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Socialism and Science: Nuclear power and a socialist energy programme THE CHERNOBYL nuclear catastrophe has horrified workers throughout the world.
Millions are looking for a socialist energy policy as an alternative to the nightmare offered by Stalinism and capitalism. Britain has enormous resources of oil, gas and coal yet every winter thousands of old people die of the cold and families, who are victims of economic crisis, have their gas or electricity cut off. This is despite the fact that the 'energy crisis' of the seventies has now turned into an energy glut due to the collapse of British industry.
Capitalists demand that the state should provide them with cheap energy regardless of the best interests of society or of the safety of workers in the energy industries.
They are prepared to risk possible nuclear disasters because cheaper energy will lead to higher profits. As the crises of the capitalist system deepens the jobs of workers in 'safe' industries like gas and electricity will come under threat and valuable energy resources will be squandered in the bosses' short term interests.
Britain hás enormous resources of the three main fossil fuels oil, gas and coal, but their precise extent is unknown. There is probably between 35 and 80 trillion cubic feet of gas, which at the 1979 rate of consumption would last for between twenty and forty five years.
Total recoverable resources of oil are estimated to be within the range of 2,400 to 4,400 million tonnes, which at the 1979 rate of consumption would last between 30 and 50 years. Recoverable resources of coal are around 5,000 million tonnes, which would last 350 years at 1979 rates of consumption.
However in capitalist Britain technical predictions of how long energy resources will last such as the ones above, are almost completely speculative. The convulsive economic crises, which are inevitable in the near future, make it impossible to predict consumption rates in five years time, let alone into the next century. The collapse of the oil producers' cartei OPEC has led to the price of oil being cut by two-thirds in a few months.
This means that the "economically' recoverable reserves of oil in the North Sea have been slashed, since this oil is now prohibitively expensive to extract compared to that from the Gulf, ana the capitalists will always demand energy at the lowest possible price.
OPEC is hoping that the fall in the oil price will force producers of marginal By Pete Dickenson high cost fields, such as Britain, out of business. This has begun to happen in the USA, in Oklahoma, where 23,000 high cost 'stripper' wells are threatened. For political and technical reasons the British ruling class cannot allow a similar devastation of the North Sea, even if this means paying huge subsidies to the oil companies to stay in production. Most of the big oilfields in the northern sector of the North Sea produce oil and gas together-for technical reasons one cannot be produced without the other. Unlike oil, gas cannot be imported in sufficient quantities vy tanker to meet demand if the North Sea was shut down. It would take years to develop the facilities to do this, or conversely to convert back to oil and coal burning. The cost would be astronomical, and the billions of pounds spent on converting to North Sea gas would be wasted.
Tories nuclear power strategy The cornerstone of the Tories' energy policy is to generate half of all electric power by nuclear means. They are prepared to ignore the terrible risks highlighted by the Chernobyl catastrophe and the disaster at Three Mile Island in the USA.
The exact cause of the accident at Chernobyl is still unclear, but the final death toll from cancer over a 20 year period could be as high as 100,000, according to the New Scientist magazine. If the wind had been blowing towards the nearby city of Kiev the casualty figures would have been much worse. What is clear is that there was an explosion blowing the roof of the reactor off and releasing a radioactive cloud which subsequently spread round the world. The initial cause of the explosion could have been a rupture in a huge drum containing the steam coming off the reactor, perhaps due to faulty construction. The core became uncovered the graphite around it heated up and any water subsequently coming into contact with the graphite could have caused an explosion. What made Chernobyl worse than the Three Mile Island accident was that there was no containment structure around the reactor. This meant that an explosion immediately released huge quantities of radioactive gas into the atmosphere. The lack of containment also prevented water being pumped into the reactor 29 after the explosion to control the fire because a further cloud of radioact. e steam would have been released The nuclear reactor at Three ! = Island was a PWR (Pressurises inster Reactor), the same ive= CE33 want to install at Sizeme crisis at Three Mile sari:= as ===. came to withimelting point :: =:
"melt down" -=:
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MIR Summer 1986: Nuclear have been a major disaster. Many engineers think the design of the PWRs is inherently unsafe and none have been ordered in the USA since 1978.
Thatcher's decision to press ahead with nuclear power is not even based on direct economic grounds, but is designed to weaken the labour movement. This was shown by a leaked Cabinet minute in 1979 which stated: "A nuclear programme would have the advantage of removing a substantial portion of electricity from disruption by industrial action of coal miners and transport workers. " In other words, the Tories' energy plans reduce to a choice between spending billions of pounds on building up coal stocks to beat the miners or spending billions of pounds on uneconomic nuclear power plant to achieve the same end.
New uses for coal
Power-amount of the chemical sulphur dioxide which is produced. This causes 'acid rain' which can destroy vegetation. However burning coal in fluidised beds dramatically reduces sulphur dioxide pollution, as well as improving general efficiency.
The huge investment in converting the gas transmission system and gas appliances to burning North Sea gas over the past 20 years will be wasted, unless steps are now taken to step up research and development into producing natural gas from coal. North Sea production will rise to a peak this year and could be exhausted in 20 years. Gasification of coal would create a demand for another 120 million tonnes a
year.
