Murderous mayhem in the Middle East sends oil prices through the roof -- US$78 a barrel and climbing. UK electricity prices are up 35 percent in two years, gas prices up 53 percent. So the British government launched its energy review last week in a turbulent market. With no certainty on price, all estimates of the costs of various energy technologies are equally rough guesses.
So political predilection guides this whole debate: the pro-business right is instinctively pro-nuclear, the left is anti.
Without verifiable forecasts, one expert's guess vies with another's. That allows political passions on all sides to masquerade as pure science or economics.
The old right has been on an arduous journey, with most finally converted to the truth universally acknowledged, except by flat-earthers: the world is warming at life-on-earth threatening speed.
When the climate-deniers' case collapsed, they retreated to an ideological redoubt claiming global warming was a natural phenomenon, not amenable to man-made remedy. But that fortress crumbled too, and even US President George W. Bush, last of the naysayers, conceded.
For some reason the old naysayers, barely batting an eyelid, shifted over to nuclear as the only salvation, though those who have been so wrong owe a little humility when it comes to next steps. Many hail from a bizarre tradition of right-wing bad science, such as Andrew Neill, the London Sunday Times editor who ran a dangerous campaign that denied HIV caused AIDS, branding the latter as a disease only of gays and the wildly promiscuous.
Consider the continuing claim of the London Daily Mail and the British journalist Melanie Phillips that the MMR vaccine causes autism, panicking mothers into failing to immunize babies. Posing as hard-headed realists, those on the right are more prone to pit their ideology against the weight of science.
Seat belts? Motorbike helmets? Chlorofluorocarbons and the ozone layer? Smoking bans? Advertising junk food to children? The science-based realists tend to be on the left, the conviction-based fundamentalists on the right.
Climate change leaves no doubt that nuclear power is infinitely better than roasting to death. New stations are likely to be safer and better built, but will still produce a lot of radioactive waste, if less than before. The energy review still has no idea what to do with it. Even so, nuclear is better than baking.
But why are nuclear enthusiasts so sure there is no better alternative? A ring of off-shore wind turbines round these blustery islands would give permanent energy. British Prime Minister Tony Blair chose a picturesque boat ride to one to launch his review. It's expensive -- but compared with what? So far the cost of nuclear energy, clean coal and all other untested options is guesswork.
Here's the conundrum: the people now supporting nuclear are the same ones appalled by vast state-sponsored schemes in the making: look at ID cards, gigantic IT pipe dreams, the Concorde or other balloons swelling up from politicians' airy rhetoric. The history of nuclear power is the most grotesque example of a state program founded on dreams mushrooming out of control because no one dared say "Stop!" In the 1950s, people were promised energy so cheap there would be no bills, so no party dared stop pouring good money after bad. Construction was always wildly over cost and late, delivering far less energy than promised. So why are they falling for the same snake oil again?
The wise will keep a hawk's eye on the money. Nuclear is not and never was feasible without heavy subsidy. When the government swears there will be no price guarantee or subsidy, none of the experts believes it -- though the industry naturally pretends. Investors will only build because they understand that the state will step in, one way or another. Always has, always will.
Even the CEO of the US nuclear power company Dominion said that, despite US government wishes for new nuclear power stations, he would not build, to avoid giving credit raters Standard & Poor's and his own chief financial officer "a heart attack."
Standard & Poor's says that not even government help with construction costs changes this reality: "An electric utility with a nuclear exposure has weaker credit than one without and can expect to pay more ... for credit."
The UK Treasury has just said it will sell a chunk of its British Energy (BE) interest. Who wants it? Probably EDF, the French government-subsidized company now bidding to build new nuclear plant on BE land (watch for favors or subsidies in return). BE already had a ?5.1 billion (US$9.3 billion) liability written off by the taxpayer as one lot of shareholders saw their investment go bust. Yet somehow fresh "value" has been added. The Treasury hopes to raise ?2 billion of its paper ?6 billion BE holding.
Why now? Because sky-high gas prices turn BE profitable: the unwary might buy shares, not realizing new pipelines and gas from other sources may soon lower prices. But most buyers will be canny investors who know if nuclear building begins, all future governments must back it. Think leaky Thames Water, the railways and all hybrid state-private essential services. Even if tax money flows in one end, shareholders can still take it out the other. Despite ?70 billion in unpaid nuclear clean-up costs, somehow BE still makes "profits." A rum business.
The eyes of would-be nuclear builders, meanwhile, are on Areva, the French government-subsidized company building -- in Finland -- the first new nuclear station anywhere in decades. Areva has just admitted it is already one year behind after its first year of construction.
Beset with design problems and skill shortages, this is no market tester but a loss-leader financed by Finnish local and central governments and the French, borrowing at a subsidized 2.6 percent from a bank that owns the company building the turbines.
For Britain, nuclear stations drain political enthusiasm for any other energy finance. Governments hide the true cost from voters, and even from themselves. State insurance against disaster isn't even counted in. Watching the small print will not reveal all: Hidden taxpayer backing will be watermarked into every clause of new nuclear contracts.
If not, if Labour genuinely means no subsidy, there will be no new stations and all this nuclear posturing may be fantasy politics.
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