Should Scotland blindly follow England down the nuclear power path?

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

She didn't add 'top that, Swinney,' but a gauntlet was unmistakeably proffered.
Jobs, apprenticeships, investment – oh, and it's low carbon too: Labour's sales pitch on nuclear power is a challenge to the SNP's 'no new nuclear' policy (conveniently overlooking that the decision to prevent new nuclear was originally taken by the Labour-Lib Dem coalition).
Backing new nuclear power hits two spots for Labour – one, it helps with energy security, providing a low carbon baseload power source for when the wind isn't blowing, and two, it will create jobs and rather a lot of them (10,000 at Sizewell C in Suffolk, Reeves claims, including 1,500 apprenticeships).
Read more Rebecca McQuillan
This is all music to the ears of traditional Labour supporters who are disorientated by the ongoing retreat from traditional industry, alarmed about the wind-down of oil and gas, and sceptical about the capacity of the renewables sector to replace lost jobs. We hear you, the Chancellor is saying. Ian Murray, the Scottish Secretary, has been out reminding people that the SNP is refusing to allow Scotland to benefit from any of this munificence.
On the face of it, the SNP's anti-nuclear power stance has become radioactive.
But that's only on a narrow reading of the issue. There's more to it than that. The Scottish Government has a long-standing objection to nuclear power mainly on environmental grounds. Those objections are not daft – to this day, governments around the world are vexed by the question of how to dispose safely of highly dangerous radioactive waste.
Accidents at nuclear power plants can be catastrophic. More immediately, building new nuclear capacity is also infamously expensive and costs are prone to rise, often astronomically, during the build phase.
Hinckley Point C in Somerset, which is currently being built by EDF Energy, was initially projected to cost £18bn but last year EDF estimated it could end up costing up to £46bn. It's also several years late.
The Government's £14.2bn projected spend on Sizewell C is only for the next four years, with overall costs officially expected to top out at £20bn, but industry experts suggest £40bn would be more realistic. The UK Government's own figures suggest power from nuclear costs two to three times more than wind power per megawatt hour.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves (Image: free) So the Scottish Government aren't wrong to be holding back on nuclear, economically as well as environmentally. Focusing on renewables output is cheaper, cleaner and quicker to bring on stream, as well as producing lasting employment.
But wind power and solar won't be enough, on their own, to meet all of Scotland's energy needs. To do that, Scotland needs reliable baseload power generation. The wind blows hard in the North Sea off Scotland but even sailing boats on the Moray Firth are becalmed sometimes.
So how can Scotland cover its baseload power needs? That's the question that has yet to be answered clearly. Scottish ministers need a convincing plan or risk losing the argument by default.
Yesterday Gillian Martin, the energy secretary, reiterated the no new nuclear stance and cited hydro power stations as 'a way of filling in any gaps in the generation of power".
And why not? Scotland already has 88 per cent of the UK's hydro capacity. This country has different geography and a much smaller population than England. England might need to replace its ageing nuclear reactors, but does Scotland? It only has one still operating. It makes sense to check first that we can't meet our baseload power needs from renewables before jumping on the nuclear bandwagon.
Pumped hydro storage is one option and is proven tech. Water is pumped from a lower reservoir to a higher one during times when renewable electricity is plentiful so that it can be let down through the turbines again to generate electricity when there's a power shortfall. A large scale pumped hydro scheme already being developed at Coire Glas by SSE Renewables would have 30GWh of storage, doubling Britain's electricity storage capacity.
But how many pumped hydro plants would we need? Where would they be? Would they get through planning? How long would they take? The Scottish Government hasn't said. It has urged the UK government to provide better conditions for investment but details are scant.
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Scottish ministers have also talked about the importance of 'grid-scale batteries' and vehicle-to-grid technology, allowing car batteries to store power and supply it back to the grid. They talk about the role of green hydrogen in 'long term and large scale' energy storage, but we need more details.
Reeves has given the green light at last to the Acorn Project carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility in Peterhead, providing 'development funding'. The facility would collect carbon dioxide generated from gas-fired power generation and industrial sources, and store it underground. Environmental campaigners say its assumed benefits are hugely exaggerated, but it's backed by the independent Climate Change Committee and the Scottish Government.
Either way, it will take years to get up and running.
An aspiration for more hydropower investment, aspirational talk of batteries and hydrogen, and support for CCS is not a concrete plan. There's a strong argument to avoid saddling Scottish people with expensive nuclear power generation when energy security could be provided through cheaper, faster, cleaner methods, but the Scottish Government needs to show the way with a robust clear plan, and fast. Otherwise it's advantage Labour.
Rebecca McQuillan is a journalist specialising in politics and Scottish affairs. She can be found on Bluesky at @becmcq.bsky.social and on X at @BecMcQ