Nuclear power and Climate Change - a Liberal Democrat challenge

The Liberal Democrats have opposed nuclear power for many years, and with good reason. Nuclear power stations and, in particular, nuclear weapons have been seen as a threat to our safety and security. Nuclear waste has rightly been seen as a burden we should not be visiting on the generations that will follow us.

But now we face a new and immediate challenge that requires us to look again at the issue of nuclear power. Tackling climate change requires us to make dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions. Can we afford to ignore the contribution that nuclear power, as one of the few viable and existing large scale near zero carbon technologies, has to make?

It is Christian's view that nuclear fision can only be a bridging technology in the 21st century - the future must lie in the transformation of the National Grid, the development of new battery technologies and the conversion of all buildings into a renewable energy-based power stations.

It is deeply shocking that the UK only generates 0.5% of the solar energy generated in Germany and only 12% of the wind power generated in Spain.

The government has dithered for so long on renewables that we are faced with a dilemma in the immediate future as to how we avoid the lights going out while a coherent long term energy future is delivered. The speech below was delivered by Christian to the Liberal Democrat regional Spring conference in Hull on 16th February 2008.

Motion on Co2 Emissions and nuclear power

We Liberal Democrats can be rightly proud that we have led British politics on environmental matters for decades. That leadership has been based on principle and not on expediency or dogma. I therefore put it to you, conference, that we must again show courage on this issue.

In recent years Climate Change has come from nowhere to take first place among the environmental challenges facing our nation and the world. In the light of our growing understanding of the urgent need to tackle climate change, it is time for us to have the self-confidence to re-examine our position on one of the issues of our age, namely the issue of nuclear energy.

This is not to abandon our environmental credentials nor is it to abandon all the other elements of our policy on energy. Indeed this motion re-iterates the hierarchy that must lie at the heart of any realistic policy for tackling climate change.

1. Improving energy efficiency and reducing energy demand.

2. Increasing renewable energy production

3. Reducing reliance on fossil fuels

4. Developing clean technologies.

Al Gore has said that there is no silver bullet for tackling climate change, only silver buckshot. This is true. While we can indulge ourselves by imagining all the world's power being provided by either solar panels, the truth is that it is a combination of all the technologies available to us and all our resourcefulness is required to make the dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions that are urgently required by 2050.

Much is hoped from emerging clean technologies such as carbon sequestration or CCS carbon capture & storage. But as of now, all these technologies are only at the pilot stage. We are decades away from them playing a significant role in combating climate change. And we have to succeed before 2050.

There is an existing zero carbon [or near zero carbon] technology available and that is nuclear power.

I put it to you that we are no longer a protest party. If we aspire to govern we must show the ability to be pragmatic, demonstrate an ability to revisit and reconsider, and show the courage to make the tough choices governments have to make. It may be that a technology that was rejected in the past for very sound reasons must now play its part in tackling the catastrophic threat posed by climate change.

There are two principle objections to nuclear power:

1) the issue of nuclear waste, and

2) the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons

David King, until recently the Chief Scientific Advisor to government has written: 'É the waste from a new generation of (nuclear) power plants will add only a small fraction to the amount that already exists in countries that have relied on nuclear power in the past. In the UK, for instance, replacing every current (and soon to be decommissioned) nuclear power station with a new one, and running these stations for forty years, would increase the country's existing waste levels by a mere 10 per cent.'

In other words, the problem of nuclear waste already exists and does not go away if we discontinue all our nuclear power stations. The situation has changed because the new generation of nuclear power stations is so much more efficient than those built forty years ago. We cannot simply pretend that nothing has happened in all those intervening years.

With regards to the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, the whole world is right to be concerned but, for example, the IAEA [the International Atomic Energy Agency] has been quick to pick up the threats posed by North Korea and Iran and the international community is fully engaged with controlling the spread of nuclear weapons.

At heart, concerns about nuclear power centre around safety - the world we inhabit and the world we leave to those who come after us. That is precisely the challenge posed by climate change. Only with climate change the question is not one of how we keep a lid on Pandora's box, it is one of how we act decisively on a huge scale to turn the clock on something that is already happening.

We all agree that this government is failing badly on tackling energy efficiency in transport and in buildings, on reducing energy demand, on installing intelligent metering in every home and business, on bringing Swedish levels of insulation into homes, on increasing the amount of renewable energy being generated, and so on. That is not at issue.

Renewable energy generation has increased by only 1% since 1990. But you cannot blame a pathetic record on renewables on the existence of nuclear power. It is quite possible to do both and, if our situation is as critical as many believe it is, it may be absolutely necessary to do both.

The government's refusal to ring-fence revenue from the European Emissions Trading System, an agreed EU wide levy to help nations develop clean technologies, is a total disgrace and we must ensure that the whole nation understands the difference between Gordon Brown's self-congratulatory rhetoric on climate change and his total failure to act on tackling climate change. That is why this motion also calls on the government to invest all revenue derived from the European Emissions Trading System into the reduction of CO2 emissions and the development of clean technologies.

But we must also face up to this question: Is our nation capable of making the dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions required of us, by 2050, without incorporating nuclear power into the action plan?

It is ironic that so many are so keen to say they are the greenest of greens and to praise the work of pioneers such as James Lovelock right up until the moment that those same pioneers tell us to look again at nuclear. Suddenly, the praise is qualified and those who have been at the heart of recognising climate change as an issue are dismissed as mavericks. Suddenly the scientists we have been happy to quote as our environmental champions become the stereotypical dangerous boffins or mad scientists we must shield ourselves from. Because we don't like what they are telling us.

It is my belief and the proposition of this motion that the urgency of our battle to reduce CO2 emissions requires us to look again at the issue of nuclear power and to properly understand why it is that so many experts in the field are telling us that a realistic programme to tackle climate change can no longer afford to ignore the contribution nuclear power has to offer.

You have seen the charts, I am sure. You know how dramatically our emissions are increasing. It is not for nothing that the scientific community is shouting that climate change the biggest challenge facing us.

That is why we are calling for the establishment of a working party to produce a detailed report and policy statement on nuclear power in the light of our changing circumstances for consideration by the national party at its autumn conference later this year.

Published and promoted by Christian Vassie, 10 Blake Court, Wheldrake, York YO19 6BT