Power and energy priorities must include the nuclear option

Published on Tuesday 17 February 2009 20:58

IMAGINE you're sitting at home one evening when the lights go out. You feel your way to the fusebox, but that's not the problem. You scrabble around and find a torch. You can see where you're going, but that won't light the whole house. You dig out some old candles, but they only give you small pools of gentle light. Maybe you can get by for a while, but neither the torch nor the candles gives you enough light to live by.

We all rely on having enough light to live by, and in the same way, we all rely on having enough energy to live by. For the past few centuries, that hasn't been a problem; we have been able to convert oil, coal, and gas into energy without worrying about the consequences. But that has changed.

The first big problem is that fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas are finite. They will run out. But even before they do, they will get scarcer, more expensive than many populations can afford – and uneconomical to extract. We need to stop relying on them.

The second big problem is that burning them gives off carbon, which heats the planet. Each year, more and more of us in northern Europe understand this might not always mean that from year to year in the short term we will see the weather outside our windows change. It means that from decade to decade, people in other parts of the world will.

The two problems both point in the same direction. Fossil fuels will run out – so we need to stop relying on them. The earth will reach a climate tipping-point if we carry on – so we need to stop relying on them urgently.

How can Scotland do it? Today, the majority of the energy that we use still comes from fossil fuels. We also access about a quarter from nuclear and about 13 per cent from renewable sources like the sun, the wind, and hydroelectricity. Over the next few decades, less of our energy will come from fossil fuels as old power stations shut: Cockenzie coal-fired power station will close in 2015, Longannet in 2020, Peterhead gas-fired station in 2025. At the same time, more energy will come from renewables; in 11 years, the government wants to use renewable sources to produce fully half of Scotland's energy. It is on target.

But even assuming we do manage to generate half of our energy from renewable sources by 2020, we need to think practically about how we generate the other half.

There is only one energy source which makes significant quantities of baseload electricity, makes it without giving off lots of carbon, and already works: nuclear. Scotland's Sustainable Development Commission now concedes nuclear power has "an impressive safety record in the UK".

International competitors are beginning to realise no other technology will make up the energy shortfall. Social democratic Sweden has just ended a 30-year ban, partly because nuclear is the only way it can meet its climate change targets. Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are moving in the same direction. Environmentalists are beginning to realise the same thing. George Monbiot now says opposing nuclear is now less important than preventing the harm from a radically changing climate. Environmentalists like James Lovelock and Mark Lynas support a nuclear solution. Advisers to Alex Salmond's government say the same. The Scottish Parliament's energy committee, the chairman of the committee advising the Scottish Government on climate change, and its council of economic advisers all say that if Scotland wants to make up the energy shortfall, we cannot rule out nuclear power.

Scotland's nuclear power plants are due to close, Hunterston B in six years' time and Torness in 2023. We need to replace them. The Scottish Government's insistence that we do not ignores the big picture.

Relying only on renewables or technologies that don't work yet would be like relying only on torchlight and candles when the lights go out. It would give us some energy to be getting on with. But it would not be enough energy to live by.