Out of Its Depth Waste- Renewable Energy Potential Some Partnership

Energy Inefficiency Skewering our energy future UK Nirex _ out of its depth Waste a b~rning ISSUe Renewable energy potential Some partnership COMMENT UCLEAR POWER is on the are the bold claims of being the profit will be temporary and pale into ropes, and it's only round cheapest source of electricity, now msignificance when staked against the N one. The bell has rung for the they say that one day in the not too industry's liabilities. The 'City' will long-awaited government review of distant future all other energy sources not be slow to notice this. nuclear power and already the press will become very expensive and make It won't be the 'City' which saves is writing it off. nuclear power look cheap. An old nuclear power from extinction, that threat. Yesterday's technology? Too ex particular privilege belongs to pensive? What are we going to do with They say that there is no nuclear waste government if it dares! the waste? How are we going to crisis, who would believe that, If there is any resurgence in the dispose of decommissioned power certainly not UK Nirex. The costs have industry's fortunes it will be because stations? These are all questions which all been quantified and can be met by the government has bought its have been asked in the columns of modem power stations, but not by the dubious environmental claims and august newspapers - the Financial old ones. So they now want us to sell rudimentary rejection of renewable the PWR and the AGRs to the highest Times, The Times, The Independent and energy and energy efficiency backed bidder while the taxpayers, who have of course The Guardian - questions by dean-coal technology. which have failed to find answers already paid for decommissioning worth taking seriously. nuclear power stations, will be left Although the current debate may be holding the bill for the bulk of the economics-led we must remember it is The nuclear industry's three main liabilities. protagonists - Nuclear Electric, environment-driven, and only by Scottish Power and the Nuclear Utilities Nothing has really changed for driving home nuclear power's alarming Chairmen's Group - have all nuclear power despite bold environmental implications can we submitted their evidence to the statements of new prosperity made in warn the public, the 'City' and Departmentoflndustrywell in advance the companies' annual reports, any ultimately the government that nuclear of the 30 September cut-off date. Gone gains in productivity or operating power is simply too hot to handle. AILING THE MYIH that there That report has led to a further the ART Osprey and the PS Frog, were is only a small renewable downgrading of wave power and its excluded from the '94 study because N energy resource, the Energy virtual exclusion from government the analysis in the '92 review had not Technology Support Unit's (ETSU) RD&D funding - a move which put been sufficiently rigorous; the third latest report ("Renewable energy poten at risk European Union (EU) funding device, the SEA Qam, was costed at tial", page 18) shows that renewables for two UK wave power projects. 8-9p at only one specific site and at exactly 10.3p at other potential sites. could meet the UK' s electricity needs. It The 1994 assessment gives a tiny is a useful contribution to the debate on 'accessible resource' for offshore wave So, we have a total accessible resource future energy supply, but once again power, using a lOp per unit of which could be met by just five ART E'ISU has downphiyed wave power. electricity (8% discount rate) cut-off. Ospreys, priced at 7p in the '92 study and now being developed off Ever since 1982, when the govern The justification for its findings is the Dounreay with EU support. ment's wave energy programme was 1992 wave energy review; yet three of cut in suspicious circumstances, ETSU the seven offshore devices considered Wave power has, for over a decade, has taken an unduly negative view of in that report were costed at less than suffered from an unjustified lack of wave power. lOp per unit. enthusiasm at ETSU. There is a real risk of the self-fulfilling prophecy: Tom Thorpe, while undertaking ETSU's explanation to Safe Energy for ETSU's 1992 review, tried hard to ETSU says there isn't the technology this apparent anomaly is coherent, but to exploit the resource, the mend fences with wave research not convincing. teams, but still the cost estimates for government cuts RD&D funding, the wave power were overly pessimistic. Two of the devices costed below lOp, technology isn't developed, QED. 2 Safe Energy 101, Summer 1994 SAFE ENERGY CONTENTS FEATURES 8 Energy inefficiency Regulation of the gas and electricity industries, and its interpretation by the regulators, is preventing the promotion of energy efficiency. With the Energy Saving Trust seriously underfunded, the government's programme for reducing carbon dioxide emissions is in disarray, argues Pete Roche, a Greenpeace campaigner. 