A Nuclear Exchange in the Guardian

Jean Lambert writes in the Guardian may 25:

How can the government justify plans for a nuclear future (Report, May 24) when such plants will be unable to operate, without breaking environmental laws, if the climate-change crisis continues at the current rate?

Nuclear power plants source enormous amounts of cool water from rivers and reservoirs to keep operations at safe temperatures. With soaring global temperatures, however, the water will simply be too warm to use, leaving power stations with little choice but to restrict output or fall foul of environmental practice.

The past few years have seen large numbers of nuclear power plants across Europe operating at reduced capacity or brought to a halt because of hot summers. With the impending climate crisis this looks set to continue and will no doubt bring energy production to a standstill.It makes more sense to focus on energy efficiency and capture tide and wind power than to build nuclear power stations with their feet in the water. Given that climate change is a historic problem we shouldn't even be thinking about leaving the problem of nuclear waste to future generations.

Jean Lambert

To which a life- long liberal replies:

Jean Lambert (Letters, May 25) typifies the ignorant nonsense that Greens and others display when arguing against nuclear power. No nuclear power station in this country uses river water or reservoirs; all use sea water. This is in contrast to most coal- and oil-fired power stations in the UK, which are located inland. Nuclear, oil, gas and coal power stations discharge roughly equal amounts of heat. In countries significantly hotter than the UK such power stations operate, many inland. To suggest that they could not in the UK is patent nonsense.
JL Summers

I reply:

JL Summers (Letters, May 26th) typifies the belief of most conservative zealots* that ad hominem insults are an acceptable substitute for reasonable discussion. In future, nuclear power stations must be sited inland, because of sea level rise due to global heating. Therefore they will have to draw there cooling water from rivers. But diminished rainfall due to aforementioned global heating will mean that we cannot rely on plentiful supplies of river water. So Jean Lambert's point still stands.

Dr Richard Lawson
* a search shows that he is probably a member of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, which is a bit alarming, since the NII should have thought about these matters in great depth already.

Alistair's Darling Little Lies

Hooray. The Energy White Paper is out. In it Rt Hon. Alistair Darling MP writes "...we are strengthening our support for renewable electricity...".

So that's why he has slashed the subsidy for domestic photovoltaics by 50-75% then.

Thanks Alistair.

Alistair Darling is an anagram on "Ar, it is Al, dang liar".

Stroud Bomber Bashers Not Guilty

JUSTICE AT LAST: PEACE ACTIVISTS RIGHT TO TRY TO PREVENT BOMBERS GOING
TO IRAQ

JURY UNANIMOUSLY DECLARES B52 TWO 'NOT GUILTY'

A jury at Bristol Crown Court this afternoon declared Philip Pritchard
and Toby Olditch, the two Oxford peace activists (known at the 'B52
Two') not guilty. They had been accused of conspiring to cause criminal
damage at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire on 18 March 2003 when they
tried to prevent B52 bombers from bombing Iraq. The bombing of Iraq
starts on 20 March 2003.

Stroud Mayor Kevin Cranston, Green party councillor and retired
Lieutenant Colonel, who provided written evidence for Philip Pritchard
and visited them while they were held on remand in Gloucester prison in
2003, said "This is brilliant news confirming the whole basis for this
war was illegal. The Court has shown they were entirely justified in
their brave actions to try and prevent an unprovoked war."

Kevin Cranston added: "The Green party was the only main party to
oppose this illegal, immoral and counterproductive war from the start.
Sadly our worst fears have materialised: many thousands killed, 3.7
million Iraqis refugees, a whole country's infrastructure destroyed,
Britain's reputation for fair play in tatters and rapid growth in
terrorism."

UN Secretary General's agenda

UN SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN KI-MOON OUTLINES PRIORITIES & CHALLENGES FOR UNITED NATIONS
(In a speech in Korea)... In human rights too, we have an ambitious agenda. I intend to strengthen our mechanisms for the prevention of human rights violations and to work for steps to make operational the concept of the responsibility to protect.

I write to the main Responsibility to Protect campaigners:

It is good that Ban Ki Moon has this intention. It is very clear that prevention (of HR violations) is better than cure. We need to start course correction procedures at a very early stage, at the point whaere any government begins to go down the authoritarian route, to challenges to free speech, infringemennts or distrortion of democratic processes, silencing and locking up political opponents, and the rest of it. These activities are recorded in UN, Amnesty International and State Department reports. However, they effecively disappear in reports, invisible to all except experts and PhD students.
However, rendering this information into an Index would make the relative HR position of each and every state in the world visible at a glance, to the politically aware citizen, or to the person planning his/her annual vacation.

More information is here : Index of Human Rights