There are few things we Brits enjoy so much as feeling morally superior to the Germans and it should be acknowledged at once that they have made that rather easy down the ages.
One doesn’t need to reopen any historical cans of worms to luxuriate in such a sensation right now because, via its foot-dragging on taking effective sanctions against Russia and the paltry nature of its initial support for Ukraine, Germany is rendering itself a very easy target for morality-based wrath.
But in truth we are kidding ourselves if we believe the pusillanimous reaction of Germany to Vladimir Putin’s disgusting conduct compared to the more robust responses of our own country says anything much about ethics.
The reality is that, were we dependent upon Russia for nearly half our natural gas compared to just three per cent of it, we would be just as hamstrung as Germany has been in the face of Putin’s evil.
Would British public opinion be as gung-ho towards the Russian regime if the consequences included shivering in their own homes, massive increases in the price of food and other essential commodities, huge waves of job losses in key industrial sectors and a potential economic depression? That must be highly doubtful.
And it is arguably just as much through luck as judgment that we are not in such an unhappy situation. For we have neglected our own energy security and abandoned the strategic goal of self-sufficiency almost as acutely as Germany.
Successive German chancellors are culpable for winding down their nuclear energy sector and ramping up dependency upon Russian gas supplies, with the long-serving and recently departed Angela Merkel deservedly getting the lion’s share of the flak.
But in recent decades British governments of all political shades have also taken massively complacent decisions about energy provision. The 21st century is thus far a dismal tale of UK expertise in nuclear energy being allowed to wither away, Whitehall deciding to get China – of all countries – deeply embedded in the provision of what little new capacity it did facilitate, fracking getting abandoned at the first whiff of environmentalist aggro, most of our gas-storage capability being scrapped and coal mining more or less completely shutting down.
While it is true that there has been a boom in renewable energy, everybody knows that back-up sources of power are needed when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind either doesn’t blow or blows too hard.
The past few years of the Covid pandemic and grotesque behaviour by China and Russia should by now have shattered various conceits and delusions that have been prevalent in our liberal establishment. The arc of history does not necessarily bend towards progress, globalising supply chains is not a cost-free exercise, some countries are never going to behave well or transition to liberal democracy, and the folly of neglecting the capacity of the domestic nation state is thrown into sharpest relief when tough times arrive.
Fortunately, our own nation state was able to draw on sufficient resources of expertise and finance to deliver the world’s best vaccination programme against Covid. Kate Bingham’s marvellous Vaccine Taskforce, commissioned by Boris Johnson, was authorised to slice through usual time-consuming Whitehall procedures and processes. And what a difference it made, saving tens of thousands of lives.
Britain needs to do something similar in the field of power generation and time is of the essence. An Energy Security Taskforce, based on the high-speed Bingham model, should be established at once. Clearly, new power plants cannot be conjured up overnight. But does anyone believe that if or when China starts majoring on nuclear energy it will take them 10 years per plant – the schedule our own Hinkley Point is working to and already slipping behind – rather than 10 months?
It is absurd that the environmental movement in Britain has forged so strong an alliance with the ever-present NIMBY tendency that creating any extra energy-generation capacity other than via renewables has become the work of decades.
Back in the 1980s, the green movement made opposing nuclear energy one of its central aims because of over-hyped concerns about safety and storing spent fuel rods. But once reducing carbon emissions had been elevated to the top planet-saving goal, the British state should have made a hard-headed decision to forge ahead with major new nuclear capacity.
To abandon coal, envisage winding down gas long-term and decommission ageing nuclear plants without replacing them in a timely manner amounted to a decadent strategy predicated on the world becoming a happy and peaceful family of civilised nations reliably helping each other out, such as it has never been.
The Russian boot may not be bearing down on the British throat quite as savagely as it is upon the German one right now, but do not imagine we are altogether insulated. The market for energy is predominantly global and when the massive financial firepower of Germany is deployed to find alternative supplies for its citizens the effect will be to bid up prices for everyone.
A luxury mindset has dominated British public life for too many years, resulting in the elevation of trivial and divisive identity politics to a central position as well an eco-tyranny that brooks no compromise. As we enter what will be at best the era of a new Cold War we are going to need a much harder-headed approach if we are not to find it very chilly indeed.
>There are few things we Brits enjoy so much as feeling morally superior to the Germans and it should be acknowledged at once that they have made that rather easy down the ages.
What the fuck is this as a premise… have they ever read a book about british/English history?!
Germans have had their moments in the last 200 years.
England has had more than 1000 years.
Not so sure about how the article phrases it, but their absolutely right.
This anti-nuclear sentiment is holding back the country. Nuclear power is the best chance the world presently has to breakaway from using Coal, Oil and Gas.
The constant fearmongering about it helps no one.
