Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Yes, nuclear power plants are dangerous. But for Britain, the alternative is to start hoarding candles

Daily Mail
"Chris Huhne, the British Government’s Lib Dem Energy Secretary and a crusader for renewables, is a dogged opponent of nuclear power.Only yesterday he called for more ambitious carbon emission targets to cut Western energy use, even though many economists believe such policies will grievously erode our industrial competitiveness.Huhne is likely to be prominent among ministers who argue that the Japanese disaster reinforces the arguments against new atomic power stations. Yet some of us believe that if his brand of woolly sentiment prevails, it will deal a body blow to Britain’s future. .....Accidents in the oil and coal industries have killed and continue to kill far more people than nuclear power ever has.

Almost every course of action that societies adopt demands a balancing of choices, acceptance of some risk.

Many sensible economists and industrialists think we should be much more frightened than we are about the prospect that amid worsening energy shortages and rising oil prices, by the end of the decade this country will face a crunch that the Government is doing nothing to avert.I believe that Chris Huhne’s commitment to Lib Dem green nonsense makes him a menace as the Government’s minister responsible for energy.He pretends that renewables (wind generation foremost among them) can solve most of our problems, which is a huge untruth.In the winter of 2009, Britain’s 2,800 hugely subsidised and vastly expensive turbines provided just 0.7  per cent of our energy needs.

The truth is that however many more windmills we put up, nothing alters the simple fact that the wind, especially in southern Britain, blows too little and too erratically to make turbine generation a credible mainstay of our power requirements."

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