Books and reports

Hard to keep up with climate change, energy policy and environment & nature issues, especially as they achieve ‘serious’ status in at least some political quarters. So good reports and key books are very important to behind the media “bites” which seem to pile up but not go anywhere –  “no real direction of travel” as politicians like to say. Here are a few recent ones which we’ve found valuable.

• So, on Brexit and environment law issues, a good green grounding can be had from Green MP Caroline Lucas’ “Exiting the EU, Not the Environment”, Spring 2017, Report. 14 pages of clear explanation and 10 pages of detailed laws and regulations nicely set out. Their future under the questionable care of DEFRA Junior Minister Therese Coffey.
• Then, a very professional  Nuclear Technology & Brexit report. An interesting one by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers says after Euratom Brexit, Uk nuclear wll need a new state body to control the nuclear industry. Not superficially very kind to the underfunded but repeatedly “best of the industry” Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR). But it shows how difficult the whole business is: the key issue is shortage of UK nuclear engineers. Not a good basis for the renaissance surely.
• On the nuclear legacy, respected political sociologist and latterly nuclear expert Professor Andy Blowers, leading light of the Bradwell Essex campaign against siting a Chinese owned new nuclear reactor on the decommissioned site has written: The Legacy of Nuclear Power, pubished by Earthscan /Routledge.  A very valuable four country case study, it asks how and why in different countries anti nuclear campaigns have successes and failures, and how the public debate - the nuclear “narrative” - shifts and is handled differently.The UK case study is the awful Sellafield, now 100% into a century long clean-up ( not really an adequate word) and the associated  search for a permanent depository. For the USA, the case study is Hanford, the US plutonium base, for Germany it is Gorleben where a waste depository was planned, for France it is plutonium and reprocessing Cap La Hague and Bure for a depository. A very valuable, maybe “first” study of its kind. Will be widely read by non-experts and experts alike.  A longer SAGE review to come.