Europe looks to a new generation of atomic energy


After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, most European nations turned away from nuclear power - but global warming has forced a change of heart, writes James Button.

The dawn of the millennium seemed to mark the sunset of nuclear power in Europe. The public did not want it. Only two reactors had been built since the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. In 1999 Sweden began closing its atomic power plants. In 2000 the German government announced it would gradually do the same. Italy shut down its last two reactors after Chernobyl, while a 2003 British government white paper called nuclear energy an "unattractive option" and assumed it would be phased out in 20 years.
Only France, which takes 78 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power, and Finland, which decided to build a fifth reactor in 2002, held out against the ebbing tide.
But the tide may have turned. Four days after the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, won the 2005 election, having ducked the issue during the campaign, a leaked Downing Street document revealed that nuclear power was back on the table. Last year Blair said openly it was back "with a vengeance".
In January this year the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, also said the unsayable. "We must think about the consequences of shutting down nuclear power plants," she said, angering her Government partners, the anti-nuclear Social Democrats. "We need a comprehensive, balanced energy mix in Germany."
What happened? First, Europe is alarmed about having to rely on a resurgent and unpredictable Russia, from which it takes a quarter of its gas. Russia's President, Vladmir Putin, sent shockwaves through Europe when Russia's state-controlled energy giant, Gazprom, cut off gas supplies to Ukraine in last year's freezing winter to try to settle a price dispute.
The other change is the belated rise of climate change to the top of the global agenda. Britain's carbon dioxide emissions are growing fast: it will fail to meet its commitment of a 20 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. What's more, wind power will produce just 7 per cent of electricity by 2010, despite big investments in wind farms. Britain's 14 nuclear power stations, which supply a fifth of all electricity, are ageing. Since they take about 10 years to build, it is time, says Blair, to invest in a new generation of reactors.
In terms of carbon dioxide emissions, the case is strong. France's use of nuclear energy means each citizen emits six tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, compared with 9.5 in Britain, 15 in Australia and 18 in the United States, say 2005 figures from Bruno Comby, of France's Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy.

Even the British environmentalist George Monbiot, who on balance opposes nuclear power, published figures showing that electricity produced by a pressurised light-water nuclear reactor emitted about 16 tonnes of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, compared with 356 for gas and 891 for coal.
But Britain is still far from a big reinvestment in nuclear energy. The obstacles are the huge costs and repeated budget overruns in building new plants and the still unresolved problem of disposing of waste. The Blair Government has promised to remove planning and regulatory impediments to building new reactors.
But, committed to a free market and level playing field in energy, it will not provide the nuclear industry grants or tax breaks, nor guarantee cheap loans.
So it is up to private companies. They will study the Government's plans for licensing new power stations before making any commitments. But release of the plans may be delayed after the High Court, in a case brought by Greenpeace, ruled in February that the Government's public consultation over new nuclear reactors had been inadequate and "unfair".
Meanwhile, although a Government scientific report suggests deep burial as the best way to dispose of waste, local communities will fight any moves to do so. The material sits in drums on nuclear power sites, unable to be moved. "It's the big moral issue, the bit everybody hates: what to do with the waste?" says a former Downing Street adviser.
Nevertheless, the former adviser believes some new reactors will be built, especially if gas prices stay high. If companies can build them on time and if "the punishments for carbon emissions increase, you could see plenty of new power stations over the next 10 to 15 years".
France has plenty: 59 reactors in 20 power stations dotted around the coast and by rivers, in order to get access to water for cooling.
France went nuclear in 1973 after the threat to power supply caused by the oil shock. It was a political decision to ensure the country's energy independence and the French appear to have never regretted it.
"Public opinion in France is not highly interested in the nuclear debate, apart from people living near a plant or a repository," says Dominique Leglu, editor of the leading magazine Science and the Future, and former vice-president of the French national authority for nuclear safety and information.
"French nuclear military power and nuclear civil energy have always been intimately linked," she says. "Nuclear power is at the core of the French state. When you question it, it is as if you question French national sovereignty."
All the same, Leglu says that while the nuclear industry has been quick to present itself as a producer of clean energy, it tends to do so to overseas audiences. At home, the strategy of the state power company and the government is that "the less the nuclear industry is talked about the better".
She says that while France has had no nuclear accidents, the public is worried about disposal of waste. Some goes to a huge treatment and recycling plant in Normandy, most is stored at nuclear plants. None has been buried.