The Sizewell Public Inquiry which opened at Snape, Suffolk, on 11 January, and is expected to last well into the Autumn, is considering the proposed siting of the first Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) nuclear power station in Britain. The energy problem needs to be seen in the context of the workings of the capitalist system as a whole. Under capitalism, it makes no difference whether power stations are privately owned or state run, as is the case with most power stations around the world. The interests of most capitalists obviously lie in obtaining electricity as cheaply as possible. Most Industry today is electric-powered and the proposed PWR at Sizewell Site B will, of course, supply electricity. Obviously the minority of capitalists with a stake in the actual production of electricity, such as the contractors who supply materials and labour towards the building of power stations, don't see things like that; they naturally want as high a price as possible for their “services”. It is the job of governments, in this case through the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), to see that the best deal is obtained for the ruling class as a whole. This is by no means as easy as it sounds, particularly in these days of large multinational companies and the ever increasing diversity of their interests.
At the moment, leaving aside hydro-electricity which is of somewhat limited value outside certain geographically favoured areas, there are three main methods of generating electricity. All are based on raising steam to drive turbines: burning coal, burning oil (or natural gas) and nuclear fission, the splitting of heavy elements. For the workers in these industries, all three mean unpleasant and dangerous working conditions with a high risk of premature death. All three are unsatisfactory from the ecological point of view. Sulphur dioxide is produced when oil and coal are burned, and a more rational use for these fuels would be as raw materials for plastics. However, the dangers to health and the environment from continued use of nuclear fission are all pervading. Despite this, ecological considerations have so far entered only marginally into the decisions and only a really serious environmental disaster would alter this.
Many interesting alternative power sources are available which are either ecologically benign or present in abundance, or both. These will be mentioned on numerous occasions during the Sizewell Inquiry but none will be sufficiently developed in time for British capitalism to consider them as options. And so the prime considerations remain cheapness, competition and profit. The Inquiry thus appears to have only three options to consider, as it is reasonable to assume that some kind of power station will be built on the Sizewell site. These are: a power station using coal or oil; a different type of nuclear installation; or building a PWR as at present proposed.
It does appear from the available evidence that the government has, through the CEGB, already made up its mind that it wants the PWR, so that the Inquiry appears to have only a rubber-stamping role. The New Statesman reports (7 January 1983) that the pressure vessel has already been ordered from the French company Creusot Loire, and cancellation now would invoke penalty clauses. As early as April 1980 the CEGB issued a letter of intent to the National Nuclear Corporation (NNC) which, in effect, placed a manufacturing order for the nuclear core. Site clearance for the PWR commenced last summer, while Sir Frank Layfield, chairman of the Sizewell Inquiry, was holding preliminary hearings a few miles away. Sir Frank said he had no power to stop it! Further evidence in the same issue of the New Statesman confirms that the government wants a biased, white-washing “investigation” in the hope that its supporters will be appeased and the various objecting groups become dispirited. The journal quotes from leaked minutes of the critical 1979 Cabinet meeting at which the decision to hold an inquiry was taken. Apparently the government saw “a danger that a broad-ranging inquiry would arouse prolonged technical debate between different representatives of scientific opinion”. After reading this prize piece of cynicism we are left wondering why they bothered to hold an inquiry at all, thereby giving at least some opportunity for the expression of informed opposing opinions. After all, without any debate the go ahead has been given for two new advanced gas cooled reactors (AGR) at Heysham in Lancashire and Torness in Scotland. The Windscale inquiry chaired by Lord Justice Parker in 1977 neither increased confidence in judicial impartiality in these matters, nor led to any lowering of the protesting voices. A similar predetermined effort on Sizewell seems likely only to intensify the effect.
The deliberate bias built into this Inquiry shows itself in a very large imbalance of resources between the applicants and the objectors. The CEGB has produced a massive amount of documentation which will require about eight weeks to read into the records. At the time of writing the proceedings have gone “underground" while this task is performed. The boredom induced by this monumental effort of social irrelevance will assist in putting the objectors off their stroke. “Without sufficient funds to employ lawyers and specialist scientists, the objectors will find it hard to sustain an effective presence”, comments the New Statesman (ibid). Since then the chairman has ruled that the applicants can both initiate and wind up discussions on a particular issue, but that the objectors can only do one or the other.
We can now briefly examine the credentials of the two sides. For the applicants, the CEGB lead the way. British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) is responsible for the supply and removal of enriched uranium fuel rods. The Nuclear Installation Inspectorate (NII) will issue a site and operating licence. The National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) will give “evidence'’ on the hazards of accidental radioactive release (no facts please, must be their motto.). It is planned that the National Nuclear Corporation (NNC) will construct the reactor. The Department of Energy will be supporting the CEGB, even though Sir Frank Layficld will be presenting his final report to the Energy Secretary, Nigel Lawson. Other government departments will be chipping in with supporting views. Also listed among the applicants but not actually present, are two USA nuclear corporations, Westinghouse and Bechtel, who have designed respectively the steam raising core and the associated power plant of the PWR. It will be noted that these applicants, despite their number, are a pretty united bunch. All will be playing their part in trying to convince the British ruling class that they are doing their job.
