Antinuclear

Civil and military nuclear mutuality

‘The UK government is pursuing an uneconomic nuclear programme in large part so as to maintain & renew military nuclear capabilities’.

backs both civil and military nuclear: ‘Safeguarding the future of our nuclear deterrent and nuclear energy industry is a critical national endeavour’. French president Emmanuel Macron is even more upfront about it all: ‘Without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear.’ With the USA, China and Russia also evidently locked into similar paths, the global future doesn’t look too good. 

Renew Extra Weekly, 13 Apr 24

Until recently, the UK government has always said that civil and military nuclear technologies were separate things, for example in response to claims that expansion of civil nuclear power capacity could lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons making capacity. But, as researchers at the University of Sussex have relentlessly catalogued, there seems to have been a change of view underway, culminating formally in March in a new policy document from No. 10 Downing Street. Entitled ‘Building the Nuclear Workforce of Tomorrow’ it claims that ‘domestic [civil] nuclear capability is vital to our national defence and energy security, underpinning our nuclear deterrent and securing cheaper, more reliable energy for UK consumers’.  So they are intertwined and mutually beneficial- we need both!

UK Prime Minister Sunak says that ‘in a more dangerous and contested world, the UK’s continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is more vital than ever’ and that civil nuclear power is the ‘perfect antidote to the energy challenges facing Britain- it’s green, cheaper in the long term and will ensure the UK’s energy security for the long term’.

There are many issues raised by these claims. Leaving aside all the major moral and political issues associated with nuclear weapons, it is not at all clear that new nuclear reactors will be as costs effective as renewables. Indeed, the cost of renewables has fallen dramatically in recent years while the cost of nuclear projects has continued to escalate. It could be that, recognising this imbalance in cost, what we are now seeing is the government trying to provide a compensating justification for new civil nuclear- it will aid defence. Even if, arguably, it makes little economic sense as Business Green argued: ‘The UK government is pursuing an uneconomic nuclear programme in large part so as to maintain & renew military nuclear capabilities’.

Basically, as the Sussex University researchers have argued, it does seem that the government is just responding to military pressures. More specifically though, it’s a matter of rapidly expanding skill requirements- and shortages. Matthew Lay, Head of EDF Nuclear Skills Alliance, says that ‘the UK Government’s commitment to nuclear power must be seen in the context of a steady increase of nuclear capacity worldwide as well as growth in defence expenditure,’ and especially the growth in the ‘defence industry’s demand for nuclear skills, to deliver established and new nuclear submarine programmes’. So it’s about expanding nuclear skills for building nuclear sub power plants and civil reactors, including possibly Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which have some similarities. Presumably also about making fuels for them both too. 

Some may be happy about civil-military skill sharing, but it’s a long way from the old rhetoric about ‘atoms for peace’. In 1953 President Eisenhower called for nuclear bomb technology to be turned to peaceful ends around the world, with US help e.g. in transferring  nuclear plant technology to developing countries. That had floundered due, in part, to the high cost of nuclear plants. According to a review by Drogan, a State Department Intelligence Report, circulated in January 1954, ‘Economic Implications of Nuclear Power in Foreign Countries’, noted that ‘nuclear power plants may cost twice as much to operate and as much as 50 percent more to build and equip than conventional thermal plants’. So it warned that the introduction of nuclear power would ‘not usher in a new era of plenty and rapid economic development as is commonly believed’. You could say that we are still waiting! 

There were also potential conflicts between the ‘atoms for peace’ idea and proliferation issues. Indeed that is now even more of a problem, with some newly developing countries, following the UAE’s lead, looking to have nuclear plants, which, in theory, could give them the ability to make bombs. And (the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty apart!) why not, if nuclear weapons states like the UK are seen as no longer maintaining a clear separation between civil and military nuclear technology? Except of course the high cost of civil nuclear may make renewables a much better deal- especially solar, of which many countries (in the Middle East and Africa for example) have plenty. ……………………………………………………………………………..

Clearly UK Prime Minister Sunak doesn’t see it this way- he backs both civil and military nuclear: ‘Safeguarding the future of our nuclear deterrent and nuclear energy industry is a critical national endeavour’. French president Emmanuel Macron is even more upfront about it all: ‘Without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear.’ With the USA, China and Russia also evidently locked into similar paths, the global future doesn’t look too good. 

Do we really have to continue with all this? In 1995, Sir Michael Atiyah, then retiring as President of the Royal Society, said ‘I believe history will show that insistence on a UK nuclear capability [weapons and energy] was fundamentally misguided, a total waste of resources and a significant factor in our relative economic decline over the past 50 years’. He may have been right.  https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2024/04/civil-and-military-nuclear-mutuality.html

April 15, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | energy, news, nuclear, nuclear-energy, nuclear-power