Hinkley C and the BBC

Powerful letter from Dr Ian Fairlie, independent nuclear consultant (http://www.ianfairlie.org/about-ian-fairlie/) to the BBC - shared by Angela Paine, a leading campaigner to stop a new nuclear power station being built on the Somerset coast (http://stophinkley.org/) and local green activist:

Sirs

Your programme on Hinkley C (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04n67xn) was perhaps one of the worst-informed, biased and misleading I've heard in a long time.

Have you no independent researchers who could dig a little deeper on this contentious matter?

Why no discussion of the truly extraordinary construction costs - £24.5 billion - and rising? This is more than double the cost of the 2012 UK Olympic Games...for one power station. And the mindboggling price support subsidies, estimated at another £35 billion over the life of the station assuming it is ever built? These have been severely criticised - even by Conservative politicians and bankers.

And the fact that the EPRs [nuclear reactors] under construction in Finland and France are in serious legal, technical, and financial difficulties? Both projects being years behind schedule and £billions over budget?

And the fact that the EPR is an experimental design and may not even work in practice, given its over-reliance on myriads of untested computer programs?

You and your colleagues may say that nuclear is low carbon, but this is naive: of all the methods of generating  low carbon electricity, nuclear is the least economic, by some margin.

For heaven's sake, where was the balance in your programme?

Yours in anger

Sadly, another thing to be cross with the BBC about! If you heard this R4 'You & Yours' programme last week, please consider joining Ian in contacting them with your thoughts / complaints...

Nuclear power is not a cheap option

A letter from one of our local Green councillors, Martin Whiteside, tackling nuclear issues. Re-blogged for the benefit of those of you who may otherwise have missed it.

23^rd October 2013

 

Dear Editor,

The agreement to let the French and Chinese build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset has serious implications for us in Gloucestershire.  If we are not careful, next in line could be the go ahead to build a massive new nuclear power station close to us on the Severn at Oldbury. If something went wrong, (like happened at Fukushima, Chernobyl or  Three Mile Island) this would, at average wind speeds, carry radioactive contamination to us in Dursley in 40 minutes, Stonehouse in one hour and Nailsworth or Stroud in 1 hour 20 minutes.

Nuclear power is not only dangerous, it also makes no economic sense. These nuclear power stations will only be built with a guaranteed price subsidy from you and me and our children - on our electricity bills for the next 35 years. Our higher bills will be subsidising shareholders and taxpayers in France and China for a generation! Does handing over this technology to foreign companies make us more energy secure in an uncertain future? The Greens don’t think so. Who will be left with the legacy of the nuclear waste (we still have found a way of dealing with our existing waste – let alone any new waste!) - we will! Who will suffer if there is an accident – we will!

The Green Party energy policy is based on the latest scientific evidence. It shows how we can live comfortable lives without nuclear, while still radically reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. We need to invest more in energy conservation and genuine renewables. The good news is that this will also create many more local jobs than nuclear, and with technologies that are locally owned and creating local profit. It makes a lot of sense.

Martin Whiteside – Green Party District Councillor