Expensive and slow to build. Any new ones planned today won’t be producing energy for 10 years, so hardly going to do much good short term.
What we should actually be doing is a massive insulation program on all buildings to reduce our use of gas now and reduce the need for energy in the future (actually we should have already been doing this for the past 10 years, not to mention all new homes be zero carbon homes which was in place but the Tories scrapped).
Plus [UK made green gas](https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-green-energy/green-gas) looks like it could be much more quickly rolled out in this country than new nuclear, and that company thinks it can produce 97% of UK home gas needs much more cheaply than electric air source heaters.
How many times – **WE USE BARELY ANY RUSSIAN GAS AT ALL!**
The reason gas prices are so high is because of Germany. We’re actually *exporting* gas to Germany right now.
Yes, we need more nuclear though. Because of the climate crisis. Start building 6-7 like, tomorrow. Could be up and running by 2030 if there’s no fucking about and arguing over cost.
The article doesn’t appear to argue for a nuclear renaissance very well. Simply saying we need more energy independence.
The UK’s current trajectory towards more renewables is the way to go,and that’s what we’re doing. This should just remain an argument for speeding up that transition to reduce reliance on gas. Nuclear is unlikely to play a huge role in that simply because we can’t build them fast enough or cheap enough. Even China won’t be building a nuclear plant in 10 months.
Oh yes, let’s increase our reliance on China (to build then) and Kazakhstan for the Uranium.
Absolutely. Don’t won’t to end up simping for war criminals like Germany, and being reliant on tyrants for their energy. France set a good example for a while, but even there the virus of green energy is taking over. It’s going to be tough to undo the misinformation about the effectiveness of wind and solar, ie it isn’t. Look up the difference between installed capacity and actual generation, because no one seems to understand the difference and why it’s important.
Once Fussio, rather than Fission, is available. Only initial cost will hold back cheap energy production.
You can replace electric power from gas with that from nuclear. But it will take decades and costs will triple (even above what were paying already). And we’ll have to actually deal with the waste. And we’ll still need gas for heating and cooking.
Or you can just build new pipelines and open new fields and source your gas more widely. That can be done in a few years.
Slightly nore nucleur, and go BIG into green renewable energy, not so much the kind that glows green though.
We are an island nation, that means we can produce plenty of:
Wind energy. BAM!
Marine, Wave and Hydropower energy. BAM!
Biomass energy. BAM!
and for 1 week in the summer, Solar energy. BAM!
Well, a lot more than a week, but you get me! It would be best if we all independently harnessed the materials we have to create energy too, which is only really possible with significant structural changes implemented governmentally, making things afforable. E.g having solar panels on our roofs, small mill turbines for houses next to rivers, baby wind turbines for mountain/hillside homes.
You get the picture. Nucleur is great, but IMO its pretty shortterm thinking, especially considering halflives of nucleur isotopes. It is a good technology to use as an ‘inbetween’ form of renewable energy
“decadent.”
These po-faced nationalists sound more and more loopy as time goes by.
The Tories were told this in 2011. They were specifically told in a report that they needed to invest in nuclear power.
I used to be big proponent of nuclear but now I think we’ve possibly missed the boat.
Nuclear would have been fantastic several decades ago, hell even about 5 or 10 years ago it could’ve been a great thing to switch to, but the benefits (being that our stations would be more or less safe from any natural disaster that would otherwise make them seem a dangerous investment as well the fact that if we had done it at scale we could have exported and made money off it).
But now the trees we should be planting should probably be in renewables and research for renewables, it takes so much time and energy to complete the cycle for a nuclear plant now that it’s just unrealistic to spent the next several years building them, only to probably have to take them down within another decade.
Makes me laugh when people say “oh but the waste for future generations to deal with”
Yeah, a bit of nuclear waste is better than burning oil, coal, wood pellets etc.
Plus the huge amounts of unrecoverable materials that go into making wind turbine blades.
Oooor, just keep builing renewables and storage like we have been. It’s actually faster and cheaper to build way more capacity than we need of renewables (to make up for their unpredictability) than it would be to generate the same amount with nuclear. Less problems with waste or safety to deal with as well.
Sure, more power, but sure the elephant in the room: better insulated homes that require less power and money to keep warm
Solar is great, especially if solar roofs can become mass produced, wind is also great, but we need to end our fossil fuel reliance. Next generation nuclear is the way forward, and with energy prices continuing to spiral it’s becoming ever more sensible and affordable.
Successive governments have kicked the can down the road; it’s time for decisive action.
I thought there was a Chinese contract to build these with the Key Atomic Benefits Office Of Mankind ?
Another problem is the issue of nuclear reactors being owned by private firms, or even the state-owned firms of other nations. That must end, too, and our power infrastructure brought into public ownership.
