How to debunk the nuclear lies

Common Weal urges Scotland's politicians not to take Common Weal's word for anything contained in this briefing. Instead, we would encourage them to find out this information for themselves via a series of short web searches.

Today they are once again being pressured by what is quite clearly the commercial interest, which is spending most time and money trying to influence Scotland's election – the nuclear power lobbyists. It seems that few weeks pass without claims that Scotland's wellbeing is at risk if we don't dash for new nuclear power generation.

The Nuclear Industry Association is not a neutral source of information but a commercial lobbyist. When it is in the newspapers claiming that nuclear power has “helped contain the rise in bills by providing reliable, competitive low carbon power generation”, it needs to be challenged. We have provided this information dozens of times, so perhaps it will stick better if people discover it for themselves.

First suggested web search: “What is the most expensive way to generate electricity?”

Given that by a long margin it is new-build nuclear power, why do the lobbyists claim the opposite? It is simple dishonesty. For a number of years, this line has been used unqualified, but it is only vaguely true because the nuclear plants are at end of life and the capital investment has been paid off. That makes them competitive with renewable energy, where the capital isn't paid off.

Of course, if the capital investment is paid off on renewables, the cost of generation is basically zero. So Common Weal agrees – if you've been paying excessive profits into the nuclear industry for 40 years to the point that their ageing plants are briefly competitive for a short period at the end of life then that provides a case for maintaining them as long as safely possible. But:

Second search: “In the UK, who pays for the decommissioning of nuclear power stations?”

That's right – you do, not the nuclear lobbyists. It is an attractive industry when you can take out the profits, but someone else pays to clean up your mess. Those decommissioning costs are never factored into the price of generation. It is a massive structural subsidy to nuclear lobbyists paid by you.

Third search: “How does nuclear power contribute to load management?”

This involves more reading because the answer is more complicated. In the past, nuclear power was only really viable if it ran 'hot' all the time. Traditional nuclear does not like being turned up and down. Modern nuclear plants are more flexible, but they still take half an hour or more to ramp generation up and down to match demand and can only do it a couple of times a day at most.

The nuclear industry attacks the renewable industry for being 'unreliable', by which it means it is intermittent. But it presents itself as 'reliable' when what it means is 'inflexible'. Combined cycle gas turbines cannot be replaced with nuclear for power management because gas output can be turned up or down rapidly according to demand, but nuclear cannot.

Meanwhile, stored renewables (whether in the form of battery storage, pump-store or hydrogen) can be turned up and down to manage demand very easily. The strength of nuclear was once that it could provide a steady baseline, but the merits of that ability have greatly reduced.

Fourth search: “How long does it take to build a nuclear power plant in the UK?”

Put simply, do you really think a country with the renewable resources Scotland has in a world where storage technology is improving as remarkably quickly as it is just now is still going to be talking about nuclear in 15 years, which would be the fastest conceivable timeline?

The nuclear industry, therefore, touts the less efficient but smaller and cheaper to build new generation of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors. So:

Fifth search: “When will small modular nuclear reactors be widely deployed and how many are there just now?”

So, again, will Scotland really be talking about nuclear power in 15 years’ time? It seems unlikely. The only reason this issue appears to be an election issue is that big corporations are spending a lot of lobbying money trying to make it one – and Scottish Labour appears to be helping them. Why? Try this:

Sixth search: “How many former Labour politicians have been lobbyists for the nuclear industry, and who is the current CEO of the Nuclear Industry Association, which is behind all of this lobbying?”

See? This campaign is utterly dishonest.