By offering the nuclear industry a 40-year subsidy (Ministers offer nuclear reactor deal until 2050, 19 February), the coalition is backtracking on its 2010 promise not to make the public pay for new nuclear, and tying us into decades of increasingly expensive, risky power.
Even if the nuclear industry delivers on time, new reactors won't be ready until the 2020s, and could end up costing consumers tens of billions of pounds. Meanwhile, the government's dash for gas is driving up our fuel bills, and giving new gas plants a free pass to pollute by allowing them to pump out climate-changing carbon till 2045.
It's outrageous that nuclear and gas should be given such lengthy guarantees when renewable energy faces a funding cliff-edge after 2020. Britain has abundant wind and marine energy resources, and should be a world leader in developing and exporting expertise. MPs must act decisively where the government hasn't, and back a 2030 clean power target in the energy bill that will tackle climate change, create green jobs and provide energy we can all afford.
Head of campaigns, Friends of the Earth
• The £240bn pledged in subsidies for new nuclear power stations in Britain would give £10,000 to each home in Britain so they could all install solar hot water, solar electric systems, controls and new boilers, where necessary with insulation and draught-stripping, and help take every home in Britain out of fuel poverty.
The solar option helps cut energy demand from homes by 50%-75%, saving huge amounts in NHS costs for mental and physical health. Solar systems generate electricity at less than half the C02 life-cycle costs for nuclear. Most importantly the nuclear route puts more people, every year, into fuel poverty as prices rise, putting profits into the pockets of Big Energy and Big Construction. The solar option actually builds local businesses and community resilience. The Arab spring showed us the power of people who can't pay their bills. Can anyone tell me one good reason for choosing the nuclear over the solar option if our aim is to build a stronger, safer, cleaner, healthier Britain?
Professor Sue Roaf
• There should be only two guarantees to nuclear operators: (a) that they can sell electricity at the price required to cover their costs, and (b) that they are guaranteed to be able to sell some agreed fraction (say 50%) of the output of their reactors while operational, regardless of the cost they have to charge. If the operators have to charge double the standard rate, then tough – it would expose the myth that nuclear fission is an economically competitive way of generating electricity.
International treaties enable the huge economic impact of a nuclear incident to be covered by governments, and thence the general public, instead of the operators. Operators should not be allowed to go bankrupt in the event of a serious incident but instead be required to charge whatever higher price for electricity from other reactors is necessary to cover the full cost. If this is 10 times the normal cost of electricity, again, tough.
• Your correspondent Alan Rigby (Letters, 22 February) asks whether anyone has formally reported to the EU Competition commissioner the implications of providing EDF, the French state nuclear generator and distributor, with billions in subsidies to build and run nuclear plants in the UK.
On 24 February 2011 Energy Fair (energyfair.org.uk) made just such representations to the European Commission. Included in the items we considered were state-sponsored subsidies for the nuclear industry, we listed subsidies for the short-to-medium-term cost of disposing of nuclear waste; and institutional support for nuclear power generation, by means of government offices and staff involved in institutional coordination, research and safety-related activities.
Brigitta Renner-Loquenz, head of the competition directorate-general's unit responsible for state aid in the energy and environment sectors, replied: "We are in contact with the UK authorities and asked them for their own summary of the facts, as well as for the reasons why they do not consider the alleged aid to be unlawful aid."
She added: "The above-mentioned letter … also includes questions concerning the nuclear third-party liability regime as well as the issues brought forward in another complaint."
Dr David Lowry
Member, Energy Fair
• Electricity from coal is very dirty but costs about 5p/kwh. From gas it's fairly dirty and will soon cost more. Clean renewables are very expensive and intermittent. Replacing obsolete nuclear reactors with their carbon-clean but inefficient modern equivalent will cost about 10p/kwh, and produce much long-term radioactive waste. Safe and efficient molten salt reactors, burning abundant thorium and/or nuclear waste will generate clean electricity cheaper than from coal, and their waste is virtually all short-term and valuable. Alvin Weinberg's team at Oak Ridge labs ran such a reactor for five years. China, India, Japan and France are working on molten salt and/or thorium. The UK and US governments appear to have their heads in the sand. Interesting that sand is rich in both salt and thorium.
• Looking out across Morecambe Bay from the pier at the end of Ulverston canal, one can plainly see at least one of the two nuclear reactors at Heysham, Lancashire. Twenty three miles from Heysham by road, and quite a bit closer as the crow flies, is Hesketh Bank, where the most advanced of the UK's exploratory fracking operations is situated.I can't help wondering whether carrying out industrial operations designed to interfere with geological strata in the vicinity of nuclear installations isn't a teeny bit stoops. Can anyone offer reassurance?
Dr Roger Lindsay