A reply is needed to the letters (23 March) objecting to political parties supporting nuclear power. How can the chairman of the British Energy Efficiency Federation dispute the statement that “electricity demand is expected to rise steadily in the next decade”? Has he not realised that, to meet the climate crisis, the necessary replacement of fossil fuels in road transport and home heating requires electric-powered engines and heat pumps, respectively?
Safe underground storage of nuclear waste has been developed. This has never been an insoluble problem. By contrast, little money has been spent on other waste products such as heavy metals, industrial chemicals and plastics. In comparison with nuclear waste, the poisonous effects of heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium never decay with time.
We need both nuclear power and power from renewables, the long-term storage of which is a real problem. It is sad that the UK government’s abandonment of support for nuclear industry development in the 1990s has led to the import of expensive foreign reactors. Our country needs a revived nuclear industry based on smaller, much cheaper reactors that are faster to build.
Opposition to nuclear power has led to much higher emissions of CO2; for the past 40 years, the emissions from France, whose electricity has been mainly nuclear-powered, have been about 30% less per head than those from Germany. The current abandonment of nuclear power in Germany has not made sense because it has led to more burning of coal and a reliance on imported Russian fuels.
Dr Charles Clement
Wantage, Oxfordshire
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