A Nuclear Fallout

This blog has seen many a war of words in its time but it now may have its best ever.

A post that began as a pretty standard rinsing of the Lib Dems for some poor spelling soon spiralled into a right dong-dong over nuclear power in the comments section.

It would be remiss of me not to pass on some of the best bits of this engaging debate, in a totally objective manner, of course.

So, in the saintly green corner is Richard Thomson of Scots and Independent and in the nasty radioactively bright yellow corner is Neil Craig of A Place to Stand.

Neil got the ball rolling in comment #4:

Since the reason for rising leccy bills is because we have windmills rather than (1.7p a unit) nuclear power it is disgustingly cynical of the LDs to try to make hay with those who are suffering (& sometimes dying).

Richard took the bait in comment #5:

Neil - where on earth is nuclear power only 1.7p per unit?

Don't say France - it's subsidised to the hilt by the French taxpayer, rendering the actual cost per unit considerably higher...

The somewhat inevitable retort from Neil followed:

France.

Neil went on:

Perhaps you would produce the evidence that the French state, which exports 57 bn kwh of the stuff to Germany, Italy, Spain & Britain is so generously & secretly subsidising them.Who would have thunk (sic) they were willing to make such sacrifices to provide so much aid to poorere (sic) countries?Or perhaps you can't produce the evidence because it is merely yet another example of the total contempt for any form of honesty common to the eco-fascist movement.

Editing things a little bit from now on, the debate continued as follows:

RT - Now, tell me - does your 1.7p per unit cost take account of the cost of waste transportation and storage or plant decommissioning?

An anonymous commenter dangerously wandered into view but was quickly trampled over as the great debate raged on, starting off with some almost Confucius-like wisdom:

NC - what matters is that we know it cann (sic) be produced at 1.7p a unit becuse (sic) it is being produced at 1.7p a unit. You have produced no evidence whatsoever that the French figures are wrong.

RT - I freely admit I can't find a breakdown for French nuclear costs, and suspect given the nature of the relationship between EDF, the French Government and the French military nuclear programme, I'm extremely unlikely to get one.

What I can do is look elsewhere and form an opinion as to how credible the French figures are likely to be. Accordingly, here's some estimates for the 'levelised cost' of nuclear power i.e. the entire life-cycle cost per MWh:
BERR - £38MWh
Rice University - 65Eur MWh
MIT - 67Eur MWh
Royal Academy of Engineers - 41EUR MWh
Canadian Nuclear Association - 50Eur MWh
IEA - 18-40 Eur MWh
Chicago University 43-58 Eur MWh

Impressive, this guy should be Head of Research somewhere. Hang on...

Neil battered on regardless:

NC - You have produced no evidence whatsoever to dispute the figures & are still merely asserting that they must be fraudulent because you want them to be. Once again if something is being done & has been done for decades then, by definition, it can be done.

At least you aren't defending Mr Kidd's total dishonesty in saying that nuclear is the most expensive. Nonetheless that rematk was indicative of the total dishonest way in which the Luddite movement so often behaves.

It wavers a little off topic somewhat at this stage (ironic, since the original post was about spelling mistakes) and Richard, quite reasonably tries to close the debate down. Not that I'm doing him any favours by recreating a debate that any reader could just as easily scrolled down to read for her or his self!

And, to just round the sheer delight of the situation off, Advanced Media Watch has a link at the very bottom of the page with a headline that is about as unpalatable as one I have ever seen. I would recommend he removes it, sharpish. (And not because it has spelling mistakes in it.)


So, all in all, a wonderful debate and one I have followed avidly despite not jumping in myself. In the end, I scored it as a technical knock out for Richard Thomson, but what say you?