When it comes to the people making promises on behalf of nuclear power, can any of them be taken at their word? When it comes to Ed Miliband, the UK’s environment minister, we’re not so sure.
Speaking in Parliament last month, Miliband said…
…we are not going to provide public subsidy for the construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear power stations.
That sounds pretty definite to us. But if that’s the case, why has he refused to answer the ‘question on whether the nuclear power industry would be given an insurance indemnity subsidy from taxpayers’? As Paul Flynn, the Member of Parliament who asked the question, says: ‘The only sensible conclusion to draw is that there will remain, probably huge, hidden subsidies in the form of insurance underwriting.’ If the minister has nothing to hide surely he’d give a straight question a straight answer?
The same applies to decommissioning and waste disposal costs. Nobody knows how much those will cost but the budget is exploding (it's currently around the £73 billion mark). So in order to keep industry and investors comfortable with predictable costs, the UK government now proposes to introduce a flat, fixed payment from the industry. This shifts all the unpredictability to the public, and socializes all the risks attached to it. Whatever the final costs, our grandchildren will have to pay to clean up our mess with public subsidies.
Then we look at the news that the UK taxpayer is giving £25 million to build the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC) and we ask: surely that is a public subsidy to the nuclear industry?
The centre will ‘bring together university research and industrial expertise to develop manufacturing techniques’. That means the £25 million to build NAMRC is, in the words of Ed Miliband, a ‘public subsidy for the construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear power stations’
In July, Rolls Royce was given £45 million of public money to help build four new factories in the UK, including one to manufacture ‘components for nuclear power plants’. That is a public subsidy to the nuclear industry. Also, the government ‘is investing £8 million to expand existing civil nuclear research facilities within The University of Manchester’. That is a public subsidy to the nuclear industry.
In June this year Vincent De Rivaz, the Chief Executive of EDF Energy, said…
I’ve always said we don’t ask for taxpayers’ money. We don’t ask for government subsidy.
When it comes to the UK government and taxpayers’ money, one thing is clear: the nuclear industry doesn’t have to ask.
