FT Letter1 Nov 2018 03:18
Flexible, safe, affordable - renewables are the future.
Given the risks associated with rampant climate change, it is more important than ever to communicate facts rather than conjecture. While Financial Times readers may be used to competing academic taking hsm-fisted swings at each other, here the the stakes are too high to let it go.
The reality is that professors Anton van see Merwe and Wade Allison (Letters, October 29) are factually mistaken on all counts.
First, nuclear new builds are universally acknowledged to be high-risk projects involving significant delay, vast cost escalation and investor risk, with construction proceeding only with huge public subsidy. Second, the overwhelming scientific consensus, the basis of all international radiation protection, is that there is no safe radiation dose, and "body counts" do little to throw light on the complex reality of radiation risk. By contrast Prot Allision believes low doses of radiation might be good for you.
Finally, the International Energy Agency states that 1tn watts of renewable power, equivalent to 1,000 large reactors and three times the world's existing nuclear capacity, will be be installed over the next 5 years. By 2023, renewables will account for a third of total electricity generation worldwide. In this context, nuclear power at the expense of more flexible, safe, productive, cost effective and affordable technologies dies seem rather foolish.
Dr Paul Dorfman - Honorary Research Fellow, UCL Energy Institute, UCL
Prof Tom Burke - Visiting Professor at Imperial and University Colleges
Prof Steve Thomas - Emeritus Professor of Energy Policy, PSIRU, University of Grenwich
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