Skip to main content

Might Be Time for Another Poll

By Eric McErlain
Over the Holidays, I missed the fact that the Guardian (U.K.) had commissioned a poll on the British public's feelings about nuclear energy:
Almost half of Britons say no new nuclear power stations should be built in the UK, according to a Guardian/ICM poll which comes as ministers consider whether to restart Britain's controversial atomic power programme to meet growing energy demand.

The poll finds that neither the pro- nor the anti-nuclear lobby can rely on a clear majority of public support: 48% of people oppose expanding nuclear energy, while 45% support it. The findings show the scale of the public relations exercise required. About 19% of the UK's electricity is generated by its 14 nuclear power stations, but this is expected to drop to 7% by 2020 as older reactors are switched off.

There's just one catch: The Poll, conducted for the paper by ICM Research, was taken between December 15 and 18, 2005 -- about two weeks before the current crisis roiling European natural gas markets.

I wonder what the results would be if the poll were conducted again right now? And as it turns out, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair is seizing the opportunity:
The spokesman said Blair had highlighted the potential problems of the security of energy supply at Hampton Court last year.

Blair had urged the EU to "come up with a coherent energy policy".

The spokesman said: "These events have underlined the prime minister's thinking in making that argument.

"Security of supply was one of the reasons both behind what the prime minister said at Hampton Court about Europe, and behind setting up an energy review."

The spokesman denied that the current crisis would necessarily lead to a new programme of building nuclear reactors in the UK.

"Does an energy review knee-jerk to one particular event? No.

"But does it take into account the need for security of supply, diversity of supply, further down the line?

"That's one of the issues that needs to be considered. There is an issue of security of supply, there was already before this event, and clearly this event underlines that issue."
Technorati tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Matthew66 said…
I am not surprised at the British poll results. The Greenham Common women's movement, which in the 1980's picketed the US Airforce Base at Greenham Common for several years, was very high profile in its opposition to the presence of US nuclear warheads in the UK. I believe that many of those who supported that movement would inextricably link the military and civilian nuclear programs, which were in fact linked in the UK in any event. It will take more public debate and education to overcome those long held prejudices.
January 3, 2006 at 6:19 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more