26/05/2024
A beautiful Bank Holiday Sunday just spent walking along the Suffolk coast. The area north of the current monstrous Sizewell power station is really beautiful. A lot of Suffolk, a lot of Britain is beautiful. All round Sizewell are marshes, bird reserves, areas of scientific interest and a wonderful beach all along that part of the coast.
As I walked back I contemplated people`s arguments against wind power, even out at sea. Has anyone reading this spent time on a beach in the UK and felt no wind, no matter how gentle? That kind of wind is multiplied out at sea, so imagine the force of the usual beach winds. As a rule the beaches are populated by families cowering behind windbreaks or wearing clothes...
As usual my thinking is fairly simple and, I hope, illustrated in the photos I am showing. Sizewell is set to more than double in size, creeping up along the coast towards where I was standing, and no matter what EDF or Sizewell say, it will destroy the environment of a vast area, locally as well as further afield. As we stumble towards another General Election, alas the major parties are in favour of nuclear generation (pronounced "newclear", by the way) and that includes new power plants. Sizewell, in more than 10 years is only planned, at vast cost, out of control costs, to produce 7% of the UK`s energy needs and the power is already planned to be sold more expensively than wind and solar elecricity. One picture shows the relatively small powerstation, compared with what is planned, the other, hundreds of wind turbines out at sea. Which looks more appealing?
Sadly, even local government has been sucked into saying that jobs will be created; openings for young people to spend days staring at dials. The construction jobs are temporary. Imagine if all the money that is planned to be spent on the power station were spent on the design, production and maintenance of off-shore wind turbines? Grandchildren of former fishermen could become REAL engineers, sail, from Lowestoft to service equipment and work on, agreed, dangerous jobs, out at sea and be proud of that.
I thought I could keep this short. I couldn`t and there is so much more that needs saying on the subject, and it applies everywhere that nuclear power stations are being talked about.
