Letter of the week: Scotland's energy future lies with renewables

Yes, Torness has served Scotland well, and hopefully will continue to do so till 2030, perhaps a year or two longer. But I believe that the future lies with renewable energy, for the twin reasons that it is less costly and has less environmental impact.

In the Courier article, Douglas Alexander MP describes the Scottish Government’s policy against building new nuclear reactors as “outdated”. But why is it “outdated” to focus on renewables rather than new nuclear plants?

Belgium, Spain and Switzerland have policies either for a nuclear phaseout or against any new build. Germany, Italy and Lithuania have chosen to completely phase out their nuclear plants. Is Douglas Alexander suggesting that government policy in these countries is also “outdated”?

By contrast, global investment in renewable electricity capacity has soared, reaching US$623 billion in 2023, 27 times the reported investment in the construction of nuclear plants.

The Scottish Government’s policies in favour of renewables are hardly “outdated”; rather, they are mainstream.

There are downsides to investment in new nuclear plants which are worth highlighting. Environmentally, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, renewables are 10 times more efficient than new nuclear at CO2 mitigation.

Disposing of waste from nuclear plants remains unresolved. Westminster’s Public Accounts Committee has noted with concern that plans to create a long-term deep underground store for nuclear waste have now slipped to the late 2050s. And so the problems at Sellafield, already the world’s largest store of plutonium, continue to mount up, with the cost of a clean-up now estimated to be £136 billion and to take 100 years.

As for costs – and with energy bills in Scotland already the highest in the UK – of all the sources of energy, the cost of generating nuclear energy is the most expensive, far more so than renewables.

D. Williamson

Dunbar