MY grandfather was a coal miner. My father was an electrical engineer. Energy appears to be in my blood. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I was growing up in the north of England, we seemed to be heading for a new age of energy production. Just to the south of us was a community called Seaton Carew, in the county of Durham. It needed more electricity, and a new coal-fired power station was proposed. The people objected. As Ian Fells, emeritus professor of energy conversion at the nearby University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne puts it, they said, “Why can’t we have one of those new, clean nuclear power stations?” My neighbors got their wish. In 1969, work began on the Hartlepool Nuclear Plant. Since 1983, it has provided 3 percent of the United Kingdom’s energy.
Next year, decommissioning work will begin on the plant. The local people are opposed to a replacement nuclear facility. What happened? The answer is strangely universal. Around the Western world, environmentalists did what they do best: They exploited fear and massaged science to make nuclear power morally unacceptable, impeding progress and innovation. Yet today they find their case weakened-perhaps fatally-by another concern born from another campaign of fear: global warming. The hysteria environmentalists have built up around carbon emissions may lead to a new dawn for nuclear power. Given that, the case for new nuclear is almost unassailable.
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