By James Kanter
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
PARIS: The British government is expected to introduce plans this week for a series of new nuclear reactors - a move that energy experts say could light a beacon for the beleaguered nuclear industry in other parts of Europe, where opposition to the technology remains strong.
Plans by the left-leaning government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown to replace aging nuclear plants would demonstrate a new era of pragmatism at a time when concerns about promoting low-carbon technologies and energy security have become paramount, said Luis Ech�varri, director general of the Nuclear Energy Agency, an organization based in Paris that advises industrialized countries on nuclear power.
"I think that this U.K. message will be very influential in Germany," said Ech�varri, citing one of several European countries where nuclear power has been or is being phased out.
"Gordon Brown comes from the Labour Party, and he's very committed to climate change," Ech�varri said. "So this is a very clear indication that you have to be pragmatic and not fall into the trap of saying, 'We are on the left, and nuclear is bad.' "
He added, "Nuclear can be one of the right ways to fight against climate change, and so that message is no longer valid."
In an announcement to be made Thursday in Parliament, John Hutton, secretary for business and enterprise, is expected to encourage companies to build and operate plants as part of raft of new legislation on energy and climate change. He is not expected to set precise targets for how many nuclear stations will be needed, or to say what proportion of power they will supply.
Nuclear reactors supply about 20 percent of electricity in Britain. But because those reactors are aging, the government has no choice but to shut all of them down over the next 30 years and to lay the groundwork for new investments if it wants to keep nuclear part of its energy mix.
Nuclear operators could be called upon to pay the full costs of decommissioning and a "full share" of the costs for waste disposal, a spokesman for Brown said this week.
Critics warned that hefty fees could be passed on to consumers in the form of higher bills.
The nuclear industry languished for decades after accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979, and at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986 aroused fears about the safety of the technology. The cost of building nuclear power plants has since generated further concerns, including from the Labour government in Britain, which this decade branded nuclear power "an unattractive option."
Now the nuclear industry is seeking to capitalize on growing concern that generating power from fossil fuels like coal harms the atmosphere, that relying on oil and natural gas from unstable parts of world jeopardizes energy security and that renewable sources of power will be insufficient to fill a looming energy shortage.
The British announcement "will be very, very important," said Gerald Doucet, secretary general of the World Energy Council, a group based in London that represents the interests of energy producers across several industries. "Nuclear power is here to stay, not just as a solution to climate change but to meet the needs of British industry and the public for new electricity capacity."
Even so, the recent spurt in nuclear projects has fallen short of a so-called nuclear renaissance heralded by some sections of the nuclear industry, Doucet said.
Nuclear power generates about 16 percent of electricity globally, he said, down from a peak of about 17 percent in 2001.
Some of the most promising orders for companies that design nuclear power stations like Toshiba of Japan and Areva of France have come from China, which plans to spend more than $60 billion on new nuclear power plants by the end of the next decade.
Embracing nuclear power is a more difficult proposition for governments in the European Union, where more than half of member states still use nuclear power but where opposition to the technology persists and has made any widespread expansion impossible.
France has the most nuclear plants in Europe, and they generate about 80 percent of the country's electricity needs. Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia are planning new reactors, while Finland and France are expanding their nuclear capacity. But governments in Sweden and Germany have committed to phasing out nuclear power, and that continues to cast a long shadow over the long-term viability of the industry.
The Belgian government imposed a moratorium on new nuclear power plants in the late 1980s, although it has permitted capacity upgrades to existing plants.
Italy imposed a moratorium on the construction of plants during the late 1980s and no longer operates any nuclear power stations.
In Germany, a government run by Social Democrats and Greens agreed in 2000 to the phase-out because of the industry's perceived safety risks. Germany decided to close all its reactors, which supply a third of its electricity, by 2021. While some members of the conservative-led government under Chancellor Angela Merkel maintain a pro-nuclear stance, they have been stymied by having the Social Democrats as their coalition partner.
Among the companies that are ready to participate in the building and operation of new reactors in Britain are the German utility E.ON and �lectricit� de France, said Colette Lewiner, who monitors energy for the Capgemini consultancy in Paris.
"The British decision sends a very strong and positive signal to the industry," Lewiner said. "Britain will be the first European country after Finland and France to build new reactors, at a time when Belgium and Spain are revisiting their positions on whether to keep a moratorium on new nuclear facilities," she said.
Environmental groups like Greenpeace say that British taxpayers already face a huge bill for disposing of existing nuclear waste. They would prefer that Britain's power supply gap be bridged in future by renewable sources like wind and solar power, energy-efficiency measures and clean use of fossil fuels. Greenpeace sued the British government in 2006 for misrepresenting the economic case for nuclear power, and that forced the government in February to undertake a more detailed consultation.
On Tuesday, Ben Ayliffe, a spokesman for Greenpeace in London, said that the consultation had been flawed, and he hinted at further legal action if the measures announced Thursday failed to deal adequately with questions concerning waste and cost.
"We believe it would be unlawful to give the green light to new nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom," Ayliffe said.