"We do not agree with the United Kingdom Government that nuclear energy is environmentally sustainable. [It] is not required in Scotland. Our draft energy strategy sets out that the capacity for renewable generation in Scotland could mean that Scotland’s annual electricity capacity generation will be more than double our demand by 2030 and more than treble by 2045. We have a route to net zero through renewables. We do not need nuclear power."
Mr. Oldham, whatever his qualifications might be, is ... you know .. wrong. Nuclear power is entirely sustainable. It's very expensive at the moment, though.
OK. I would love to know the reasoning. I hope it isn't "Nuclear sounds scary!" Fission power is less polluting and kills enormously fewer people than, say, coal or oil power. (I'm talking about electric generation, of course.) Coal power still kills an astonishing number of people, see: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/
@nitpicking@pauloldhamsnp The reasoning is in Scotland we already have a cheaper, safer, alternative using an existing (though still improving) set of renewable technologies.
Dounreay has been closed down, but the specialist clean up of the area will still be decades; how much to remove a wind turbine at end of its life?
Now all we need is for the energy pricing scheme to be altered (at Westminster) to stop Scotland being charged more than England.
@HighlandLawyer@pauloldhamsnp Cleaning up current wind tech is not trivial, in fact. The turbine blades are a mess of epoxy-bound fibers that can't be recycled or even burned.
@nitpicking@HighlandLawyer bet they won't still be potentially able to kill people in thousands of years though.
While we continue to pursue nuclear power we leave an ever increasing toxic legacy for future generations forever, for quite large values of "forever".
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