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Nuclear Industry

It was significant that the Chairman of the Committee said that the finances are rapidly changing with the technology. I agree with him that left to the market, it is possible that carbon capture and storage will be able to outbid nuclear quite soon. The nuclear industry is always optimistic, but I think that it is being over-optimistic. I have never been able to grasp the point made by nuclear advocates on the security of supply because there is no domestic uranium and European supplies of uranium are insufficient to keep nuclear power plants going for long, especially if there is new nuclear build that uses up existing and known supplies. All usable uranium has to be imported, not only from Canada and Australia, but other countries such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. On the other hand, wind, tide, sun and coal are local and there are plenty of suppliers within our political grasp, as it were. Instead of comparing itself with those sources of energy, the nuclear industry usually compares itself with the gas industry. True, gas will probably play a bigger part in the generation of electricity in the next few years regardless of the policy on nuclear new build, because gas is probably the source from which new electricity generating capacity will come as other sources decline, depending on the relative price of gas and coal. That is not in any way an argument for nuclear. By the argument that I have been using, nuclear will not be able to plug the gap in the time scale. The policy problem—the problem of a secure gas supply—applies regardless of nuclear policy.