Nuclear's Achilles heel

Neil Craig (Letters, 2 December) finds difficulty with the suggestion that the cost of decommissioning wind farms will be less than that of decommissioning nuclear power stations. But wind turbines will have a longer working life than nuclear power plants because they do not depend on the corrosive processes at the core of nuclear power production.

Unfortunately, nuclear power stations are broke. They have swallowed enormous public subsidies to save them from bankruptcy and they continue to release carcinogenic, mutagenic radioactive particles into the environment. Yet, our first serious foray into renewable energy, hydro-electricity, has been quietly producing electricity without fuss for over 60 years and shows no sign of aging.

Mr Craig suggests we need to re-place 44 per cent of our electricity produced by nuclear means. In Scotland, we export roughly 40 per cent of our electricity, so perhaps this is not a specifically Scottish problem.

But the Achilles heel of the nuclear power industry is its inability to de-commission its operations in a de-fined budget. The sites of these power stations may become relatively safe 50 years after closure, but the waste they have created will be an expensive problem for thousands of years.

JAMES BOYLE

Eastwoodmains Road

Clarkston, Glasgow

Commenting on the government’s increased renewable energy target, a spokeswoman for the anti-wind energy organisation, Views of Scotland, has referred to "genuinely viable technologies such as wave solar and tidal", and so revealed why her organisation has failed to become an effective campaigner. Wave, solar and tidal power are no more viable than wind energy, which will receive 1 billion a year in subsidies by 2010.

Until Scotland’s population and organisations such as Views of Scotland face the reality that serious energy production depends on coal, gas, oil or nuclear they will be un-avoidably committed to wind farms.

Reiterating unfounded nonsense about viable technologies, which are, in fact, non-existent for all practical purposes, simply opens the door to the wind energy industry.

JOHN RD STEWART

Path of Condie

Perthshire