tion, it is ultimately disappointing in that it adds little in the way of new insight as to how increasingly scarce non-renewable energy sources may affect our future economic welfare, and is indeed misleading in its proposed policy reaction to energy price increases.

Edward Saraydar Department of Economics

University of Westem Ontario Canada

1Per E. Thoresen, 'Impact of energy price rises on costs', Energy Policy, Vol 9, No 2, June 1981, pp 145-52. 2The argument below-which is concemed with likely long-term income distribution effects of an arbitrary increase in energy price - does not depend upon whether the

energy price increase is or is not economi- cally justified in the sense that the higher price may well be more consistent with the high opportunity cost of a non-renewable resource. Neither, for that matter, does it depend upon whether imported energy is a renewable or non-renewable resource, per se. It does, however, depend upon 'the rise in imported energy price' being something more then a momentary fluctuation in a competitive market, an analytically uninter- esting event which we assume that Thoresen does not have in mind. 3Thoresen's discussion of 'energy crisis' (pp 150-51), where he treats energy price increases and the denial of energy supplies as independent events, confirms that he is unaware that it is the ability to withhold- the implicit or explicit limitation of supply- that permits arbitrary energy price increases, given demand. Of course, with high initial price for a particular form of energy, longer- term demand may moderate with a shift to other forms of energy and conservation.

Conference reports Sizewell B: the case against?

Issues in the Sizewell B Inquiry, Polytechnic of the South Bank, London, 26-28 October 1982

An essential prerequisite for a compre- hensive and rational discussion of the key issues surrounding the proposal by the UK Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) to build Britain's first PWR at Sizewell in Suffolk, is that all interested parties should participate in the debate. This conference, organized by Colin Sweet of the Polytechnic of the South Bank, suffered from the fact that no representatives from either the CEGB or the UK Atomic Energy Authority attended, although invited, and the overall impression gained from the conference was that opponents to nuclear power significantly out- numbered proponents and less committed observers. In some ways this meeting was the antithesis of an earlier conference, held in Birmingham in April 1982, in which the so-called 'nuclear establishment' was in the fore (as reported in the September 1982 issue of Energy Policy),

Notwithstanding this limitation, a

number of stimulating papers were presented. The opening session dealt with the role of the Public Inquiry in the decision making process, a subject on which there was a significant diver- gence of opinion. Tam Dalyell, MP, expressed doubts as to whether the high cost of such major inquiries was justified and cited France as an example of a country in which nuclear decisions have been reached with greater expedition.

Funding Several other speakers complained of the lack of government funding for objectors at the Sizewell Inquiry, but perhaps one of the more interesting positions adopted was that of Robin Grove-White of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, one of the objectors at the Inquiry. Grove- White emphasized the advantages of the public inquiry system, and, while

Communications~Conference reports

acknowledging that lack of funding may present difficulties, thought that objectors to the Sizewell project have ample opportunity to attack what, in his opinion, is a very vulnerable scheme.

Reactor choice Several papers on the choice of the PWR as the next UK reactor system were presented. An historical perspec- tive of PWR development was given by Simon Rippon, European Editor of Nuclear News, in which emphasis was given to the success achieved with the operation of PWRs in several Euro- pean countries. A detailed analysis of the costs and performance of Westing- house plants in the USA was provided by Charles Komanoff, a New York consultant, who showed that between 1973 and 1979 the real cost increase of US Westinghouse units averaged just over 14% per annum. A further per- spective on the question of reactor choice was provided by Lord Bowden of Chesterfield who argued vigorously for a reconsideration of the Candu reactor system.

Gordon MacKerron of the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex Uni- versity opened the session on economic considerations with an excellent paper in which the advantages of delaying a decision on the PWR were presented. He also addressed the question of investment appraisal and pointed to improvements made in the way the CEGB now calculates system-based net effective costs but, at the same time, expressed concern over the adequacy of the sensitivity analysis so far performed by the CEGB. A further point developed in his paper concerned the fuel diversity argument put forward by the CEGB in support of Sizewell B, and he concluded that insufficient analysis of the whole question of fuel diversity has so far been performed.

