Nuclear energy costs a concern

Published on 28/10/2012 00:00

IN RESPONSE to Malcolm Parkin (Letters, 7 October), while there’s nothing new about windmills, using turbines to convert wind into electricity on a large scale is comparatively new, unlike ­nuclear, which has been with us for many decades.

Although nuclear has ­certainly generated a lot of electricity over that time, it has still been by any measure a commercial failure.

That such a well-established technology should still require subsidies in terms of the taxpayer picking up decommissioning costs and electricity price floors should concern us all.

While offshore wind is similarly expensive for the ­moment, at £140 MW/h it still matches on cost grounds what one potential nuclear investor says it needs to break even, and at least has the potential to become more competitive with other forms of generation as engineering experience and designs improve.

If we’re going to offer subsidies for generating electricity, I’d rather we did so for technologies which at least stand a chance of one day operating without gouging the taxpayer. The reluctance of private investors to build new nuclear in the UK despite the favourable conditions being engineered for them by the Westminster government should tell us all we need to know.

Richard Thomson, Ellon