The principle that the nuclear industry should pay the full costs of nuclear power generation is rarely disputed. In fact, in the United Kingdom, the current ministerial push for nukes has been accompanied by the constant refrain that taxpayers won’t be paying for it. British Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks reiterated in an interview recently that the nuclear industry must foot the entire bill. As always, this promise should not be taken at face value.
The costs of nuclear waste disposal and the decommissioning of nuclear power stations are likely to be huge and occur after operating companies have made their money and even vacated the industry. Certainly it’s the case that governments have taken liabilities off the nuclear private sector before — and the Energy Act 2004 contains powers which allow the British secretary of state to direct the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency to take over financing of nuclear waste liabilities for private nuclear companies in the future should they be unable to meet their obligations.
In other words, if companies manage to direct profits to shareholders, or simply don’t make much money, the taxpayer can be made to pick up the bill at the stroke of a Whitehall pen. Those who think this couldn’t happen should remember that it already has — British Energy passed on its liabilities bill, now estimated at £5.3bn (yes, billion) — to the taxpayer to get them back on their feet.
Governments can never walk away from nuclear power. If a wind farm or gas-fired power station becomes unprofitable, it can be closed down with relatively little fuss and everyone walks away. What happens if a nuclear operator goes belly up? Bluntly, those nuclear stations — containing large amounts of nuclear waste — become the government’s problem, because there’s no one else to sort it out. For those who say it could never happen, remember Metronet, the company that the government obliged the Greater London Authority to use to run London Underground. Created by large major engineering and utilities firms, it went bust leaving London taxpayers with a huge headache and as much as an extra £2bn in debts to service.
Aside from the waste, there are other subsidies essential to making nuclear an attractive option. These include insurance (no insurance giant is prepared to insure against a Chernobyl-scale accident) and loan guarantees (as needed for the construction of a new reactor in Finland) so that the taxpayer takes much more of the risk in a nuclear project than any other form of power generation.
Finally the biggest fear, aside from accidents, spillages, terrorism, nuclear proliferation (and all the other threats that should demand immediate termination of a nuclear programme) is that the commitment to nuclear energy “freezes out” other more sustainable forms of power generation like renewable and decentralised energy. Then, in five years time, when the nuclear power programme is late and over budget (as they invariably are), the British prime minister is left with no choice but to write a blank cheque to the nuclear industry to stop the lights going out.
Guardian