Nuclear Power? No Thanks! says Phil McVan, MD of leading renewable energy company, True Energy.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) October 10, 2008 -- This take-over is backed by the British government, which looks set to make £4.5bn from the deal.

This seal of approval confirms the renaissance of nuclear power - a tool our government has seized upon in its efforts to reduce the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels for generating electricity.

EDF’s game plan includes adding a further four nuclear reactors to the existing eight in the present stable. Two of these newcomers will be built at Hinckley Point in Somerset, and two at Sizewell in Suffolk.

Other sites are being eyed up by the UK government too - potentially to be sold off to other nuclear operators.

Britain’s rekindled love affair with nuclear energy will, according to Pierre Gadonneix, the chairman and chief executive of EDF, make Britain in 10-20 years’ time “the country where there will be the greatest number of nuclear developments.”

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Rather than take the nuclear route, with all its drawbacks - the unresolved problem of what to do with radioactive waste, nuclear plants’ vulnerability to terrorist attack, the potential for a Chernobyl-style accident - why not invest wholeheartedly in renewables such as solar and wind power to create a truly sustainable system?

To me, handing on the poisoned chalice of dangerous waste disposal to future generations contradicts any notion of creating a sustainable future.

We have the technology here to create a viable green future - that is, should the UK, like Germany, do more than pay lip service to putting it into practice on a broad scale.

This year oil prices hit stratospheric levels.

And, although prices have dropped again, the price of a barrel of oil still remains at previously unthinkably high levels.

This, however, is all to the advantage of sustainable energy, making it competitive with oil in financial terms - something it certainly wasn’t when oil cost just $30 a barrel.

Renewable energy effectively uses natural resources such as sunlight, wind, tides and geothermal heat, which are naturally replenished, as an alternative to fossil fuels.

Renewable energy technologies were traditionally considered to be prohibitively expensive in comparison to the carbon emitting alternatives, explaining why, to date, only 18 per cent of global energy consumption can be attributed to renewables.

Solar power is already developing into a massive global industry that’s growing beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. In 2002, the forecast to 2010 was a global value of $16bn. In 2006, the actual value was $27bn, and the revised forecast for 2010 in now $140bn.

The advantages of solar power are many. For one, the sun is guaranteed to rise day after day. As the sun’s presence is a constant, it makes sense to harness it.

What’s more generating power from sunlight is a non-polluting process that generates no waste.

The UK is committed to cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 - surely cutting down on emissions by creating a surfeit of problematic radioactive waste makes no sense?

Europe''s first commercial concentrating solar power plant was opened in the spring of 2007 near the southern Spanish city of Seville.

OK, you argue, Seville is hot and sunny throughout the year. But the same cannot be said of Germany whose government has been supporting the development of solar thermal power plants for several years, with the result that Germany is now global leader in the research and development of this technology.

At the end of the day, for sustainable, ‘green’ technologies to truly takeoff here in the UK, they need the unreserved backing of our government - and that commitment appears to be sadly lacking.

More information can be found online at http://www.trueenergy.co.uk

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