Planet Savers blog

So… we are joining hands with France and about to make a fortune by becoming world leaders in the nuclear power industry.

For those of us that are not scientists, this argument swings like the proverbial pendulum.

I agree with Steve Webb, Lib Dem’s Enviroman, that this will produce no benefit until 2020 and we need something done NOW. Rather than spend a fortune on new energy creation schemes that will only deliver in 12 years time, we need huge sums of money spent on helping us, the people using the energy, to make better use of it. Cut the cost of solar and photovoltaic panels, provide better recycling systems, make it easy for people to live sustainably. This will cut down on the amount of energy we need.

The other side of the argument is that we must become energy independent. We can’t rely on imports to keep our power stations going so, from this point of view, nuclear is the obvious route. It is clean, it provides jobs, it’s there when you need it.

The problem with wind and sun is that they are not consistent. We can’t expect the clouds to part for extra solar gain at half time when everyone puts on the kettle. Nor the wind to blow extra hard at the end of the block buster movie (sorry, ‘film’, I get told off for saying ‘movie’!). Electricity is not something you can pop into a box and stick on the shelf to use later. You need huge farms of turbines and panels if you want to make the supply run efficient so I can see the argument against these.

But what about waves? We are an island. As long as we have Moon, the tides will go in and out in a very reliable fashion. The problem here lies in the government’s desire to wreck the coastline and various eco-systems instead of working with it to a happy conclusion.

Why are government scientists and environmentalists always at loggerheads? I’ll answer that in another question. Why does money still over-rule a sensible argument?

Unfortunately, I think we need some nuclear power stations (never thought I’d hear myself saying that). But I would hate it to be the government’s total solution.