UK government incoherent and inconsistent on energy crisis, and has no solution to the accumulating nuclear wastes

Does the new government energy strategy tackle the immediate energy
crisis? This is the third document in six months that the government has
produced, and all that has happened is that they have become less coherent,
and less and less connected to what actually matters to most people.

What the Prime Minister seems to believe is that we want expensive nuclear
‘jam’ tomorrow, and that we are not that bothered about cheap energy
efficiency ‘bread’ today.

I think that this is rather like the Chancellors recent Spring Budget, in that it is simply not hearing, or paying attention, to what is actually happening in the country, and what
matters to people who have got to live with the immediate crisis of their
energy bills.

And the way that the government can deal with that right now
is to start spending money on energy efficiency, money by the way that the
government promised in its manifesto and hasn’t actually delivered. In
2012, we were insulating about 2.5 million houses per year, now we are down
to about 20 thousand. If we had carried on at that rate, we would be saving
people money right now as this crisis has occurred.

So, this is a real failure of the government to be consistent in doing the things that really
matter to most people. Why would we want to use nuclear when there are much
better options already available? This is the third big government
announcement on energy policy in 6 months, and all you have got is if you
were an investor why would you invest in whatever the current flavour of
the month is for the government?

You would wait to see what happens when
things settle down. Government incoherence and inconsistency is really
slowing down out whole response. The endless announcements, with no real
delivery, is really slowing down our ability to deal with climate change.

People are right to be terrified by the conclusions of the IPCCC report,
they really are very scary indeed.

There is a future bill for nuclear waste, which grows. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is responsiblefor dealing with nuclear waste in this country, it now spends several
billions per year of public money in order to deal with the waste that we
have already got. So, it is quite right to question why the government is
even thinking about piling on more nuclear waste to be dealt with, when we
can’t even deal with the waste that we already have now. We don’t know
what to do with the high-level waste, that is the most dangerous waste, not
because of its volume but because of its radioactivity. We don’t have a
solution for that yet, despite 50 years of trying to find one.

Tom Burke 7th April 202 2http://tomburke.co.uk/2022/04/07/does-the-new-government-energy-strategy-tackle-the-immediate-energy-crisis/

April 11, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | ENERGY, UK, wastes

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