"Lucha entre Energía Nuclear y Eólica según The Economist"

Dado que recientemente he hecho mención al tema de la inversión en energías renovables, y en su día analicé los biocombustibles, me parece oportuno exponer aquí un interesante artículo publicado en The Economist esta semana, en el que se muestra un supuesto práctico de la “lucha entre la energía nuclear y las renovables”. Se trata del caso del Reino Unido, país en el que se están contraponiendo las tesis del lobby nuclear frente a las de los medioambientalistas.

Como siempre, en versión original (recuerdo la posibilidad de usar la banderita traductora) :

“The timing was impeccable. As the first hints of winter sent temperatures falling this week, British Energy, whose eight nuclear power stations can meet a fifth of Britain's electricity demand, said on October 22nd that it had discovered a technical problem in one of its reactors. Worried that three similar reactors might be similarly afflicted, it decided to shut two of them down and to delay restarting the other, which was offline for maintenance.

British Energy shares dived 8% that day and short-term power prices jumped by about 15%. Unplanned outages have been commoner of late. Another of the firm's reactors is also offline due to an “electrical fault”. Last year cracked boiler pipes forced a long shutdown at two other sites.

For the nuclear lobby, such technical difficulties highlight the urgency of immediately replacing Britain's doddery old reactors, many of which date from the 1960s and 1970s. Environmentalists, most of whom oppose nuclear power, see things differently. They argue that British Energy's troubles are evidence that nuclear power is an unreliable technology that has no place in a modern energy mix.

Unfortunately for greens, ministers seem to agree with the atom-splitters. Impressed by arguments that nuclear energy is a proven source of low-carbon power, and worried about the dependence on foreign fossil fuels caused by the decline of North Sea oil and gas, the government has been preparing the ground for a nuclear revival. An ostentatious public consultation on the issue finished this month, and some official pronouncement is expected in the next few months. Meanwhile EDF Energy, a French company, has pledged to build a plant by 2017, with three more to follow.

Environmentalists fret that new nuclear plants will come at the expense of eco-friendly technologies such as wind and wave power. On October 23rd those fears seemed to be confirmed. The Guardian newspaper Publisher extracts from a leaked document suggesting that Gordon Brown was trying to wriggle out of a pledge made by Tony Blair, his predecessor as prime minister, that 20% of European energy consumption would be met from renewable sources by 2020.

Civil servants described the target as “expensive” and said that it faced “severe practical difficulties”. That was a diplomatic way to speak of a target that Britain, which gets 2% of its energy from renewables now, has little chance of meeting. Malcolm Wicks, the energy minister, points out that the target is for Europe as a whole, and suggests Britain might manage 10-15% by the deadline.

Stung by accusations that it is diluting its trumpeted commitment to greenery, the government details its support of all sorts of expensive schemes. A multi-million-pound competition to build a “clean” coal power plant that would trap and store carbon emissions in depleted oil fields is to be launched in November. Subsidies for renewable energy will be rejigged in the hope of encouraging technologies, such as solar or wave power, that are not yet competitive. But that cuts little ice with experts, most of whom agree that the government is unwilling to spend the money required to give renewables a big boost. “It is wedded to nuclear power,” says Robin Webster of Friends of the Earth, a green group.

Yet even if ministers row back on renewables, they may not get the new nuclear plants they want. Decades of decline have left the industry short of engineers. Economics is a problem too. The government insists that any nuclear stations must be built without state aid. But nuclear plants—with their huge capital costs and glacial startup times—are a dicey proposition in Britain's liberalised electricity market, where prices fluctuate rapidly.

Ministers are trying to make planning rules more nuclear-friendly, and hope that tighter carbon-emission limits will help nuclear energy shine by comparison with fossil-fuel plants. But Martin Brough of Oxera, an economics consultancy, thinks that more will be needed, most probably a guaranteed minimum carbon price. That would be tantamount to stifling the markets, and reneging on another energy promise.”