There is great potential for further automation in mining which could have the result of extending coal reserves to 1,000 years, drastically reducing the working week for miners and improving health and safety. Coal gasification 'in situ ie. underground, would open up new coalfields which are at present too dangerous or difficult to mine. In this process a bore hole is sunk and oxygen and steam is injected and the gas produced drawn off. Another possibility, of introducing more remote computer control in mining, using the highly sophisticated handling systems developed in the nuclear industry,
would also lead to shorter working hours and improved safety conditions.
There are a whole range of other
possible sources of energy which need
to be seriously considered. The most important ones are water power, wind
energy and solar energy. Water power
can be divided into hydroelectric, tidal
and wave categories. Hydro-electric
power is already generated in moun-
tainous regions in Scotland but there
is little further scope to develop this.
Harnessing the energy of the tides is
technically feasible but there are only
a few suitable sites like the Severn
estuary, and the capital cost would be
very high indeed. The technical pro-
blems associated with wave power
have so far been insurmountable, in
particular how to move the electricity,
in one form or another, ashore. Like
tidal power, the capital cost to produce
significant amounts of electricity would
be prohibitive at the moment.
The technology to produce energy
from the wind or the sun is now well
established. Both still suffer from the
problem of high costs to produce
relatively small amounts of energy, but
the main problem concerns storage of
the electricity. Since the sun shines on-
ly a minority of the time and wind
speeds are often zero, the energy pro-
duced on sunny or windy days must be
stored for use in the future. This is
notoriously difficult to achieve. Bat-
teries cannot hold enough energy to be
useful for heating purposes and other
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The capitalists are unconcerned by the evidence from the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria, where the rates of incidence of leukemia are very high. For instance, in the town of Seascale just over a mile from the plant, children under the age of ten had an incidence of leukemia ten times the national average. Although the government sponsored Black Report said there was nothing to worry about, evidence to the contrary is mounting, especially from the USA. At a US Navy Shipyard in Maine the overall death rate of workers involved in nuclear related tasks was twice the national average and the incidence of leukemia was 45 per cent above average. These workers were exposed to very low levels of radiation well within 'safety limits' , indicating that there is probably no safe dose of radiation in these circumstances.
There is a need now for big investments to implement technology based on new uses for coal. When coal is burnt in a power station only 35 per cent of the energy released produces electricity. The remainder is lost through the cooling towers in waste heat. By using this waste heat in domestic district heating systems, the efficiency of power generation can be increased from 35% to as high as 80%. Twenty average-sized district
heating systems would use 10 to 15
million tonnes of coal a year.
The most dramatic recent develop-
ment in coal technology has been the
invention of fluidised bed combustion.
Powdered coal and sand are mixed
together and burnt in a moving bed,
leading to greater efficiency by improv-
ing the rate at which heat is transfer-
red from the coal. The result is that
boilers can be made much smaller, in-
creasing their possible range of applica-
tions. A major problem in burning coal
in conventional boilers is the large
methods like pumping water up hills and running it down again later are inefficient and expensive. At the moment, solar and wind energy would supplement power produced by conventional means on the national grid, but this is also inefficient since generating capacity has to be duplicated.
Theoretically, one of the most promising sources of energy is nuclear fusion. Nuclear power at present is based on fission; that is, using the energy that is produced when an atom of uranium is split into smaller particles. The problem is that radiation is released at the same time. In nuclear fusion an atomic nucleus is formed by fusing together atomic particles. At the same time a large quantity of energy is released but with virtually no radiation produced. To cause this reaction to happen needs a very high temperature and to control the energy when it is released is technically very difficult. At present, the method is still at the research stage and will need very big investments to bring it to the stage of providing electricity through the national grid. But, in a socialist planned economy, with resources for research determined by social need and not profit and, especially in relation to nuclear
power the development of armaments, in the long term nuclear fusion could be
a very important potential source of
energy.
Nuclear fusion
Whatever the most rational development of energy resources is, workers in the oil, gas, coal and electricity industries in crisis ridden capitalist Britain face an uncertain future. The inevitable economic and political convulsions nationally and internationally can alter overnight the bosses' view of what energy resource it is in their best interests to exploit. Also, as was mentioned previously, the political calculations of the ruling class in their battle with the labour movement plays a big role in determining energy policy. Take, for example, the electricity industry where many workers think their jobs are safe. Current generating capacity in Britain is 66,000 Megawatts (MW). When the expansion at Drax power station is complete, another 1,300 MW will be added. The new nuclear stations at Dungeness, Hartlepool and Heysham will soon be fully operational, adding a further 5,000 MW to generating capacity, making a total of 72,000 MW. Peak demand however, even in arctic conditions, is about 50,000MW, an overcapacity of nearly 35 per cent. Since 1979, over 6,000 MW of noncoal generating capacity has been commissioned in power stations in England and Wales at unit fuel costs of between two and ten times that of coal.
