Hopefully after tomorrow the Miliband brothers will have no say in the UKs mad rush towards nuclear....Sorry chaps....looks like your time may be up........
I am sure we will see one of them back as labour leader....so they will still have their fingers in various pies.
Go Zac and the Lib Dems!
Nuclear Power
The Party's position is simply that the market should decide. There should be zero subsidies (direct or indirect) for nuclear, and nuclear providers must demonstrate an ability to cover future costs of waste disposal and decommissioning. My view – shared by almost all the energy experts I’ve consulted - is that there can be no new nuclear power without government support. There never has been.
Any money the government is willing to invest in energy should be spent in areas that will deliver the greatest returns. That’s not nuclear. It has been calculated by the Rocky Mountain Institute that a pound invested in energy efficiency for instance buys seven times more solution than a pound invested in nuclear.
Subsidies should be for start up, immature technologies, which is why we will introduce Germany’s Feed-In-Tarrifs. Under the German system anyone generating electricity from solar PV, wind or hydro is guaranteed a payment of four times the market rate. The system boosts take-up by consumers by reducing the payback times on such investments to less than 10 years - compared with 25 or 30 years in Britain. As a result, Germany has 200 times as much solar energy as Britain, and a flourishing renewable energy sector.
I do think it’s worth putting nuclear in context. It provides only 18% of our electricity, and electricity is only a small part of the energy we use. Heat is more significant. It is a big political issue, but it has been blown out of proportion in terms of its actual importance. Dependence on Russia for instance is principally a heat issue - not an electricity issue, and would not be solved by nuclear.
If you’d like to read more about my views on nuclear, please click the following link:
Wednesday 5 May 2010
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And so the Tories will wait for the energy companies to realise they cant afford it.... Meanwhile our community will remain blighted by their plans for Shepperdine for years and years ... at least the Lib Dems are upfront enough to say nuclear is not the right answer and would stop it in its tracks and thus stop allowing the pro-nuclear lobby from distracting energy companies from building more renewables and now (if they are given the chance) so we all know where we stand.... if the tories know it cant by done without subsidy and they are truely genuine about their promise not to subsidise nuclear what is the point in the tories policy??? seems a fudge to me...it can only serve to distract the markets from building enough renewables to stop the lights going out... the Lib Dems are being more realistic on this... just my opinion...
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