editorial from Sunday Herald, 09 July 2006
Tony Blair’s energy review has pulled off a remarkable feat: it has abolished history. Don’t take our word for it, read what Dr Colin Mitchell, a manager of nuclear policy at the Department of Trade and Industry in London, wrote last month when he turned down a request for information on the review.
“I have spoken directly with the team carrying out the energy review and they have informed me that in-depth research into the past performance of the nuclear industry is not required to carry out the review,” he said. “The past performance, when the nuclear industry was establishing itself, has little correlation to the future performance.”
So history is bunk. There is no need to learn from the mistakes of the past because the past is not related to the future. If you are about to do something stupid, this is a very handy notion.
When the Prime Minister’s review finally sees the light of day this week, its headline conclusion will contain no surprises. As ministers have been signalling for months, it will endorse a programme of new nuclear power stations to replace those that are due to close down.
The only way for Blair to do this without flinching is to ignore the history of nuclear power over the last 50 years. Because if he remembered the mountains of radioactive waste, the companies that have gone to the wall and the billions of pounds wasted, he would choose another way.
Unfortunately, the leaders who will be joining Blair at the G8 summit in St Petersburg next weekend look like they are going to make a similar mistake. As we reveal today, they are planning a major worldwide expansion of nuclear power to ensure “global energy security”. The also want to revive the fast breeder reactor, which depends upon plutonium, the raw material of the atomic bomb.
Blair and the other G8 leaders might prefer to ignore history but its lessons are very clear. In the past, spreading civil nuclear technology has often led to the spread of military nuclear technology, thereby rendering the world a less safe place. Previous efforts to develop the fast breeder reactor have also failed: more than £2 billion was spent on it at Dounreay before it was dropped as too costly.
Too many memories are too short. Our leaders need to learn from history, not abolish it.
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