Letters: nuclear energy is key to our future

Your business leader misses the bigger picture, as indeed do other supporters of renewable energy, such as Greenpeace (“Moorside’s atomic dream was an illusion. Renewables are the way to a clean future”).

The bigger picture is that we can expect to see a substantial and sustained increase in electricity demand over the next 20-30 years due to the electrification of transport and heat. Heat alone, by the most conservative estimates, will add 300GW of peak thermal demand, which would add 100GW to the grid, dwarfing the current 65GW or so of peak UK demand. Yes, renewables backed up with energy storage and smart control can make an impact but a significant baseload method will still be needed. As pointed out in the late David Mackay’s excellent book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air, the least bad option of meeting this is likely to be nuclear fission.
Chris Underwood, professor emeritus of energy modelling for the built environment
Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne

Opposition to nuclear power in the UK has largely focused on the risks of an accident and the enormous cost of waste disposal, officially running at more than £100bn. Also, high-quality uranium ore is in short supply, and can only supply the world’s existing reactors for another 50 years. After that the energy required to extract fissile material from low-quality ore will exceed the energy produced, at which point the technology becomes unsustainable.

Recently, the chancellor admitted that he had delayed crucial legislation under pressure from the gambling industry. The only way to rationalise the UK’s chaotic energy policy is to accept that the nuclear and fracking industries have better lobbyists than the renewable sector.
Dr Robin Russell-Jones, chair, Help Rescue the Planet
Marlow, Buckinghamshire

Your business leader identified the key problem in the building of new nuclear power stations – that the government meant it to be funded by the private sector. Unfortunately, you then focus instead on the idea that renewables will be cheaper. You do recognise that there will continue to be a need for subsidies for renewables, but you say nothing of the actual costs and efficiency of renewables in the longer term.

The answer is for the government to fund the building and running of new nuclear power stations as part of a nationalised energy industry, alongside sensible investment in much more powerful requirements on insulating all new-build properties and developing renewable sources that are efficient and reliable. The idea that nuclear power stations can be built in the UK by the Chinese and French governments but not our own is nonsensical.
Diane Ordish
Brighton

Honour the unsung heroes

Tim Adams noted that when he went to see Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old “everyone in the cinema stayed in silence to watch the credits” (“We properly honour the past when we remember in new and vital ways”, Comment). Good for them: to pay attention to all those who made such a remarkable film is to acknowledge their part in the achievement.

The many names on screen do not, however, include a single one of the cameramen who originally took the film on which Jackson and his team have worked their digital magic. It is an astonishing omission. Without Geoffrey Malins, JB McDowell and the dozen or so other “official kinematographers” from Britain and the Dominions who filmed on the western front between 1915 and 1918, They Shall Not Grow Old would not exist. They, more than anyone, deserve recognition.
Roger Smither
London SE22

School cuts fail my daughter

The effect of funding cuts for children with learning difficulties (“‘Devastating’ cuts hit special educational needs”, News) is that these children are either shoehorned into an increasingly “one-size-fits-all” mainstream educational setting, or they are ferried for miles across the county to an ever-declining number of special schools.

We chose to keep our daughter, who has complex needs and intractable epilepsy, in the mainstream. But this year, in order to sustain itself, her school has had to lose learning support assistants, at a time when subjects such as music, dance, food tech and PE are being driven out of the curriculum by government reforms, or made so academic that they are inaccessible to children like her (and thousands more).

Children with mild/moderate learning difficulties are simply not accommodated by the secondary education system that Michael Gove and years of austerity have shaped – and the effects on their self-esteem, mental health and future prospects can be catastrophic.
Rachel Bladon
Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

So much for US democracy

Your excellent analysis of the US midterm elections (“Trump at bay but now more dangerous than ever”, Editorial) leads to only one conclusion: democracy in that country has failed and the Republican party is now a toxic institution.

America was founded by a group of rich, white, slave-owning tax-dodgers. It was then built on slavery and discrimination and the slaughter of some two million natives. The Federalist Papers make it clear that the primary intention of those plutocratic founding fathers was to protect their numerically endangered clique from the rest.

The result is a nation in thrall to a constitution still stuck largely in the 18th century and an election game where entrenched elites hold all the high cards and make all the rules.

The “shining city on a hill”? No. A democratic swamp, allowing the perfect place for monsters such as Trump to evolve.
Steve Edwards
Wivelsfield Green, Haywards Heath, West Sussex

Watchful eye on DNA debate

Your science editor Robin McKie’s coverage of the new documentary Three Identical Strangers does great service to those keeping a watchful eye on the re-emerging nature-nurture debate (“What makes us… nature or nurture?”, Special Report).

The many implications of this are partially reflected in the adoption into common parlance of the somewhat irritating phrase “It’s in our DNA”, and in recently reported “secret” eugenics conferences at University College London.

McKie’s very proper highlighting of the far right’s attempted accretion unto itself of the tenets of genetic determinism is surely more than sufficient justification for the press’s continuing watchdog role respecting future developments in this highly contentious field.
Steve Williams
Peacehaven, East Sussex

Reef encounter

You report that “children born today may be the last generation to see coral reefs in all their glory” (News, last week). Such direct experience is mostly restricted to those with the leisure and resources for travel, which will often be long-haul. Yet that very travel is a significant contributor to the global warming that threatens the reefs’ existence.

Perhaps the Observer could do its part in encouraging vicarious rather than first-hand enjoyment of far-off places, by ensuring that regular features such as “Five of the best” deal only with the tremendous opportunities in and around Britain. Is it really desirable to be encouraging readers to visit artisan distilleries in Chicago (Travel, last week)?
Tim Forcer
Southampton