I WAS appalled to read that the price of decommissioning of the Sellafield nuclear site, pictured, will be rising to £70bn with no cap set on the spend and this is "likely to continue to rise" ("MPs blast huge rise in costs at Sellafield", The Herald, February 11).
Is there no end to the money we are throwing at this monster and the money-grabbing industry that profits from it? If this money was subsidising any other part of society there would be an outcry from both Tory and Labour, but there is a strange silence when it comes to these massive handouts.
The costs of this decommissioning, which are replicated across the various nuclear sites around the UK, should finally put paid to the deluded idea that nuclear fuel comes cheap.
If the "cradle to grave" and gravekeeping costs of nuclear are figured into its unit costs, it makes financial sense that we leave this expensive white elephant behind in the century that created it. We should utilise effective proven power generation such as our sadly under-used hydro schemes and put our collective efforts, and public money, into new hydro schemes and other possibilities including seabed turbines, local biomass generators for rural communities and mass insulation of all our housing stock.
Now if we could just get Donald Trump to comment on the cost of decommissioning it might get the headlines it deserves.
T Proudfoot,
38 Strathearn Road,
Edinburgh.
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