LEARNING TO LOVE NUCLEAR

24-05-2007

Help? I really don’t want to love nuclear power, I really don’t. But isn’t Tony Blair simply being realistic when he argues that it has to be put on the energy agenda?

For the first time in my life - and indeed in anyone’s living memory - energy supplies in this country are not secure.

For decades we had coal, then North Sea oil and gas, not to mention cheap and plentiful energy supplies from other parts of the world, notably the Middle East.

Of course we knew that the reserves wouldn’t last forever, but as there wasn’t any immediate prospect of them drying up, most of us took a fairly relaxed attitude to the threat.

Global warming came as a kick up the complacency.

Even if we’d discovered that the supplies of fossil fuels were endless it couldn’t have saved us, because in burning them we were generating the Co2 which was in turn heating up the earth’s atmosphere.

The chase for alternatives was on.

Ok, in reality, it was more like a slow amble, not least because the politicians reacted more slowly to the threat than the people, but in any case we soon realised that many of the options were flawed.

Solar power? Useful, but in a country like Britain, limited. Wind turbines? Ugly, noisy, and as yet, simply not powerful enough to meet all our needs.

Meanwhile, in the big bad world out there, time moves remorselessly on. As our current nuclear plants are being decommissioned, so our reliance on other increases.

We look to Russia for gas, for example - a country which has already cut off supplies to its neighbours to push up the price and drive home a political point or two.

Or else, we look to the Middle East. But environmental concerns aside, just look at the death toll caused by the Oil Wars of the last few decades including, arguably, the current conflict in Iraq. Viewed from that perspective, is oil really any safer than Sizewell B?

Of course, nuclear plants will always generate safety concerns as well as electricity, but every time someone mentions Chernobyl, just think of thousands who’ve died in the Gulf over the last four decades because of the batle for black gold and ask yourself which form of power is more deadly.

We can turn off the stand-by buttons on the telly, drive our cars less, insulate our lofts better.

But in this chilly, mobile island we will always need more energy than clean, green energy sources can produce; and making our own is the only reliable way of providing it.

Unless there's a better suggestion on the table - and now - the time for nuclear has come.