A couple of months ago, My Mate Dave and I wrote a piece on the possible future role of nuclear power in the UK (indeed, everywhere) and how we think it’s a winner. The main obstacle we could see was the supposedly vehemently anti-nuclear Lib-Dem contingent within the then newly-formed coalition popping up to scupper proceedings. As it turns out, when you actually have to do something other than heckle from the sidelines, it has a habit of reforming your perspective:
Then:
The Liberal Democrat Cabinet minister was a vociferous opponent of nuclear before he joined the Government.
He wrote three years ago: “Nuclear is a tried, tested and failed technology. New nuclear would be economically foolhardy, environmentally irresponsible, and pose long-term security questions that are impossible to address.
Now:
He told BBC Radio Four's Today programme today that his views in the past on nuclear energy had been “much misunderstood”.
He had merely pointed out that there had been no private investment in nuclear since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in America in 1979.
He said: “There will be investment in new nuclear and that will be an important part of our energy mix - along, of course, with coal and gas, as long as there is carbon capture and storage, and along with renewables.”
Hey, I don’t mind a bloke changing his mind once he’s in a position to see the greater picture - that’s what rational people do when presented with facts contrary to previously held opinions. My approval is obviously helped along by the fact that he’s now espousing opinions broadly in-line to my own on the matter, but hey ho. Apparently though, in politics, this kind of reversal isn’t logic but ‘flip-flopping’. Such is the hazard of coasting to power while married to frivolously ideological positions rather than rationally reasoned ones. But bollocks, he’s making the right noises so I don’t care.
As an aside I will briefly comment on the Three Mile Island thing. I’ve never understood why that was ever used as an example of the inherent riskiness of nuclear power despite showing that even when you fuck up every single thing when running a nuke station, you can’t even harm or kill a single person. If there was ever an example of how safe your modern station was -and how you wouldn’t get another Chernobyl-like event, thank you very much, mainstream media- this was it. But that, along with the release of the likes of The China Syndrome (!), literally destroyed the American nuclear industry, so they made do with dioxin poisoning from fossil-fuel burning plants instead.
But like me and any other vaguely interested observer will point out: in any given mainstream discussion on power generation, the rationality is always inversely proportional to the mentions of the atom smashing. In the end, pragmatism wins out.
