30th July 2006

It is hard to take the latest Energy Review seriously. Alistair Darling says "if you want to be frightened about anything you want to be frightened about the impact of climate change". Yet as minister for transport, Mr Darling favoured the unrestricted growth of air travel and estimates suggest nuclear will only prevent around a 3% increase in emissions through 2020.

Nuclear raises far too many unanswered questions, like what if the private firms go bust? Who will pay for decommissioning? And if the reactors are owned by companies based abroad, doesn't that mean we lose pricing control and access to technology for future developments? With chronic underfunding of science do we now have enough chemists and engineers? How can we enrich uranium while condemning Iran and North Korea?

And how can we build on existing sites when already only 3 are deemed not at risk from climate change erosion? Or build more with no safe solution to storing nuclear waste? And at what cost? We already have cancer clusters. What if a slow leak of radioactive material into groundwater killed an average of only one person a year for one million years, is that a risk worth taking? A million people dead.

The Green party are right. Why go this route when the alternatives are safer, fairer and cheaper?

 
Sue Nicholson, Nailsworth