Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-13-Speech-2-027"
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"en.20060613.6.2-027"2
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"Mr President, I should like to comment on Mr Buzek’s proposals on nuclear research.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution Britain was able to rely predominantly on its own indigenous energy resources: coal and then natural gas. But Britain, like many European countries, now faces an impending energy crisis. Coal still meets 35% of our energy needs but it is environmentally unfriendly. North Sea gas, which met 37.5% of our needs, is rapidly running out and since 2003 we have been forced to import gas. We have already passed from a surplus to a shortage and we are heading for an ever-widening shortfall.
Nuclear energy provides about 22.5% of our needs but that nuclear capability is now rapidly coming to the end of its life cycle and our nuclear power stations will have to be decommissioned, so that by 2014 we will have lost about 70% of our capacity. Britain faces losing a very large proportion of its energy supplies relatively quickly. Unless other provisions can be made, very soon we will be forced to rely on foreign, unreliable and not necessarily friendly suppliers, for example, the Russian Federation.
Energy conservation measures are necessary and desirable, but cannot make the necessary impact. With the best will in the world, renewable sources of energy, such as wind and waves, simply will not supply the amounts of energy required for major industrialised societies. Wind turbines will only work when the wind blows, which is 30% of the time, and require conventional power stations to back them up when the wind does not blow. They are worse than useless. Wave power only works in specific geographic locations. Other alternative methods are equally ineffective. France has already tackled the problem and installed the latest range of modern nuclear reactors, to the extent that they now supply about 70% to 80% of its electricity needs.
Therefore I found much to agree with in Mr Buzek’s report. He is quite right to think in terms of a 50-year plan for sustainable and secure nuclear energy supplies that are safe and environmentally friendly. The first stage of that plan is to build sufficient new-generation nuclear power stations for the next 30 to 50 years. Stage two of the plan must, as he rightly says, consist of the development of nuclear fusion to deliver viable fusion plants within two generations.
Where I have to part company with him is on the notion that this project should be done under the auspices of the European Union. Britain could build ten new nuclear power stations for the equivalent of less than two years’ contributions to the European budget. That would be money much better spent.
The development of nuclear fusion is precisely the kind of international cooperative project that could be undertaken by independent sovereign governments, without any need for the institutions of the European Union intended to promote political integration by economic means, as indeed Euratom has done since its creation."@en1
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