10 Skewering our energy future With the government's long-promised nuclear review now under way, Mike Townsley looks at the arguments being put forward in the submissions by Nuclear Electric, Scottish Nuclear and the Nuclear Utilities Chairmen's Group. 13 UK Nirex- out of its depth IfUK.Nirex is allowed to proceed with its plans for an underground nuclear waste repository atSellafield by 2010, public safety will be compromised, warns Friends of the Earth (FoE) in a new report. Dr Patrick Green, FoE's rad waste campaigner, summarises serious deficiencies and contradictions in Nirex's programme. 14 Waste - a buming issue Should waste incineration remain part of the government's Non Fossil Fuel Obligation? Max Wallis of the University of Wales, Cardiff, and Alan Watson of Friends of the Earth Cymru look at the environmental issues and consider the best approach to the waste problem. 18 Renewable energy potential The size of the UK renewable energy resource which could be practicably used for generating electricity is greater than the country's present electricity demand. Graham Stein reviews the findings of a new study by the government's Energy Technology Support Unit. 19 Some partnership Since donning green garb in the eighties and calling for a partnership with renewable energy, the nuclear industry has taken it upon itself to provide information about renewables as well as nuclear power. Graham Stein reports that it promotes a consistent and inaccurate view: renewables are a good thing but they can't make a major contribution to energy supply. S.fe Energy 101, Summer 1994 3 for completion of its repository is the Many US utilities built their nuclear Nirex all wet most realistic yet. in Rwmac's view, it stations with limited storage facilities, does not account for the possibility of believing that the government would take NCONSISTENCIES between regulators demanding further tests. Knill possession of their radioactive waste in I computer models and observed further warned that within "a small 1988. However, after paying some $10bn groundwater flow at Sellafield cast number of years, although not in fees to the government. many will run considerable doubt over Nirex's choice immediately ... the storage issue will be out of storage in the next few years. of the site for a deep dump, according critical." to the government's Radioactive Waste Nirex, however, is not unduly disturbed • Several hundred police, in a dawn raid, Management Advisory Committee by Rwmac's criticisms. A spokesperson removed over 400 protesters from a (Rwmac). for the company said that the past year's makeshift village outside the proposed The committee's 14th annual report research had left it "more confident, not nuclear dump site at Gorleben in states that "a very significant amount of less" that Sellafield would eventually Germany, at the beginning of July. work will have to be done before the state prove suitable. While the action remained peaceful, of knowledge of the Sellafield area could Nirex is expected to submit a planning with the police showing good faith by be sufficient to provide a confident basis application for a £200 million Rock arriving unarmed, the move has for the detailed assessment of the safety Characterisation Facility sometime in the highlighted the growing confusion over case for a deep repository." next few weeks. Germany's plans to dispose of its nuclear While Nirex's computer models show waste. groundwater flow through the area • Meanwhile, things across the Atlantic The Lower Saxony state authority, in moving steadily away from the site into appear to be moving just as slickly for the which Gorleben lies, controls the state rock deep under the Irish sea, Rwmac dumping industry. police and ordered them not to charge any chairman Sir John Knill said it was "just A coalition of US state utilities a!ld of the protesters, but the district authority as conceivable" that groundwater would regulators has filed a suit accusing the banned any public assembly, forcing the flow up from the volcanic rock, in which federal Department of Energy (DOE) of police to take action. the waste would be buried, through the defaulting on its promise to take spent The federal government in Bonn and sandstone above it and onto the surface. fuel. the state authorities have been a "A few years ago," said Knill, "we Under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy loggerheads for the past two decades over thought Sellafield would be a simple site, Act the DOE was to begin accepting waste plans to dispose of high-level waste in a in fact it is incredibly complex." in 1988 but the Department is now salt mine currently being excavated at the Not only did Nirex's computer models arguing that the federal government is not site.

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