Some key questions about nuclear power
DAVE Haskell, of Cardigan, while publicising his book on energy generation and encouraging the use of more fossil-fuel burning, misses two ‘elephant in the room’ questions.
The smaller of the two concerns why we are not hearing more about the Swansea Bay Barrage hydro electric scheme.
But the bigger question is about nuclear power generation.
Why is it, after FIFTY years of successful deployment of mobile nuclear power stations by British manufacturing, we are still apparently dependent upon foreign – French, Japanese and Chinese – installers for new power stations?
And these enormous power stations cost tens of billions of British pounds?
Wales’s own land-based nuclear power stations, Wylfa and Trawsfynydd, lasted 44 years and 32 years respectively.
Contrast this with the first Rollsroyce-powered nuclear submarine from 1966.
HMS Valiant lasted almost thirty years. At sea!
Are they safe?
I have worked with submariners who spent their entire long careers living, indeed cocooned, within a submarine/modular nuclear power station. None of them glowed in the dark...
The connection/wiring of power stations to the National Grid costs a big fraction of the total cost.
The sites of both Wales’s power stations mentioned above are already connected.
Decommissioning old nuclear power stations is another big fraction of the total cost. Both sites can surely be re-used for their original purpose?
What, then, is the ‘conspiracy’ which prevents us from installing proven technology, available within the UK and capable of providing the solution to our present huge problem, climate change and the shortage of electrical power?
Or should we just go on with burning planet-warming gas at a cost, as I type, 500% more than it was a year ago?!!