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When the wind stops blowing

Nuclear power has evolved, says robert matthews, and Britain is in desperate need of it

A new form of renewable energy has come on stream in the UK: the incandescent environmentalist. Once started, it lasts forever, but tends to generate far more heat than light.

In a startling outbreak of long-term thinking, the Government has made clear its belief that nuclear power must be part of Britain's energy mix. Yet to judge by the furious response of environmentalists, you would think Blair had declared Britain must go 100 per cent nuclear. Not at all: the energy review makes clear renewables should also have a role in ensuring diversity of supply.

Environmentalists have always had problems distinguishing fact from fantasy in their attitude to nuclear power. For them, all nuclear reactors are like the one that exploded at Chernobyl, and all of them are underwritten by huge government subsidies.
Today’s nuclear power reactors have an impeccable track record

For those whose world view has failed to move on since the Summer of Love, such beliefs are at least partly excusable. Back then, the Soviet Union did build a number of dodgy Chernobyl-style reactors, and the industry received massive hand-outs.

But that was then. Chernobyl-type reactors - built in the face of bitter protests from western experts - have gone the same way as the Soviet Union. Today's nuclear power reactors have an impeccable track record, and are so efficient that the French company EDF says it will build Britain's next generation without the need for subsidy.

Compare that to renewables, which receive an estimated £1bn a year in handouts. And when Germany's wind-farms were hit by a six-hour lull in November 2003, the nation suddenly lost the equivalent of three conventional power stations.

The eco-warrior view of all things nuclear has not shifted since the publication of When the Wind Blows. But even then it was clear nuclear power keeps going when the wind stops.

FIRST POSTED JULY 11, 2006

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