Wind farm may be torn down to make way for nuclear site
A Cumbrian village has found itself at the centre of the debate over Britain's future energy policy
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Baywind Energy, which operates the wind farm, appears to be resigned to its fate
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To passionate advocates of the atom and renewable energy alike, this says it all. One of Britain's pioneering wind farms is threatened with demolition to make way for one of the Government's planned new generation of nuclear power stations.
The tall turbines of Haverigg wind farm, only the second commercial one to be built in Britain, have been turning for 17 years between the hills of the Lake District and the waters of the Duddon estuary on the Cumbrian coast. But they also happen to be right on one of 11 potential sites for new nuclear reactors announced by ministers 10 days ago.
And here, not far from Sellafield – on what the Cumbria County Council likes to call "Britain's Energy Coast" – the atom is due to take precedence over the zephyr.
Six of Haverigg's eight turbines actually fall within the proposed footprint of the Kirksanton nuclear power station, where RWE wants to build up to three reactors. The German energy giant confirms that they would have to be dismantled if the power station were built.
The development will delight pro-nuclear anti-wind activists while dismayed environmentalists will see it as an all-too-obvious portent of a switch in government priorities from promoting wind to advancing the atom – and as proof that concentrating on nuclear will cripple renewable energy. "It beggars belief that, at a time when windpower has never been more vital to the UK, a viable wind farm is to be sacrificed on the altar of nuclear power," said Martin Forwood of the campaign group Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment.
But RWE countered: "The wind farm currently produces 3.5 megawatts of energy while a nuclear power station would produce 3,600 megawatts, enough to power five million homes. So, from a climate change point of view, if the wind farm had to go it would not be such a bad thing."
Villagers, concerned about the prospect of the power station – one of only two in the country planned for greenfield sites, rather than being built next to existing reactors – appear on balance to favour the wind farm.
People in the tiny village of Kirksanton, just 150 yards from the power station's boundary, have formed a local action group that claims to represent the views of the majority of residents.
"[A nuclear power station] is completely unsuitable due to its proximity to the village and we totally oppose it," Michael Wills, the group's spokes-man, said last night. "We are concerned about the health risks and it will destroy a blossoming tourist industry."
Tim Kendall, representing another action group in nearby Whicham, added: "The wind farm has been here a long time. It's not aesthetically pleasing but we're happy to live with renewable energy.
"The nuclear power station will completely wipe it out because it will be difficult to make it work with large buildings surrounding it. Any development on that kind of scale would be totally inappropriate. It would dominate the surrounding landscape."
Baywind Energy, which operates the wind farm, appears to be resigned to its fate. "We don't want the turbines taken down but we're not sure there is an option to refuse," a spokesman said.
The county council said that it saw the West Cumbrian coast as a future hub of the emerging low-carbon economy but was awaiting the results of consultations with residents before deciding whether to back the Kirksanton plan.
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Comments
Where is the evidence for this silly claim?
A serious nuclear plant failure will be disasterous for the UK.
No one can give you a guarantee that it wont happen.
Being an island, with coast, good winds and lots of water, UK need to put more money / planning permission to wind, wave, hydro (Scotland) and tidal power and thereby minimise the number of nuclear/coal power stations.
We could never have a 'Chernobyl-like' incident, because we don't build reactors to the same appalling slapdash and unsafe design as the Chernobyl model (which didn't even have an outer housing to contain a reactor failure, and had a positive temperature coefficient, which mean that as it got hotter its rate of reaction escalated out of control). Only the Russians were sufficiently stupid and cheap-skate to attempt that design, and they learned their lesson the hard way. The modern reactor designs of the UK, France and the US are actually incredibly safe (for a start, our reactors have a negative temperature coefficient, which means that if they get too hot their rate of reaction decreases, so they can never run out of control).
So please, no counter-productive scaremongering from a position of scientific ignorance and (I suspect) green party dogma - get your facts right.
When mankind has created a non-moving part like a spark-plug that wont fail, you can come back and argue your case. Until then, accept that everything can fail, moving, static, fluid, solid, vapour or whatever. I repeat again everything.
For this reason, a modern nuclear reactor is SAFER THAN A PASSENGER AIRLINER, in terms of the number and rigour of safety requirements it must meet! And in the extremely unlikely event that it failed, the consequences would be far less serious than would be the case for a typical airliner.
Once again, I repeat - your scaremongering about nuclear reactors is based on IGNORANCE, and as such is both stupid and irresponsible. Please STOP IT.
Someone ought to tell the politicians. We may just save some farms.
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
Anyone with any sense knows that, long term, wind power, hydro-electric etc is the right option just as anyone with any sense knows that the nuclear plants will be built because the appropriate palms have been greased.
Bullshit. Do the maths. 'Renewable' energy CANNOT supply 100% of our current energy needs, let alone our future needs.
"nuclear plants will be built because the appropriate palms have been greased."
Can you offer proof of this, or is it just the usual Green Party conspiracy theorizing, based on pathological cynicism and fictitious boogey-men?
As for the money, just check the subsidy for 50 years of nuclear power here in the UK. How much has THORP cost the tyax payer so far? Just check the liabilities for new nuclear power stations under current plans. Check France out, you'll notice power generation over there is still state controlled and heavily subsidised. And we haven't ebven begun to talk about build costs, decommissioning costs and waste storage costs - for upto 100,000 years - longer than humanity has existed!
