The Prime Minister
25th April 2009Dear Sir,
I see that you have had the good sense to order the construction of a number of coal fired power stations. Well done. You really had no other option.
Now I suggest you bite the bullet and order about twenty nuclear power stations. They will take a minimum of ten years to construct by which time all our present ones will be dead. The north sea oil and gas fields will be, quite literally, on their last legs. Russia will consider it normal behaviour to switch off the gas supply in the midst of winter in order to negotiate a huge price increase. China will probably have a mutual protection pact with Iran and will take more energy from Asia and Africa than the West. It will by that time be quite clear that oil delivery has passed its peak.
The European country most likely to survive the consequent upheavals will be France which country has had the foresight to build sufficient nuclear plants to provide eighty percent of its electricity. We have no other option but to go nuclear. Growing petrol is an insult to food prices and its consumers – that is all of us. Wind, wave and any other so-called green alternatives are all marginal and enormously expensive. Electric cars will save absolutely no energy at all. Hydrogen is rubbish.
I hope you are stock-piling Uranium.
My comments are necessarily brief but I assure you they are professionally and thoroughly researched.
Regards,
Colin Walker,
C.Eng.M.I.Mech.E.A new factor that will radically change the energy scene is fracking. It appears this will make the US energy independent within ten years. This has not happened since around 1945. If the US does not need Middle East oil then it will likely end its relationship with Saudi Arabia. What then? Who will wield power over that oil? Russia? China? Iran? Iraq? No country other than the US could stop any one of them seizing Saudi Arabia and much of the Middle East. Perhaps we had better ensure our own domestic fracking proposals are implemented rapidly. A Leaning tower of Blackpool will be a small price to pay for energy.
Colin Walker