20 comments
There are few things we Brits enjoy so much as feeling morally superior to the Germans and it should be acknowledged at once that they have made that rather easy down the ages.
One doesn’t need to reopen any historical cans of worms to luxuriate in such a sensation right now because, via its foot-dragging on taking effective sanctions against Russia and the paltry nature of its initial support for Ukraine, Germany is rendering itself a very easy target for morality-based wrath.
But in truth we are kidding ourselves if we believe the pusillanimous reaction of Germany to Vladimir Putin’s disgusting conduct compared to the more robust responses of our own country says anything much about ethics.
The reality is that, were we dependent upon Russia for nearly half our natural gas compared to just three per cent of it, we would be just as hamstrung as Germany has been in the face of Putin’s evil.
Would British public opinion be as gung-ho towards the Russian regime if the consequences included shivering in their own homes, massive increases in the price of food and other essential commodities, huge waves of job losses in key industrial sectors and a potential economic depression? That must be highly doubtful.
And it is arguably just as much through luck as judgment that we are not in such an unhappy situation. For we have neglected our own energy security and abandoned the strategic goal of self-sufficiency almost as acutely as Germany.
Successive German chancellors are culpable for winding down their nuclear energy sector and ramping up dependency upon Russian gas supplies, with the long-serving and recently departed Angela Merkel deservedly getting the lion’s share of the flak.
But in recent decades British governments of all political shades have also taken massively complacent decisions about energy provision. The 21st century is thus far a dismal tale of UK expertise in nuclear energy being allowed to wither away, Whitehall deciding to get China – of all countries – deeply embedded in the provision of what little new capacity it did facilitate, fracking getting abandoned at the first whiff of environmentalist aggro, most of our gas-storage capability being scrapped and coal mining more or less completely shutting down.
While it is true that there has been a boom in renewable energy, everybody knows that back-up sources of power are needed when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind either doesn’t blow or blows too hard.
The past few years of the Covid pandemic and grotesque behaviour by China and Russia should by now have shattered various conceits and delusions that have been prevalent in our liberal establishment. The arc of history does not necessarily bend towards progress, globalising supply chains is not a cost-free exercise, some countries are never going to behave well or transition to liberal democracy, and the folly of neglecting the capacity of the domestic nation state is thrown into sharpest relief when tough times arrive.
Fortunately, our own nation state was able to draw on sufficient resources of expertise and finance to deliver the world’s best vaccination programme against Covid. Kate Bingham’s marvellous Vaccine Taskforce, commissioned by Boris Johnson, was authorised to slice through usual time-consuming Whitehall procedures and processes. And what a difference it made, saving tens of thousands of lives.
Britain needs to do something similar in the field of power generation and time is of the essence. An Energy Security Taskforce, based on the high-speed Bingham model, should be established at once. Clearly, new power plants cannot be conjured up overnight. But does anyone believe that if or when China starts majoring on nuclear energy it will take them 10 years per plant – the schedule our own Hinkley Point is working to and already slipping behind – rather than 10 months?
It is absurd that the environmental movement in Britain has forged so strong an alliance with the ever-present NIMBY tendency that creating any extra energy-generation capacity other than via renewables has become the work of decades.
Back in the 1980s, the green movement made opposing nuclear energy one of its central aims because of over-hyped concerns about safety and storing spent fuel rods. But once reducing carbon emissions had been elevated to the top planet-saving goal, the British state should have made a hard-headed decision to forge ahead with major new nuclear capacity.
To abandon coal, envisage winding down gas long-term and decommission ageing nuclear plants without replacing them in a timely manner amounted to a decadent strategy predicated on the world becoming a happy and peaceful family of civilised nations reliably helping each other out, such as it has never been.
The Russian boot may not be bearing down on the British throat quite as savagely as it is upon the German one right now, but do not imagine we are altogether insulated. The market for energy is predominantly global and when the massive financial firepower of Germany is deployed to find alternative supplies for its citizens the effect will be to bid up prices for everyone.
A luxury mindset has dominated British public life for too many years, resulting in the elevation of trivial and divisive identity politics to a central position as well an eco-tyranny that brooks no compromise. As we enter what will be at best the era of a new Cold War we are going to need a much harder-headed approach if we are not to find it very chilly indeed.
>There are few things we Brits enjoy so much as feeling morally superior to the Germans and it should be acknowledged at once that they have made that rather easy down the ages.
What the fuck is this as a premise… have they ever read a book about british/English history?!
Germans have had their moments in the last 200 years.
England has had more than 1000 years.
Not so sure about how the article phrases it, but their absolutely right.
This anti-nuclear sentiment is holding back the country. Nuclear power is the best chance the world presently has to breakaway from using Coal, Oil and Gas.
The constant fearmongering about it helps no one.
