Well, well, well.
The Greenpeace Delay is over and the new UK Energy White Paper is out. So is the Planning White Paper, Greenpeace’s rebuttal, and a CommonDreams article.
While everyone seems to be patting each other on the back about how thorough they were, the overall point is neglected that this is about permission for private industry to build new reactors. In other words, Britain has a de facto reactor ban stricter than California’s. The current system of “consultation” does not even result in much public input; it only induces delays.
What would be pro-nuclear? Let private industry build reactors if they want to, set up a regulatory framework to ensure that they’re safe, and buy power from them when they’re done. The way it is now, the British government has succeeded only in creating more paperwork and delays, and justifying this course of action with the fact that they set up rules and are following them. Congratulations.
Unfortunately, like the NRC’s process, flaws in the stupid rules governing the process aren’t admissible contentions. They apparently want it to take 20 years; I hope they don’t choke on their filth in the interim.
This exposes once again a dangerous and endemic reliance on rules instead of the objective; a single pipe hanger at one of the “Whoops” units was repeatedly installed and uninstalled 17 times by very intelligent and capable people–because that’s what the procedure told them to do. There has been little to no improvement since.
Both the Greenpeace and CommonDreams articles seek to argue whether nuclear power is a good idea instead of whether people should have the right to build reactors if they so choose and if a regulatory framework is in place. In this case, whether nuclear power is a good idea or not isn’t the issue; the issue is whether there should be a nanny agency to prevent people from spending their own money on whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. If that’s not the British system, fine. It wasn’t Soviet Russia’s system either. One rotted from the inside due to a lack of infrastructure investment, and I hope the other does not follow.
Link; Link.
Filed under Economics, Energy, Industry Performance, International, New Build, Politics and Regulation