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This policy was adopted to weaken the position of the miners in a strike. Now the strike has been defeated the CEGB may suddenly discover it has 'uneconomic capacity'. The coal fired stations in Yorkshire and Notts will be threatened if the Tories press ahead with their plans to produce half of UK electricity from nuclear power stations.
The future for gas workers is uncertain. Supplies of North Sea gas could run out in twenty years' time and have passed their peak now. The future of the industry depends on a programme of gasification of coal starting immediately, but if the Tories do go ahead with massive investment in nuclear power the industry will probably be decimated in the next ten to twenty years.
Under capitalism, precious sources of gas are being squandered, workers health and safety is threatened by nuclear power and the coal industry could be crippled. The convulsive crises which will inevitably continue mean
that jobs in all the energy industries could be under threat, depending on how the ruling class see their short term interests. At the same time, in one of the most energy rich countries in the world thousands die of cold because they can't afford to heat their homes.
An integrated energy programme, within a socialist plan of production, would guarantee cheap and safe energy for all and the most harmonious development, in the long and short term, of the different energy resources, for the benefit of society as a whole.
The main points of a socialist energy programme based upon the public ownership of the entire energy industry should be:
• An end to the nuclear power programme and the closure of nuclear power stations with a guarantee to any displaced workers of local, alternative work with present wages and conditions maintained.
• A labour movement inquiry into health hazards and the safest method
of decommissioning nuclear power plants including the disposal of nuclear waste.
• Transfer of research and development effort in nuclear fission into technology for using coal.
• More investment into investigations of new sources of energy, particularly nuclear fusion.
• Large scale implementation of programmes in coal gasification and the fluidised bed combustion method of burning coal.
• An integrated plan to use oil, coal, gas and electricity in the best interests of society as a whole as part of a socialist plan of production. • The expansion of the coal industry and an increase in automation to improve safety and increase recoverable reserves.
• A 35 hour week or shorter in all energy industries if jobs might be lost through new technology.
• Workers' control and management in energy industries.
What happened at Chermobyl?
THE DISASTER at Chernobyl was the
world's worst nuclear accident. The
exact cause is still unclear: the partial
and selective information being releas-
ed in Moscow certainly cannot be trusted to paint a true picture.
Indeed the scope of the catastrophe has been dramatically worsened by the bungling and callous indifference of the bureaucrats in charge. The disaster itself was partly due to inadequate safety features in the power station design and probably to poor standards of construction.
Moscow has admitted that it was 36 hours before the population in the immediate vicinity was evacuated, at a time when, as was later calculated, 20 times more radiation was released compared to Hiroshima. It was nearly two weeks before warnings were given not to eat certain types of vegetables.
The reactor at Chernobyl is called a boiling water, graphite moderated type. This means that the uranium fuel rods are surrounded by graphite which absorbs some of the heat of the nuclear reaction, a process essential to control its speed. Boiling water is pumped past the fuel rods and graphite to carry away more of the heat and the steam produced is used to drive turbines to make electricity. In addition, the graphite has to be surrounded by helium and nitrogen gas to stop it burning in the surroundirg air. It is inherently unsafe to have high temperature graphite close to steam under pressure, because if the two
meet an explosion is possible, as actually happened.
It now appears that a sudden surge in power inside the reactor caused a rupture in the pipes holding the cooling water, bringing it into contact with the graphite and causing an explosion. Controlling power surges in this type of reactor was already known to be problem two years ago, according to the journal Atomnaya Energiya, which pointed out the need for improved control systems. The official reason given for the power surge was a mistake made by an operator during an experiment. Apart from ignoring the danger of doing experiments on reactors under power, this reason is a convenient one for the bureaucrats because it implies there is nothing inherently unsafe in the design, only operating safety procedures need to be looked at.
Nuclear programme
continues
There is a crash programme in the USSR to build nuclear power stations. The plan is to have 70,000 MW capacity in operation by 1990, which will represent the largest generating capacity in the world. The ability of the Soviet Union to build at this rate is, in a distorted way, a testimony to the potential of a planned economy. Russia is now on a par with the USA in energy production, after being behind India in 1917.
However
the reality of Stalinism to-
day means that the nuclear programme is not part of a rational energy plan,
where production is geared to the best long term interests of society, including
safety, but rather is an expedient dictated by the economic crisis of the system.
The reserves of coal, oil and gas in Siberia are the largest in the world making a non-nuclear energy policy entirely possible. The bureaucrats are unable to use this resource for two reasons: the Stalinist system can't develop modern industries, such as electronics and computers, without importing high technology from the advanced capitalist countries. This must be paid for with hard currency which is obtained by exporting oil and gas. The second reason is that because of the chaotic nature of the railway network it is very expensive to move coal from Siberia, and although modern means of mass transportation are being built, such as pipelines, they are only being used for exports.
Hence the urgent need for a large domestic nuclear power programme, where in the rush corners are being cut and adequate safety standards ignored. The central party bosses are now heaping the blame for Chernobyl on the local bureaucrats, in classical Stalinist fashion, and they in turn are blaming the workers at the plant. As the death toll mounts the hypocrisy of the local and national rulers will be exposed as workers begin to study the real causes of the disaster.
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