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UK’s Nuclear roadmap is a massive detour

UK plan reveals true ‘energy’ agenda is pathway to nuclear weapons sector

By Jonathon Porritt, Beyond Nuclear 6 May 24

After 14 years of Tory mismanagement, the UK finds itself bereft of an energy strategy.

This was finally confirmed in the release of the Government’s new Nuclear Roadmap. At one level, it’s just the same old, same old, the latest in a very long line of PR-driven, more or less fantastical wishlists for new nuclear in the UK. But at another, it’s a total revelation.

For years, a small group of dedicated academics and campaigners have suggested that the UK Government’s Nuclear Energy Strategy is being driven more by the UK’s continuing commitment to an “independent” nuclear weapons capability than by any authoritative energy analysis. For an equal number of years, this was aggressively rebutted by one Energy Minister after another, both Tory and Labour.

The new Nuclear Roadmap dramatically changes all that. It sets to one side any pretence that the links between our civil nuclear programme and our military defence needs were anything other than small-scale – and of no material strategic significance. With quite startling transparency and clarity, the Roadmap not only reveals the full extent of those links, but positively celebrates that co-dependency as a massive plus in our ambition to achieve a Net Zero economy by 2050.

“Startling” is actually an understatement. Such a comprehensive volte-face is rare in policy-making circles. Every effort is usually made by Ministers to obscure the scale (let along the significance) of any such screeching handbrake turns. That is so not the case with the new Roadmap.

Courtesy of the latest forensic work done by Professors Andy Stirling and Phil Johnstone at Sussex University (who have been absolutely at the forefront of seeking to bring these links into the public domain over many years – often with mighty little support from mainstream environmental organisations, let alone “independent” commentators), chapter and verse of this volte-face can be laid bare. Just a couple of examples from the Roadmap:

• “Not only does this Roadmap set a clear path for the growth of nuclear fission…it acknowledges the crucial importance of the nuclear industry to our national security, both in terms of energy supply and the defence nuclear enterprise.”
• “Government will proactively look for opportunities to align delivery of the civil and nuclear defence enterprises, whilst maintaining the highest standards of non-proliferation.”
• “To address the commonalities across the civil and defence supply chains, and the potential risk to our respective nuclear programmes due to competing demand for the supply chain, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is working closely with the Ministry of Defence and the Defence Nuclear Sector.”

And there’s a whole lot more than that! As Andy Stirling has said: “Without any reflection on what this says about previous efforts to suppress discussion of this issue, the Government is now openly emphasising its significance.”

Indeed!

As usual, the UK’s ill-informed and unbelievably gullible mainstream media would appear to have missed the significance of this gobsmacking inflection point. So one can hardly expect them to have grasped its even more significant implications for UK energy strategy as a whole. In every single particular.

Let me briefly unpack some of those particulars:

1. Nuclear

The new Roadmap reads like an outing to a massive nuclear sweet shop. On top of Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, we’ll have one more big one. And then we’ll have lots of Small Modular Reactors, all over the country. And we’ll have a new fuel processing plant. And a new Geological Disposal Facility – at some much more distant point. And so on and on. 24 fantastical Gigawatts to be designed and delivered by 2050.

The reality couldn’t be more different:

• We will indeed end up with Hinkley Point C – at a staggering of cost of somewhere between £26 billion and £30 billion, with consumers paying twice as much for its electricity as they will for offshore wind. And it will almost certainly not come online until the end of the decade, 15 years on from the time it was meant to be up and running.
• We may possibly get Sizewell C, though the Government cannot currently guarantee the required level of investment. So a Final Investment Decision is unlikely before the next Election. At which point, Starmer may come to his senses and kill off this absurd white elephant.
• We will never get a third big reactor. The economics are literally impossible to justify.
• We are unlikely to get more than a couple of hugely expensive Small Modular Reactors, at some indeterminate point in the future, even with a new “flexible approach” to planning and financial inducements. Even that may prove to be an illusion. As Professor Steve Thomas has written: “Advocates of Small Nuclear Reactors claim they are cheaper and easier to build, safer, generate less waste, and will create many jobs compared to existing large reactor designs. These claims are unproven, misleading, or just plain wrong. Worldwide, no commercial design of SMR has even received a firm order yet.”
• And we may or may not get life extensions for the last five power stations in the “legacy fleet” – subject to regulatory approval, which may not be all that easy given extensive cracking in their reactor cores.

In short, the Roadmap is just a massive diversion from reality. Entailing incalculable opportunity costs. And putting at risk our entire Net Zero by 2050 strategy.

Ministers know all that. But they don’t really care. Our nuclear weapons programme (including upgrading Trident) will be protected as a consequence of this, via an unceasing flow of public money into the civil nuclear cul-de-sac, at a time when our defence budget is already massively overstretched. So who cares about the missing 24GW?

2. Renewables

We’ll continue to see new investment into renewables here in the UK, despite (not because of) government policy, which has seriously messed up our offshore wind industry, maintained a de facto ban on onshore wind, couldn’t care less about solar, witters on vapidly about tidal without doing anything etc etc.

Meanwhile, on a global basis, renewables continue to boom………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The reasons for this almost complete silence can be traced back to successive governments’ grim intent to hang onto our so-called “independent nuclear deterrent”. At literally any costs……………………………… more https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/05/06/nuclear-roadmap-is-massive-detour/

May 7, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK