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Letter from a Stop Hinkley member to Wells Journal
in response to an article entitled 'Self Sufficient in Energy'.
November 15th 2005
Dear Sir,
Nuclear the answer to the energy crisis? No thanks!
Angela Brennan bases her article about the most efficient way to solve the carbon emissions problem on a survey carried out in the South West by the EDF, guilelessly omitting to point out that EDF = Electricite de France, a totally nuclear utility which has already gained more than a toehold in the electricity supply in this country and is obviously thirsting for more.
Even EDF's CEO Vincent de Rivaz cannot gainsay the results of the survey - that roughly three quarters of the population are pro-wind power, slightly more in the case of off-shore wind farms, and only half believe that nuclear power should be retained; even less are in favour of new-build on existing nuclear power sites.
No mention is made of the comparative costs of the two sources of power, or of the inefficiencies and dangers of keeping these leaking, crumbling power stations, long past their sell-by date, in action. Nor was any reference made to the fact that the terrorist suspects rounded up in Australia were after their one nuclear power station. What a choice of targets they would have in the Severn Estuary - plus the slow-moving targets of the battered old ships carrying MOX fuel crawling unprotected round our coasts on their way to and from the continent.
And what conclusions did the Wise Men on the Planning Committee considering the application to site a wind farm alongside Hinkley Power Station come to? They turned it down because:
- They feared a loose blade from the turbines might fly off and damage the nearby flasks, which are alleged to be able to withstand head-on collision on road or rail. Even when the potential developers offered to cancel the three nearest turbines and build nine not a dozen on the far side of the site they did not yield.
- They feared a colony of rare bats might be affected. Experts had already dismissed this concern. Any fool knows that bats can 'see' at night and don't emerge in the daytime.
Would you rather have a radioactive bat in your belfry?
Yours, Liz Ounstead
051115
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