Risk

Nuclear risks were discussed at various levels ranging from the purely academic to the highly PWR specific. Chris Hope from the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, talked about a subjective index of risk

E N E R G Y P O L I C Y March 1983 83

Conference reports

with which factors hitherto ignored in formal considerations of risk (such as anxiety caused by the newness or involuntary nature of the risk asso- ciated with a technology) could be combined to provide an index for ranking the riskiness of a number of energy technologies. The results depended crucially on personal value judgements, which helps to explain why the risks associated with nuclear power are viewed so differently by various members of society. On the other hand, Shoja Etemad, formerly of Framatome, gave a detailed account of PWR safety problems and stressed some of the difficulties in making calcu- lations of transient behaviour involving two-phase flow.

Po l i cy m a k i n g process

The final session of the conference, entitled 'Decision making and demo- cratic control', opened with Professor Roger Williams of Manchester Uni- versity questioning whether improve- ment is possible in policy making in the UK. The principal theme of an extremely well presented paper was that UK energy policy in the past has been characterized by an overinvest- ment in both nuclear and coal and an underinvestment in conservation. He also pointed out that the fact that the UK has sufficient indigenous energy for the next few decades may, in itself, mean that some of the energy-related decisions of the future will be inferior to those which would be made against a background of severely constrained energy supply.

Public opinion A second paper in this session by Dr Joop van de Pligt of Exeter University looked at the problem of polarization of public opinion on nuclear power from a psychologist's perspective. One of the interesting conclusions from this work was that once an opinion is formed by an individual on the subject of nuclear power, any new information that is assimilated on the subject, regardless of its nature, will tend to confirm that opinion. A further aspect of this research focused on the way in which members of the pro- and anti-

nuclear camps view themselves and each other.

It is highly unlikely that delegates to this conference who, in the main, had well defined positions regarding nuclear power, had their opinions changed by the three days of papers. Indeed, some speakers worked from the assumption that the conference was attended solely by nuclear opponents and proceeded to present a tirade against nuclear power which contributed little to reasoned debate. A further problem lay in the fact that, being non-residential and having no well defined breaks at which

delegates could meet collectively, there was little opportunity for informal dis- cussion, often one of the greatest values of international conferences. Nevertheless, the conference did make a contribution to the Sizewell debate and helped to set the scene for the Public Inquiry which promises to be one of the highlights of the UK energy calendar in 1983.

Nigel Evans Energy Research Group

Cavendish Laboratory Cambridge, UK

Uncertain future for coal

Coaltrans 82: the 2nd international coal trade, transportation and handling con- ference. Conference organized by CS Publications Ltd, Paris, 26-28 October 1982

It is a toss-up whether one calls coal the sleeping beauty or ugly duckling of the international energy scene. On the one hand, the brave forecasts of the WOCOL study and the enlightened policy prescriptions of the Venice Summit seemed to usher in an era of reawakening, in which the international coal trade would expand massively to take up the slack left by OPEC's reluctance to expand oil production sufficiently to sustain desired levels of world economic growth. And events over 1978-81 seemed to encourage this new-found optimism, with annual sea- borne coal trade growing by 23%, 17.5% and 8% in successive years.

On the other hand, 1982 has proved a traumatic year. Far from growing, it looks as though coal trade will actually have fallen. The bright hopes for coal liquefaction and gasification have dimmed as investor after investor has cut its losses and pulled out of high- technology ventures which have to be proved commercial if coal is ever to challenge oil and gas across the whole energy spectrum. Even within its most favourable end-markets, electricity generation and industrial usage, there have been growing question marks, perhaps best summed up by the report

of the International Energy Agency's Coal Industry Advisory Board (CIAB) dealing with the use of coal in industry.

The potential for coal substituting for oil is undoubtedly there, but the resistance to coal is also proving stronger than was initially assumed by the optimists of the late 1970s. The ugly duckling analogy therefore looks increasingly apt. Increased coal trade is going to be necessary, but end users are far from overjoyed by the prospect.

These reflections are triggered by attendance at the well organized Coaltrans 82 conference, which brought together a good cross-section of industrialists and policy makers concerned with the international coal trade.

l E A coal research

One particularly impressive fact about this conference was that it was substantially built round the work that the International Energy Agency is doing within the coal sector. The open- ing address was by the IEA's David le B. Jones, and there were further contributions by Z. Allen, Norman Jennings, Ray Long and Richard Ormerod, all of whom either work for

84 ENERGY POLICY March 1983