nuclear-news

David Lowry’s Blog 4th Oct 2018

At the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham this week, energy minister Richard Harrison asserted on a 100% pro-nuclear panel: “I still believe the whole base case with nuclear power that we do need this base of power production,” while widely praising  new nuclear as reliable and increasingly  cost-competitive.
(https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/energy/nuclear-power/opinion/nuclear-industry-association/98770/arguments-nuclear-power-have)

It makes you wonder who briefs him.

A week or so earlier, a pro-nuclear lobby group, New Nuclear Watch Institute, which masquerades as a think tank, issued a tendentiously inaccurate 34 page report, arguing that new nuclear is essential to meet  carbon emission reduction targets. It was reported in The Guardian

In response I wrote this unpublished letter, below, correcting certain factual mistakes:

Here we go again! Your energy editor’s on line article  (“Abandoning nuclear power plans ‘would push up carbon emissions,” 26 Sept) reports lobby group the New Nuclear Watch Institute as claiming nuclear power is both low carbon and its alternatives “ will raise the cost of electricity.
All the robust evidence demonstrates the opposite in both cases. Just over a year ago you published a letter from me challenging the low or even zero carbon claims of nuclear ( “Beware nuclear industry’s fake news on being emissions free,”17 Sept 2017;www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/17/beware-nuclear-industrys-fake-news-on-being-emissions-free)
In my letter from a year ago, I pointed out I had challenged this nuclear low carbon myth in your columns 12 years earlier. (“There is nothing green about Blair’s nuclear dream, “ 20 October 2005<https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/oct/20/greenpolitics.world.
I said in my letter a year ago “It  is about time this dangerous falsehood was confined to the dustbin of history.”
Sadly it seems, like Freddy, it seems it is going to be resurrected each mellow autumn!

Here are some of the more egregiously challengeable extracts  from the report……..

https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/2bb616_6657309359e9460f86801598980dc296.pdf

http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.com/2018/10/low-carbon-myth-of-nuclear-power.html