TNAG-1498-FCO40-2056-Guangdong-nuclear-power-station-project-at-Daya-Bay-safety-c-1986 — Page 78

As a major exporting country our standards of living could not survive if the economies of our customers are ruined and destroyed owing to the cost and shortage of energy supply.

THE EUROPEAN DIMENSION

Our biggest single customer is the European Community. What are the

energy reserves of the European Community, including ourselves? On

the basis of proven and probable reserves at the present rates of

consumption, the European Community has oil reserves which would

last ten years, gas reserves thirty-eight years and coal reserves that could be produced at economic prices for ninety years.

This is at a time when 35% of the European Community's electricity

is produced from nuclear energy.

If the decision was taken to

eradicate nuclear energy from the European Community, the pressure upon the available reserves would be considerably greater. Within a very short period a gigantic energy crisis would hit the European

Community, either a crisis of shortage and breakdown, or

alternatively a crisis of having to pay astronomic prices to those

who could export to the European Community the fossil fuels that

were required to keep it going.

If the Community banned nuclear power it would have to increase its

use of alternative fuels in 1986 by around 3 million barrels of oil

daily, a figure greater than the whole of UK oil production.

The European Community is more dependent on fuel imports than the United States, the Soviet Union or China and its import dependency is rising far more rapidly as European fossil fuel stocks deplete more rapidly. Europe has to face a strategic imperative for maintaining major alternatives to fossil fuels. The Japanese have had to recognise a similar imperative in spite of having the economic strength to meet the enormous import bills for their energy; already they have 25% of their electricity supplied by nuclear power and within a decade that will increase to 35%.

The European Community has to recognise the location of the known reserves of energy in the world. 90% of the known reserves of coal are in China, the Soviet Union and the United States. Half of the world's gas reserves are in the Soviet Union, half of the world's

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