A more recent rant to a UKIP person can be found here: UKIP Nuclear Policy (7 June 2007)

Nuclear Power vs. Renewable Energy

15th January 2007

Hi Derek,

It's clear you hold high hopes for Nuclear Fusion, but I read the New Scientist, and the last article I read suggested that commercial fusion was probably 30-50 years away. It faces major technical hurdles... We need a solution today!

Planning on fusion being available to help with CO2 emmissions is like relying on the lottery to pay your mortgage - it's not a sensible course of action... To pay your mortgage you do work you know will pay you money, you don't play the lottery. Similarly, to provide the energy we need to live, we should be using simple, proven technologies, and we should be using them now.

You say:

Whilst I support most of your suggestions for generating renewable energy - none of these could feed energy into the national grid on a permanent basis.

But this is simply not true for: tidal, hydroelectric, methane digesters, rubbish burning... All these *will* produce a constant supply of energy to the grid. Sure, there are some which won't - notably wind (, wave) and solar, but these are in the minority.

Besides, you need to look at renewable power generation as coming from *all* these different sources. For the system to be robust and reliable we need a wide portfolio of energy generation methodologies. In combination - they *will* provide a constant input to the system. In fact, a system built from millions of small generators will inevitably provide a more constant and reliable flow of energy than a few tens of large ones.

It is true that the energy flowing into the grid will vary - and as I said before - we should be investing in the grid itself, providing it with storage (capacitance). There are many different ways of acheiving this.

You do then go on to list a wide range of viable renewable energy sources.

My main point here is this: If TAXES WERE REMOVED FROM RENEWABLES, they would become more PROFITABLE so BUSINESSES WOULD INVEST in providing a renewable energy infrastructure. This would cost the country nothing, in fact it would stimulate a whole new sector of industry, making new jobs, building expertise and IT WOULD STOP OUR CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING WITHIN 10 YEARS.

People underestimate the inventiveness of the British:

I would bet you that if we did stop taxing renewables, then in 15 years time, 10% of our energy will be coming from a renewable technology that doesn't even exist today. If the governmant provides the right economic climate for renewables to flourish, then they will. It really is as simple as that.

Nuclear power is a white elephant. And there's always the danger it'll go Rogue...

It seems utterly nonsensical to be building nuclear power stations for these reasons:

1. It's astronomically expensive. (£56Bn simply to clear up the current mess - that's before making any more of it!)
2. The overall reduction in CO2 emmissions is less than 5%
3. TERRORISM is supposed to be, alongside global warming, 'the greatest threat the world faces'. Nuclear power stations are, to a terrorist, a ready-made dirty-bomb. It is utterly INSANE to build a load of bombs around our country - ready to be set off by any slightly competant extremists. (I'd like to see them turn a tidal lagoon into a terror weapon - it can't be done!) Did you not see that documentary about security at Sellafield? (I think it was) - there was virtually *none*.
4. We STILL don't know how to safely dispose of the waste.
5. If there were no nuclear power stations in the world - there would be no way to secretly produce bomb material - like Iran is currently doing. Abolishing all commercial nuclear technology is the only way that non-proliferation will ever happen. (Nuclear research - i.e. fusion, is fine - it's just commercial scale operations that are the problem)

Nuclear power is touted to protect vested interests in this country, not because it makes sense. It provides a false hope, and diverts attention away from the one thing that actually will stop global warming - which is to *stop taxing renewables*. (The only people this policy would hurt are the oil companies, but the coutry as a whole would become richer - because we buy in most of our fossil fuels)

Government always, always comes up with overly-complicated solutions to simple problems. I think this is part due to the fact that most people in government are not trained in systems-analysis and design. They have never run their own business, and they like big schemes which make them look important.

The best solutions are always the simplest solutions. I build systems for a living... I have a rule:

If you truly understand the system, a simple elegant solution will be obvious.

The converse is:

If you don't have a simple elegant solution, then you don't understand the problem.

Nuclear power is about as far from a simple, elegant solution as it's possible to get. It creates more problems than it solves.

Reply From Derek

I never said that nuclear fusion would be producing energy for the national grid any time soon. I said that it had the highest possible potential for providing enormous electrical output for minimum material input and that research and devlopment should be funded to determine at some time in the future whether this technology had any chance of viability.

I gave no time prediction for this to be achieved, but I would be very surprised if any practical results could be achieved within several decades, if then.

However, that does not mean that we should not try to activate a system that would provide unimagineable power output from an incredible small material input. It may never happen, but we must not exclude it unless future research predicts that it is physically unatainable. Predictions in science have proved to be very unreliable. Albert Einstein said at one time that he could see no practical results from his theories on relativity, but look at how his theories on the relationship of time, mass, gravity and energy have changed the modern world - nuclear energy, space exploration, creation of artificial elements, etc.

You suggest that a multitude of small generaters would provide a more reliable output that a few tens of large generators. Well, that is what we presently have. The large coal, oil, gas, and nuclear generating stations have been producing a constant output at between 10kV and 15kV (There are some outside this range) directly from the generators and transformed to give a domestic mains supply of between 200 and 240 volts for the last half century, and earlier, supplying the current required whatever the load demanded.

( Note: In recent years the EU has determined that the domestic mains supply voltage should hover around 230V).

How would your multitude of small generators provide a synchronised ac voltage of 230V to domestic users nationwide when most of the generators you envisage using cannot generate power on an unfailing permanent basis. It might possibly work if the national grid was broken-up into a patchwork of areas of a relatively small number of consumers using a large variety of generating sources to allow for drop-out due to failure of some of the generators due to lack of input: ie, wind, wave, straw, vegetable oil, methane, etc.

Capacitance is used to balance out the masive inductance of the wires in the lines and transformers of the distribution system, but cannot help unless the output from the generators is maintained.

One natural energy source is geo-thermal and on a large enough scale could certainly provide energy on a permanent basis.

By the way, you say that taxes should be removed from renewable sources of energy. but doesn't the government subsidise many of the windfarm projects and it will take over 2000 wind generators to supply the same output as one fairly modern power station generator.

To supply anywhere near the toal output required for the nation, when the wind blows, over 30,000 wind generators have to be built - but in an anti-cyclone over the UK, the total output will be zero. Not exactly a reliable sourse of power some would say. I just do not want my country to be despoiled by an average of four wind generators for every sqare mile of the United Kingdom.

I see that ITV is frightening people into believing that global warming is upon us by showing ice-cliffs dropping into the sea in massive amounts. Well, it is Summer down there in the Antarctic, and in Summer, the ice melts, so what we need to know is the differential between normal Summer ice-melt and the actual ice-melt now occurring. Why don't ITV show the sea freezing over in the Arctic where it is Winter? We need proper information from proper scientific research, not scaremoingering non-science for vulnerable TV viewers.

Well, I'm sorry we have different views about how we should generate our country's energy, but I respect your right to hold your own opinion and I hope you respect mine. Let us hope that the right decisions will be made to ensure that future generations inherit a world where the air is clean and forests, plains and deserts provide a viable living to all the creatures that exist on our planet at the present time.

Very best regards,

Derek.

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