Expensive and slow to build. Any new ones planned today won’t be producing energy for 10 years, so hardly going to do much good short term.
What we should actually be doing is a massive insulation program on all buildings to reduce our use of gas now and reduce the need for energy in the future (actually we should have already been doing this for the past 10 years, not to mention all new homes be zero carbon homes which was in place but the Tories scrapped).
Plus [UK made green gas](https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-green-energy/green-gas) looks like it could be much more quickly rolled out in this country than new nuclear, and that company thinks it can produce 97% of UK home gas needs much more cheaply than electric air source heaters.
How many times – **WE USE BARELY ANY RUSSIAN GAS AT ALL!**
The reason gas prices are so high is because of Germany. We’re actually *exporting* gas to Germany right now.
Yes, we need more nuclear though. Because of the climate crisis. Start building 6-7 like, tomorrow. Could be up and running by 2030 if there’s no fucking about and arguing over cost.
The article doesn’t appear to argue for a nuclear renaissance very well. Simply saying we need more energy independence.
The UK’s current trajectory towards more renewables is the way to go,and that’s what we’re doing. This should just remain an argument for speeding up that transition to reduce reliance on gas. Nuclear is unlikely to play a huge role in that simply because we can’t build them fast enough or cheap enough. Even China won’t be building a nuclear plant in 10 months.
Oh yes, let’s increase our reliance on China (to build then) and Kazakhstan for the Uranium.
Absolutely. Don’t won’t to end up simping for war criminals like Germany, and being reliant on tyrants for their energy. France set a good example for a while, but even there the virus of green energy is taking over. It’s going to be tough to undo the misinformation about the effectiveness of wind and solar, ie it isn’t. Look up the difference between installed capacity and actual generation, because no one seems to understand the difference and why it’s important.
Once Fussio, rather than Fission, is available. Only initial cost will hold back cheap energy production.
You can replace electric power from gas with that from nuclear. But it will take decades and costs will triple (even above what were paying already). And we’ll have to actually deal with the waste. And we’ll still need gas for heating and cooking.
Or you can just build new pipelines and open new fields and source your gas more widely. That can be done in a few years.
Slightly nore nucleur, and go BIG into green renewable energy, not so much the kind that glows green though.
We are an island nation, that means we can produce plenty of:
Wind energy. BAM!
Marine, Wave and Hydropower energy. BAM!
Biomass energy. BAM!
and for 1 week in the summer, Solar energy. BAM!
Well, a lot more than a week, but you get me! It would be best if we all independently harnessed the materials we have to create energy too, which is only really possible with significant structural changes implemented governmentally, making things afforable. E.g having solar panels on our roofs, small mill turbines for houses next to rivers, baby wind turbines for mountain/hillside homes.
You get the picture. Nucleur is great, but IMO its pretty shortterm thinking, especially considering halflives of nucleur isotopes. It is a good technology to use as an ‘inbetween’ form of renewable energy
“decadent.”
These po-faced nationalists sound more and more loopy as time goes by.
The Tories were told this in 2011. They were specifically told in a report that they needed to invest in nuclear power.
I used to be big proponent of nuclear but now I think we’ve possibly missed the boat.
Nuclear would have been fantastic several decades ago, hell even about 5 or 10 years ago it could’ve been a great thing to switch to, but the benefits (being that our stations would be more or less safe from any natural disaster that would otherwise make them seem a dangerous investment as well the fact that if we had done it at scale we could have exported and made money off it).
But now the trees we should be planting should probably be in renewables and research for renewables, it takes so much time and energy to complete the cycle for a nuclear plant now that it’s just unrealistic to spent the next several years building them, only to probably have to take them down within another decade.
Makes me laugh when people say “oh but the waste for future generations to deal with”
Yeah, a bit of nuclear waste is better than burning oil, coal, wood pellets etc.
Plus the huge amounts of unrecoverable materials that go into making wind turbine blades.
Oooor, just keep builing renewables and storage like we have been. It’s actually faster and cheaper to build way more capacity than we need of renewables (to make up for their unpredictability) than it would be to generate the same amount with nuclear. Less problems with waste or safety to deal with as well.
Sure, more power, but sure the elephant in the room: better insulated homes that require less power and money to keep warm
Solar is great, especially if solar roofs can become mass produced, wind is also great, but we need to end our fossil fuel reliance. Next generation nuclear is the way forward, and with energy prices continuing to spiral it’s becoming ever more sensible and affordable.
Successive governments have kicked the can down the road; it’s time for decisive action.
I thought there was a Chinese contract to build these with the Key Atomic Benefits Office Of Mankind ?
Another problem is the issue of nuclear reactors being owned by private firms, or even the state-owned firms of other nations. That must end, too, and our power infrastructure brought into public ownership.