SIR, I write in response to the ‘news’ item in last week’s paper about the bid to bring an experimental prototype nuclear fusion plant to Ardeer, a plan offering us a vision of thousands of new jobs from ‘clean’ nuclear energy.

The report explained that NAC has been advised by nuclear ‘experts’ but these ‘experts were people with a career or maybe a vested interest in these proposals.

To ensure a more balanced perspective on this, the council now need to consult some of the experts who are critical of nuclear fusion, such as Dr Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment and a former consultant to the European Parliament.

It really is quite astonishing, but maybe no surprise, that NAC seem to have fallen for the nuclear industry’s glossy spin on this, no doubt attracted by the carrot of ‘thousands of clean jobs’ (which are unlikely to ever materialise), all designed to persuade the public to continue funding the nuclear industry with endless billions, as no private investor is willing to invest in any form of nuclear generation.

The reality is that in spite of hundreds of billions having been spent on trying to develop nuclear fusion over many decades, it has only ever worked for seconds in test labs, but even in the unlikely event that it would ever work, it is neither green nor clean, something that many critics have long exposed.

In addition, the carbon footprint of development and construction over many decades of such a site would be huge, never mind the incalculable costs of dealing with radioactive waste.

No form of nuclear energy is a clean energy source.

In fact a recent ‘expert’ who spoke to NAC could not confirm that there would be no waste from such a plant, just that there would be ‘less waste’, i.e. less waste than conventional nuclear fission, not exactly a reassuring admission, especially when there is no satisfactory way of dealing with nuclear waste long term and that term would be a very long time indeed even if ‘less waste’ is claimed for fusion.

On top of all that, at the end of its working life, any nuclear reactor core has to be covered in thousands of tons of concrete and guarded for thousands of years, a time period much longer than any concrete would last, possibly longer than the human race will last!

No wonder the nuclear industry is the most subsidised industry known to man, apart from the defence industry to which the nuclear one has been inextricably linked from the start.

When the full cost of any nuclear generation is included, from the start to the end of the whole process, it is the most expensive and the most dangerous form of energy ever devised.

In comparison to all that, government support for green energy is but a drop in the ocean.

Dr Daniel Jassby who worked for 25 years on plasma physics and neutron production related to fusion energy at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, at Princeton University in the USA has recently written about the myriad problems with nuclear fusion (including waste and other hazards) for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

He explains why it won’t work as ‘fusion reactors are not what they are cracked up to be’ and concluded that ‘when you consider we get solar and wind energy for free, to rely on fusion reaction would be foolish.’

Indeed, when we are blessed with such an abundance of green sources in Scotland, it just makes no economic or environmental sense whatsoever to continue with nuclear generation of any kind, especially when there is no acceptable long term solution to the waste problem.

Rather than falling for all this nuclear spin, NAC really should be promoting the green energy potential of Ardeer, something that would bring far more secure and far safer employment long term.

In contrast, if anything ever comes of it, this proposal would be more likely to deter or even prevent alternative projects in the area because of the possible risks from an experimental (or in my opinion just mental) nuclear pipedream.

John Hodgart,

18 McMillan Drive,

Ardrossan.