LABOUR ministers are “scaremongering” in the hope of pressuring Scotland into building new nuclear power stations, a group of energy experts has warned.
Writing a joint article for The National, six academics suggested that the UK Government was using “false promises” of a “golden age of nuclear in England and Wales” in order to try and force a U-turn from the Scottish Government.
As it stands, the SNP have an effective veto on any new nuclear developments north of the Border because planning laws are devolved to Holyrood.
However, the UK Government last week published a GB Energy report scoping out Scottish sites that could host a new nuclear power plant, and on Tuesday UK energy minister Michael Shanks said Labour will do “everything we can to move forward”.
Writing for The National, Dr Keith Baker, Dr Paul Dorfman, Professor Peter Strachan, Dr Ian Fairlie, Professor Lynn Jamieson, and Gordon Morgan argued that Scotland does not need any new nuclear energy plants “and no amount of scaremongering, cajoling, or false promises from Shanks or the nuclear industry should persuade our government to think otherwise”.
They wrote: “Obviously, however, the nuclear industry is lining up behind Shanks.
“Tom Greatrex, the chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, continues to parrot the claim that new nuclear supports communities and creates thousands of new jobs. Yet studies show that every pound invested in renewables creates two to three times more jobs than investing in nuclear.”
The experts further said that the UK Government’s new report not only outlined where in Scotland a nuclear plant could be sited, “it also quietly notes the risks development at those sites would create for communities and our environment”.
The report proposed developing new stations at existing nuclear sites at Dounreay and Hunterston (both of which are being decommissioned) and Torness (which is due to shut down in March 2030). It also proposed entirely new sites in Fife, Stirling, Angus, and Aberdeenshire.
The expert group argued that the coastal areas have been identified due to a nuclear plant’s need for cooling water.
However, they said that siting a new station on the coast would present further challenges, including flood risks, storm surges, and how managing one stretch of coastline will impact on others.
“That work is hard enough without dropping in new security-critical sites that would exacerbate existing problems and make it even harder to manage and protect our often-fragile coastlines,” the experts wrote.
After the GB Energy report, the UK Government said that it “concludes that, from a technical perspective, Scotland has land areas with high potential for new nuclear development”.
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