I
came across this PAWB article during my daily trawl of events. It
was somewhat of a synchronicity..particularly as it is five years
from Fukushima and we must remember this. There are frequent debates
on the scientific merits of nuclear power and while I am an opponent
of it on a scientific level as well as a social and political one.
Nuclear power by its very form, nature and structure does not fit
into the green model of democracy or structure or accountability.
Nuclear power by definition is centralised , risky, needs its own
security and police force and belongs to the large powerful nation
state.
Wales
is a small country it needs to be committed to a decentralised model
of politics. Renewable energy is the only way forward to an
independent Ecosocialist Wales. It would give the people and
communities of Wales direct control over its economy and power
supply. I worry about the implications of Daffyd Wigleys comments for
many of the excellent EcoSocialists within Plaid. I worry about a
post May challenge to its leadership from Rhun ap Iorwerth and his
pro nuclear leanings. The article from PAWB was a response to an
article in November in the Daily Post. I fear that with the blotting
out of the Lib Dems in May an Ap Iorweth Leadership following the
style of the naked populism of Peter Black and Neil Macavoy will make
Plaid the centralist of the Liberal Democrats. I hope that this will
not be the case and many like myself look forward to working with
Plaid after May. The dream of an independent, non nuclear non aligned
Wales can only come from a cross fertilization between the two
parties and those more subtle Corbynistas who do not follow the
centralisation of the old Brit left. This is the article
Sorry Mr Wigley – you’re very wrong
A
number of inaccurate statements by Dafydd Wigley (Plaid Cymru) in his
Daily Post article on nuclear power on November 5 need to be
challenged. Firstly, he says that we need new nuclear power stations
to meet “an electricty supply crisis by mid-century.” Demand for
electricity has actually fallen in the British state in the past few
years. Electricty storage is developing very quickly and note how the
biggest economy in Europe, namely Germany is closing all its nuclear
stations by 2022 and undertaking a renewable energy revolution. There
is no reason why we cannot power our own renewable energy revolution
with the best renewable resources in Europe at our disposal.
The
massive amount of land bought for the Wylfa B project is a green
field location and involves its extensive trashing. Would Dafydd like
to comment on the need to store doubly hot and doubly radioactive
waste from possible new Wylfa reactors on site for at least 160
years? Does he relish the destruction of the natural beauty of the
bay at nearby Porth y Pistyll by building an industrial jetty across
it to import building materials?
On
the matter of the French EPR reactor proposed for Hinkley and
Sizewell, those currently under construction in Finland, France and
China are hopelessly over budget and behind schedule. Dafydd’s
concerns about decommissioning costs for the EPR reactor apply
equally to the ABWR reactor proposed by HitachiGE for Wylfa and
Oldbury. He is therefore being inconsistent by welcoming Hitachi’e
ABWR to Wylfa as “it is used successfully in four reactors at three
different locations”.
What
Dafydd fails to mention is that not a single ABWR in Japan is in
operation since the triple meltdown of the Fukushima reactors. Even
when they were in service they only managed a 56% load factor, well
short of the 80% needed to pay their way. They obviously suffered
numerous problems leading to shutdowns. Furthermore, a proposed ABWR
project for the South Texas site in the USA was abandoned in spring
2011 because nobody wanted to invest in it.
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