuclear power plants is built"; the fallback position is that it would be "re-nationalised".
As the report says, the history of this industry "makes one wonder how Gordon Brown could believe for a moment that his government's decision to give the green light to more [nuclear power] stations would usher in a new atomic age for Britain".
Frank McDonald isIrish Times environment editor