Labour's big manifesto (nuclear) deception about GB Energy

It seems the Labour manifesto was blatantly misleading about the real purpose of GB Energy

Reading through Labour’s manifesto section about GB Energy, the proposed new publically owned Energy generation company, you would be forgiven for thinking this was all about supporting renewable energy. Because that was what the section on GB Energy appeared to say. There was no mention of it supporting nuclear energy.

But now it seems that support for nuclear energy will be GB Energy’s prime initial (and maybe always main financial) purpose. Its main purpose is likely to be to support a technology called ‘small modular reactors’ (SMRs) that independent say analysts does not exist, has failed so far to come into commercial existence and, (if it does) will end up being even more expensive than conventional large scale nuclear power projects.

That is the only thing one can assume from reading the report HERE

In this report from the inewspaper, it is stated: ‘GB Energy will be headquartered in Scotland and have £8.3bn in capital to invest – and i understands that among its first commitments will be a pledge to order a cluster of nuclear plants called small modular reactors (SMRs)’

If you do not believe my description of Labour manifesto dishonesty about the real purpose of GB Energy, please see the text of the manifesto section on GB Energy HERE . Compare it to the inewspaper report.

There is no mention of nuclear reactors in the manifesto section of GB Energy. Indeed the statement about technologies clearly states: ‘Great British Energy will partner with energy companies, local authorities, and co-operatives to install thousands of clean power projects, through a combination of onshore wind, solar, and hydropower projects.’

So, one would expect Labour to be soon announcing its first tranche of support for renewable energy projects, but hardly small modular reactors.

When people look back on this Labour Government, they will usually applaud the strong (compare to the previous Government) push forward to solar farms, its ending of the ban on onshore wind and a decisive move forward for offshore wind. However, there is a very big danger this will be overshadowed by a decision to pour billions of pounds into a technology, SMRs, that has no rational basis in fact.

SMRs are so far mainly known for the spectacular failure of the NuScale project in the USA. Essentially, SMRs (almost certainly exaggerated) promise of reducing construction overruns is likely to be more than offset by the failure to capture economies of scale.

Now, a lot of people will just brush aside the opinions of people like me as the usual nuclear scepticism. But please have a read of what a former Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said about SMRs HERE. For some UK analysis of SMRs, see this presentation by Stephen Thomas HERE.

I do have some sorrow over this. Poor Ed Miliband is being forced to walk the plank by trade union and big energy corporation interests on nuclear power, but only to be damned by history for incepting a giant cock-up!

Maybe Ed Miliband has some cunning plan to avoid this scenario, although it does not look like it from the inewspaper report. Might he just award a few million pounds for a few projects that we all know will go nowhere? That would be a machiavellian double-time-piece of political footwork of damage limitation?

Regrettably it seems more likely to me that he will be pushed down a path of underwriting nuclear projects worth billions of pounds and taking responsibility for an expensive SMR disaster for which he will be personally blamed by future Governments. That is rather than blame the real culprits - the nuclear technology itself and people’s wishful thinking about it.

And it would be such a big shame that we had to be misled, in the Labour manifesto, by the true nature of the GB Energy idea.