Nuclear reaction

SO: Tony Blair has admitted it. He is considering commissioning a new generation of nuclear power stations to plug Britain's energy gap.

His long-awaited announcement yesterday threatened to descend into farce. The Prime Minister had to delay his speech to the CBI conference by 48 minutes and then switch to a smaller room after Greenpeace protesters climbed up inside the roof of the hall he had been due to use.

Using safety harnesses to attach themselves to the roof, they sprinkled hundreds of stickers bearing the legend "Nuclear, wrong answer" on to the businessmen and women below.

Mr Blair attempted to pass the embarrassing incident off as a joke. "This is going to be a surreal occasion," he told his audience.

But he was not joking about the possibility of building new nuclear power stations. There was an urgent need to review Britain's future power needs, Mr Blair said.

"Round the world you can sense feverish re-thinking. Energy prices have risen. Energy supply is under threat. Climate change is producing a sense of urgency."

Energy minister Malcolm Wicks would be leading a review into the country's future power needs, Mr Blair said. "It will include specifically the issue of whether we facilitate the development of a new generation of nuclear power stations."

Much as Mr Blair might like to joke it away, Greenpeace are not the only ones with deep reservations about nuclear power being used to meet our future energy needs and our carbon reduction commitments. Both Greens and Liberal Democrats on City of York Council are against, for a start.

Coun Andrew Waller, City of York Council's executive member for environment and sustainability, said a new generation of nuclear power stations would bring serious problems of nuclear waste disposal and a threat to human health, at a very high cost.

Coun Waller said the dangers of radioactive leaks or of catastrophic failures such as Chernobyl, the difficulty of disposing of nuclear waste that remains life-threatening for tens of thousands of years, and the potential risk from terrorists should be enough to put anyone off investing in a nuclear future.

"Nuclear is far from being a carbon-free source of energy once all the stages of construction, mining, processing of fuel, and disposal are taken into account," he said. "It is also extremely expensive, both to build the plants and treat waste.

"If the Prime Minister thinks that nuclear power is the answer, then he is clearly asking the wrong question. Britain must invest in renewable energy and energy conservation as a long-term solution to the 'energy gap'.

"Other nations are leaving us behind by investing in cleaner, sustainable energy production."

The Government is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 12.5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. It has also set itself a target that by 2010, ten per cent of the UK's electricity will come from renewable energy - sources such as wind farms, solar and hydro-electric power, and "biomass", the burning of wood and other biological products.

It is well short of achieving that: at the moment, only 2.7 per cent of Britain's electricity comes from renewable energy sources.

Sir Ben Gill, the Easingwold farmer and former chairman of the National Farmers' Union, believes we can do far better. And he thinks biomass could be crucial.

While wind farms and hydroelectric power schemes tend to generate the headlines, biomass generates far more electricity than either - twice as much as hydroelectric schemes, and five times as much as wind farms. It accounts for well over half of all electricity produced in the UK from renewable sources.

But what is biomass? The term simply refers to any biological material that can be used to produce energy. It includes wood (whether waste wood from forestry schemes or crops such as the willow that could soon help fuel Drax Power Station), green waste from gardens, energy crops such as oilseed rape or sugar beet that can be used for car fuel, and even cereal straw and sewage sludge, which can be used to produce heat.

Unlike coal and oil, biomass is carbon neutral. This is because the carbon in coal has been locked underground for millions of years, and when released through burning adds to the carbon in the atmosphere. The carbon in wood and plant material has only recently been taken out of the atmosphere as the plant grew: and the carbon released by burning such biomass is offset by that absorbed by other plants during their growth.

Sir Ben chaired a government task force looking at the use of biomass. He says that by itself biomass will not meet the country's energy needs or provide an alternative to nuclear power. There is a limit on how much biomass we can produce because we need to keep some farmland for growing food.

But it could make a significant contribution, both to our energy needs and to our carbon reduction targets. Within ten years, biomass could supply seven per cent of all our heating needs - and potentially far more in future. Even seven per cent would save between three and six million tonnes of carbon a year, he said. "That is significant in terms of climate change, and we think it is quite feasible to get there."

In many ways, North and East Yorkshire are leading the way in demonstrating just how valuable biomass could be.

A North Yorkshire company, Bioflame, has applied to build a £1.2m biomass and green waste power generating station at its HQ at South View Farm in Yatts, near Pickering. The 0.5 megawatt station could power up to 450 homes per year. A typical coal-powered plant produces 500 megawatts.

More exciting still is the Renewable Energy Growers, a collective of Yorkshire farmers, many of them in North and East Yorkshire, who are on the brink of signing a contract with Drax power station to grow coppice willow which could supply up to ten per cent of the power station's needs (see panel).

The real potential of biomass, however, is not in providing electricity for the national grid, but for local, small scale electricity generation - for example, for farmhouses not connected to the local grid - and for heating.

A biomass boiler, possibly using green waste collected in York, would be an ideal way to heat the council's proposed plush new offices in Hungate, Sir Ben says. Or to heat a new school. Such a boiler would be no different in size from a conventional gas or oil boiler, and would not need much more storage space than required for an oil tank.

It would initially be more expensive to install, but thereafter, the cost of fuel would be cheaper. By using locally-produced biomass, it would be even more environmentally friendly.

If the city council took the plunge, Sir Ben said, it could serve as an example for other authorities across the country. "It is a challenge for York city, and they should seriously think about it."

Looking further into the future, a new generation of biomass power stations might even be possible. David Turley, of the Central Science Laboratories at Sand Hutton said these power stations not only generated electricity but also captured the waste heat given off and used that to heat homes and buildings in the surrounding community.

At the moment, he points out, power stations such as Drax are massively inefficient, with only about a quarter of the energy in the coal that is burned being turned into electricity.

The rest is given off as waste heat or lost on the national grid.

In theory, a power station that used biomass efficiently and harnessed the waste heat for heating homes and water could be up to 85 per cent efficient.

You would get three times as much heat and power from the fuel consumed as we do from wasteful coal-fired power stations at the moment, in other words.

Now there's a thought. With that kind of energy efficiency, maybe we wouldn't need new nuclear power stations after all.

Willow way to produce green energy

TWO generations ago, Russell Toothill's grandfather would have given over about one third of his farmland to growing feed for the horses which provided his power.

Today, Russell estimates that about a third of his own farmland is given over to willow coppice - a biomass fuel he sells to Drax Power Station which is ultimately turned into electrical energy, the horsepower of today. "Things have gone full circle," he says.

Russell, who farms near Doncaster, is a founder member and director of Renewable Energy Growers, the collective of Yorkshire farmers which is on the brink of signing a contract with Drax to supply biomass fuel which could meet up to ten per cent of the power station's needs.

"We've been doing a trial with them, and we're now towards the end of negotiations with them for a contract," he says.

A number of farmers throughout Yorkshire - including in North and east Yorkshire - belong to the collective.

They grow willow coppices on a three-year rotational basis, harvesting the young willow tress at the end of year three when they are up to 25 feet high.

The willow woodlands are great for wildlife - Russell has spotted everything from barn owls and red kites to common cranes on his land - and they are natural and renewable, Russell says.

There have been cases of neighbours objecting to the trees blocking their view, he admits. "But we have to take collective responsibility for global warming, and I'm sure they wouldn't prefer a nuclear power station next door," he said.

Updated: 10:00 Wednesday, November 30, 2005