Powerful point

In answer to William Oxenham (Letters, 8 March), the figures I quoted were capital costs for nuclear plants (£2970/kW). The capital costs for onshore wind are roughly a third of this value. For example, Whitelee wind farm is 322MW and cost £300 million, giving capital cost of £932/kW.

Capacity factors are built in to the methodology of the Royal Association of Engineers report. Following its methodology, which includes a generous 35 per cent capacity factor for onshore wind and an equally generous 90 per cent-plus capacity factor for nuclear, nuclear comes in at 3.7p/kWh and wind at 3.68p/kWh. Both are in the same ball park and the figures take capacity factor into account.

Constructing a wind farm is a much less capital intensive activity than building a nuclear plant, which is why no nuclear plants have been built in the UK for a long time. I don't dispute that we will need a nuclear or fossil-fueled plant to provide base load, but the pretence that nuclear is the cheap option should be dispelled.

DAVID MCMILLAN

Westbank Quadrant

Glasgow