Nuclear in uneconomic unless the tax payer is forced to underwrite the industry and take on the liabilities, and provide a fixed rate for every kWh generated. And one thing is for sure, putting all your eggs in one basket is a very bad idea, and that's exactly what going nuclear is going to do. Oh, and that tiny matter of waste. Burying it in the ground - very scientific and sensible - just like landfill.
Being anti-nuclear is virtually a RELIGION for people like you, and founding dogmas of your beliefs are just as irrational and uncontaminated by truth and logic.
It's a waste of time arguing with dogmatic zealots, so I'm not going to bother.
There is currently about 3GW of untapped Hydro capacity left in Scotland, that's two large nuclear power stations. But, there are waves, there are tides, there is the sun, there is biomass, there is CHP based on gas or biomass, there is clean coal, there is storage technology. Of course, there is efficiency, stop wasting energy.
The point is, renewables offer a mix of generation, truly diverse. We have massive potential all around us, it just needs investment to harness. And I for one do not believe for 1 second that harnessing the waves or tides is any more difficult than harnessing the power of fission. The only difference is harnessing fission allowed the creation of weapons of mass destruction. That is why we have civillian nuclear power, and it is the only reason why. The money we're about to chuck away into the nuclear black hole could easily be spent on solving technical issues that allow us to harness renewable energy. And that is the only way to achive energy security for this island. It also offers massive economic benefits to us as a country and could create thousands of skilled jobs. Morover, it creates non of the legacy nuclear creates.
If you look at it that way, windmills aren't that bad after all...
The average for seas and oceans around the world is 13.6 Becquerel per KG. The Irish Sea is at 13.7, the eastern Mediterranean 14.6, the Persian Gulf 22 and the Dead Sea an astonishing 178.
The amount of radiation released by Sellafield is dwarfed by the natural radioactivity in the sea.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e94b0702-9
It's also worth a visit to this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Su
We might get something 'better' that wind farms; our children's children might just be glad of them!
The fact that solar energy could have supplied many times over the necessary amount of energy the entire world needs for billions of years will be soon forgotten...
Thank you so very much for being a complete and utter mindless and degenerated moron!
http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen
So what are the alternatives?
"Clean" coal? Un-proven. Like most new technologies it'll probably take double the time and double the money to get right. At least we have domestic reserves, for now. Not a long term solution at all.
Nuclear fusion? So some say it'll be commercially available by the end of the 2020's? They haven't even got the physics sorted out yet, let alone the engineering!!!
Renewable - it can be done if the political will is there. At least a wind farm can be completely removed leaving the land exactly as it was beforehand. We could easily hit 30-40% peak demand with wind alone until such time as fusion comes on-line. Then there's tidal barrage/lagoon, and tidal stream supplying another 20%. Problem sorted. It really doesn't have to be that difficult!
Our government's abdication of responsibilty for the environment will leave the land scattered with radioactive hotspots for tens of thousands of years. Bloody disgusting.
THEREFORE, the most logical place to build nuclear reactor plants is on coastlines.
FYI, London has no coastline. That is why there are, and will be, no nuclear plants built near London. QED.
This is not a NIMBY conspiracy by selfish Londoners, but simply engineering common sense.
However, the nearest nuclear reactor sites to London are (I believe) Sizewell in Suffolk and Dungeness in Kent. Both of these are within commuting distance of London, so not too distant from it really. Where is the nearest nuclear plant to you, goosegreece?
end. The military-industrial complex has to face the fact that it has a big credibility problem
with the people of North Wales, North East England, South West Scotland, the Isle of Man
and the East coast of Ireland, who are all jaded with spin and PR already.
Sellafield has a lot of nuclear mess lying around.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2
Now we hear that the MoD has been making a mess in the Clyde Estuary.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2
Also, the MoD has been firing DU shells into the Solway.
http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/e
So we don't want any more of this, even if it does mean electricity rationing.
It will lead to environmental problems in a number of different ways.
It will lead to societies developing into an increasingly more technocratic direction, where we alianate ourselves from the core values of being part of a living planet.
It will lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons, regardless of IAEA efforts.
And most of all, it won't help us for more than a couple of centuries at most, at ever increasing costs as high-grade deposits soon will get depleted.
We are living in sad times, knowing we have the technology to direct humanity into a more benign direction regarding energy production, but doing the opposite due to political blundering and greedy businesses.
The greatest pandemic of all times is happening right under our noses, and needs no virusses to spread: the debilisation of entire humanity through globalised insanity...
Remember that the so called clean energy of nuclear demands massive amounts of fossil fuel energy to mine, refine and transport high grade uranium. The ore washing process involves injecting hundreds of tons of sulphuric acid, nitric acid, ammonia and other chemicals int the ground to dissolve the ores for several years before they are dug up.
The reserves around the worls are depleting predictably also, raising their price 6 fold between 2001 and 2006. Africa and the Caspian zone are the two known reserve areas - hardly known for their stability. With no new reactors, we have 50 years proven supply (approx 3.53 mt) but if Britain gets all its electricity from nuclear that drops to 7 years.
So choose nuclear, and you choose to emit the CO2 elsewhere, leave the pollution elsewhere and fuel conflict elsewhere for a few years and then scratch your heads at the senseless white elephants and nuclear waste left behind.