Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-11-03
Topic: Environment
Anthony Howe Browne (Conservative, Centre-right): It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green). I speak wearing my hat as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the environment, and I want to touch on some of the environmental issues addressed by some Opposition Members Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima: the names of the world’s nuclear accidents haunt people around the planet to this day. Fears of lethal invisible radiation killing thousands of people and laying waste swathes of the planet—these are very audible concerns. But then there are the facts. No one died from Three Mile Island, and studies afterwards showed that there was no measurable increase in cancer rates. One person died from Fukushima. Again, post-accident studies showed no measurable impact on cancer rates Then there is Chernobyl. I have been to Chernobyl—to Chernobyl village itself. I went with the United Nations, which spent a long time studying the medical impact of the world’s worst nuclear accident for 15 years after it happened. There I saw the alarming sight of happy villagers who had refused to leave after the accident and were taking the opportunity to restore the beautiful Chernobyl village church; they took a delight in showing me around it. I met a mother in Chernobyl village who had conceived and given birth to a totally healthy baby. Yes, 41 rescuers died of acute radiation sickness in the immediate aftermath of the accident, and there was a measurable increase in childhood thyroid cancer, which is, luckily, vanishingly rare, but otherwise the UN scientists found no measurable negative medical effects from the nuclear accident itself and concluded they had been vastly exaggerated We have now had nuclear power around the world for nigh on 70 years, and it has proven to be just about the safest and greenest form of energy. Safety is measured in the industry in terms of deaths per terawatt-hour of energy production, taking all direct and indirect deaths into account, including through the supply chain. For coal, it is 24.6 deaths per terawatt hour; for oil, 18.4; for biomass, 4.6; and for gas, 2.8. For nuclear, it is 0.07. Yes, that is a bit higher than wind, solar and hydropower, although in roughly the same ballpark, but several orders of magnitude lower than other forms of power, and in terms of CO2 emissions, nuclear produces less than hydropower. It is about the cleanest and safest form of energy in the world, and it is, as we have heard today, massively scalable So why have we not embraced it? I will tell you why: "Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media." Those are not my words but those of James Lovelock, one of the most eminent environmental scientists, who founded the whole Gaia thesis. As a former environment editor of The Observer and The Times, and as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the environment, I believe that the environment movement has been one of the most important and positive movements of the last half century. The fact that we are all environmentalists now—including the Queen, I note—proves the positive impact the movement has had. However, the environment movement made a major strategic error by campaigning so hard against nuclear power. Increasingly, many environmentalists agree. Even as Fukushima was still smoking, George Monbiot, the environmental leader, had a damascene conversion and started making the moral case for nuclear power If we believe that climate change is the biggest threat to the planet, we have to use every tool in the toolbox to combat it. We have a moral obligation not to campaign against the one technology that can probably help more than almost any other to get to net zero.