Peter Jackson column

Jun 1 2006 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

We went camping over the Bank Holiday weekend, for the first time in a long time.

We left it late before booking and, it being a Bank Holiday weekend, had a big problem finding a site with any vacancies. We had, more or less, given up hope when we eventually booked a site in the Western Lakes.

On arrival we saw one possible reason for the site's relative unpopularity with the camping public - its near neighbour is Sellafield Nuclear Power station.

In the event, over the course of the weekend, we grew used to it. It certainly has less visual impact than a fossil-fuelled power station and is no worse than a wind farm.

There are 16 plants like Sellafield in the UK, and - having outlived their 20 to 25 year life expectancy - half will close by 2010 and the rest by 2023.

That, and the ongoing oil crisis and gas shortage means the debate on the merits and demerits of nuclear power has started again with a vengeance, as Tony Blair would say.

The advantages of nuclear are clear. Modern stations are clean, they produce a lot of energy and do so reliably and they produce fewer greenhouse gases than fossil fuelled power stations.

On the other hand, uranium mining isn't clean, we're stuck with the waste for centuries, transporting nuclear fuel has its own risks and there's always the threat of another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

In truth the waste problem is exaggerated. After six years of containment in underwater storage on site, when material is moved to dry storage it is less radioactive than thousands of medical radiation sources transported across the world every day.

After 50 years it can be safely handled with minimal protective shielding and after a few hundred years it is no more than natural background radiation.

As for Chernobyl, I'm prepared to believe, maybe naively, that modern stations will be much safer.

No, the big question mark over nuclear power is that of its cost. According to a report three years ago, energy generated by a nuclear plant was about 60% more expensive than that produced by a fossil-fuelled plant.

However, since then the costs of oil and gas have risen tremendously and this has really brought nuclear back onto the agenda.