Hartlepool nuclear power plant
The Government's Energy Review looked at how the UK's energy will be produced in the next 50 years. It was the most wide-ranging and long term energy review for decades, and its recommendations were supposed to form Government policy.
It gave the Government an unique opportunity to move beyond old, polluting energy industries and set a new course to a clean, renewable future using technologies such as off-shore wind and solar power.
When the Energy Review white paper was released in March 2003, it was applauded for effectively announcing an end to the UK nuclear power industry, despite strong pro-nuclear voices in the Cabinet and continual pressure from the nuclear industry.
Although it fell short of setting firm targets for renewable energy, it did recommend a 60 percent carbon cut by 2050.
But since then, the Government has drafted legislation that allows for taxpayers' money to be spent propping up private nuclear companiezs, and leaves the way open for the building of new nuclear power stations.
As nuclear power stations do not emit the carbon dioxide that contributes to climate change, some politicians, including the Energy Minister Brian Wilson and Tony Blair himself see new nuclear power as part of the solution to our future electricity needs.
What they are forgetting is that nuclear power produces nuclear waste, to which there is no solution and which will threaten ourselves and future generations for millions of years into the future. It carries with it the inherent risk of a catastrophic nuclear accident, spreading radioactive contamination far and wide. It routinely discharges nuclear waste into the environment, threatening the health of those in the vicinity.
And, nuclear power is expensive. The industry has been subsidised to the tune of billions of pounds over the last 50 years- and has failed to perform. Money spent on subsidising nuclear stations will suppress the emergence of new, clean renewable technologies.
A dirty and dangerous technology is not a sustainable way to address the problem of climate change.