How convincing is the applicants' case? The CEGB’s main claim throughout has been that nuclear power would be cheaper. In pursuance of this aim the AGR, which is considered to be somewhat “safer" has been abandoned in favour of the allegedly cheaper PWR. However on 14 February last the Electricity Consumers Council, which might have been expected to give its support, published a critical report which, according to The Guardian of that date, said that the economic benefit case had not yet been fully made and suggested a closer look at other methods. Then, on 1 March, the CEGB itself published a pamphlet, reported in The Guardian the same day, admitting that the PWR is not, after all, the cheapest available prospect but still arguing that it represents the best overall prospect. While a blow, this could still be considered acceptable as nuclear power is strategically more secure than oil. However, the cornerstone of the nuclear power strategy has been the plan to move eventually to a series of “fast breeder" reactors (FBR) but this has now been shelved, apparently indefinitely. The USA had earlier held back from further FBR development. The FBR throws off as a radioactive waste product Plutonium 239, one of the deadliest substances known, with a half life of 22,400 years. Undoubtedly the American decision to halt has been taken because the environmental hazards of the FBR are unacceptable. even by capitalist criteria. The Sizewell applicants clearly have their work cut out to justify themselves and would appear to need all the coddling that the Inquiry seems certain to provide for them.
In contrast to the applicants, the objectors are a motley lot, presenting a variety of viewpoints, which by no means complement each other. This disunity will make it easier for the court to brush the opposition aside. One common factor will be that all will be propounding alternative capitalist strategies. Working class interests are not considered in such arguments. Bodies like the Suffolk Preservation Society would probably be satisfied by a decision to site the PWR elsewhere. Arguments that nuclear fission is environmentally unacceptable even to capitalism highlight the criminal social irresponsibility of the capitalist class in suppressing this evidence over a period of nearly 40 years. The Greater London Council will present interesting evidence on the risk to Londoners from the transport of nuclear waste through the metropolis, while pressing the case for falsely labelled ‘employment creating alternatives' such as conservation or combined heat and power stations. The Friends of the Earth, the National Union of Mineworkers and the Anti-Nuclear Campaign will argue against the PWR, trying to present evidence that the government does not wish to have a fair hearing.
A body calling itself Ecoropa recently published a leaflet entitled Nuclear Power, The Facts They Don't Want You to Know. This leaflet has sufficiently worried the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) for them to publish a counterblast pamphlet entitled Nuclear Power, the Real Facts. In a preamble to their leaflet Ecoropa make clear their concern for capitalism’s welfare, so they cannot be accused of anti-capitalist bias in presenting their arguments. This they do in question and answer form. The UKAEA reply repeats these questions and answers and then gives a reply of their own. Ecoropa embarrass the nuclear lobby by drawing attention to the way nuclear power has failed to live up to its early promise and recall the days when we were told that electricity from this source would be “too cheap to meter”.
The track history of the PWR is not a good one. We need only recall the emergency of Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania where, on 28 March 1979, the cooling system of the No.2 reactor malfunctioned, and a catastrophic melt-down of the reactor core was only narrowly avoided. A partial evacuation of the area's pregnant women and pre-school children, lasting eight days, was ordered by the State Governor. Since then the same type of valve failed in another PWR at Crystal River. Florida. The British nuclear industry categorically refuses to publish its safety statistics. Ecoropa point out that since 1977 only one nuclear reactor has been ordered in the United States. In their reply UKAEA acknowledge this but say that “this is due to economic conditions" in the hope of blaming the slump for this inconvenient fact. Yet the same economic necessity is being advanced in this and other countries as a reason for pressing ahead with the self-same design. The real reason for the United States slow-down is a re-think by the ruling class on their nuclear strategy in the light of their disappointing experience to date. This leaves Westinghouse and Betchel with the problem of reducing their losses by selling their wares elsewhere: hence their involvement with British and other European authorities. Suppression of important facts has to be a big feature of such a sales drive.
Ecoropa has also asked: “Has an evacuation due to accidentally released radiation ever happened”. The answer given is “Yes, apart from Three Mile Island. In 1958 an accident at a nuclear waste dump devastated a huge area of the Urals in Russia: the names of 30 communities have been removed from the maps. In spite of conclusive evidence from US satellites, the nuclear industry here and abroad managed to keep the news concealed for 21 years!” This is confirmed in the Britannica Book of the Year 1980: "The US CIA released previously secret documents in 1977 which confirmed that a massive nuclear explosion did take place at that time near the town of Kyshtym. . ." (p.366). If the answer were not so screamingly obvious, we could have asked why the CIA waited so long before releasing such good anti-Russian propaganda. The UKAEA attempted reply begins with “The news was not concealed in this country: an accident involving radioactivity in the Urals was reported in the London Evening News, 18 March 1959”.
The Sizewell Inquiry will in due course complete the job for which it was set up and rubber-stamp the Thatcher government’s plan. Yet doubts over the future of nuclear fission even in the capitalist environment persist, particularly in view of the virtual halt to development in the United States. The British authorities have, in effect, pleaded guilty to knowing the ecological facts and deliberately acting against them. But lies, distortion, bias, half-truths, innuendoes, white-washing, have long been part of the capitalist stock-in-trade. The facts are against us — suppress the facts has to be their cry. Total ecological benignity is of course an impossible dream, but in socialism full discussion on all aspects will democratically take place before decisions on such matters as fuel and power, which have such all pervading implications, are taken. With the competitive drive for profits removed, there will no longer be any incentive to produce untried products, such as PWRs, whose long-term or even short-term effects are lethal.
E. C. Edge
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