UK manufacturers, lawmakers push for expanded role for nuclear

London (Platts)--7Nov2005

Challenges to the ruling U.K. Labor Party's attitudes toward new nuclear
construction were raised last week in two influential venues, with assertions
that nuclear deserves to be given the same status as renewable energy sources
and that new reactor designs could be brought on line in half the time
predicted.

Calls for new perspectives to be taken on the nuclear issue were made Oct. 24
by the U.K. manufacturers' federation, which claimed that energy is now the
top issue troubling British manufacturers. Also, during a Parliamentary House
of Lords' energy debate Oct. 27, a number of peers warned the U.K. has no
secure technology for future baseload requirements but nuclear.

After more than four hours of debate by the peers, U.K. government Science
Minister Lord David Sainsbury conceded to the debate's inaugurator, Baroness
Detta O'Cathain, that "nuclear is a renewable" because of its
carbon-emission-free status.

O'Cathain had noted the U.K. government's continued denial that nuclear could
be categorized as a renewable. She had pushed for the debate, she said,
because of the peers' "deep concern about future energy supplies."

O'Cathain, an economist with wide commercial expertise, said "question after
question" had been directed by the House of Lords to the government over the
country's lack of policy about long-term energy security. "We have been fobbed
off time and time again," she said. She likened government officials to a
bunch of ostriches unable to face up to the seriousness of the situation.

Rather than new energy "proposals" in 2006 promised recently by Prime Minister
Tony Blair, she said, energy security policy decisions are needed now. The
government should face up to the matter with a sense of urgency, she said.

Domestic electricity demand has increased by 20% since 1990, she noted, with
the U.K. this year becoming a net importer of natual gas. Gas and renewables
were the government's chosen electricity generating fuel sources following the
2003 energy white paper, which set out a policy of merely keeping new nuclear
construction open as an option.

By 2015, existing coal and nuclear stations that currently supply more than
50% of the country's electricity demand would be "well along the way" to being
phased out, she said. The resultant supply deficit is expected to be filled by
a natural gas, much of it from "somewhat politically unstable" countries. Such
import reliance does not exactly "produce a comfort-zone feeling," she said.

"Of course, we are all aware of the great drive towards renewables?wind
turbines, onshore and offshore; photovoltaics, and wave power to mention but a
few. Again, I fear, I do not get much of a comfort-zone feeling from that
list."

O'Cathain acknowledged renewables were likely to be a very important component
of any future energy supply mix. "But there is no quick-fix from them?at least
not from the current categorization of renewables as defined by government,"
which "staunchly" denies that nuclear is a renewable resource, she said.

The full version of this story was published in Platts Nucleonics Week.
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