IN your report on the shutdown of one reactor at Torness for a valve repair
(“Reactor powered down as valve trouble is uncovered”, The Herald, March
18) you quote WWF Scotland as asserting: “It’s clear that nuclear power is
showing itself to be an increasingly unreliable source of energy … Scotland
is right to be choosing to harness more power from renewable energy
sources” to “end our reliance on unreliable and unpopular nuclear power and
fossil fuels”.
Implying that our existing nuclear stations are unreliable is not borne out
by fact.
Since privatisation it is only the politicians who are responsible for
ensuring we have adequate energy generation in the UK and since we have had
no energy planning or researched strategy in place since 1990 the reality
is that we need to keep ageing nuclear stations operating to supply base
load as we cannot reliably depend on the outputs from renewable sources
(predominantly wind) into which we have blindly and ignorantly invested so
much.
It is worthwhile considering the reported visit to Orkney last week by the
Scottish Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, chaired by SNP MP Peter
Wishart, which held an evidence-gathering session on issues such as grid
capacity and the lack of a cable capable of exporting electricity to the
Scottish mainland. One keynote of the inquiry is to look at recent
decisions by the UK Government particularly regarding on-shore wind and
renewables generally.
Regarding wind reliability, on March 9, 10, 11, 14 and 15 I randomly
checked existing Orkney wind output and the committee would have found the
figures sobering. However it repeated the usual political hyperbole that
“some things we all know, for example, that Orkney is self-sustainable when
it comes to renewables”.
My random daily checks showed that during these five days Orkney was not
exporting any energy at all. Orkney was importing between 50 per cent and
90 per cent of its needs. It was only generating between one per cent on
March 9 to a maximum on March 13 of 18 per cent of its current installed
wind capacity of 57,000kW.
In fact this was the second major lull experienced in Orkney within a
couple of weeks, the previous being from February 24-26 (and probably longer).
Indeed at 9.59 am on February 26 the entire measured windfleet of 57,000kW
in Orkney was producing 4kW when Orkney’s was using 24,000kW.
That is barely enough to power two kettles for a population of more than
20,000.
Before we are rushed by the politicians to intensively plant Orkney with
wind turbines, and the consequent threats that some consider it will bring
to its native, and rare, birdlife – which does not seem to concern WWF – we
must question how reliable an energy source more wind generation would
provide.
The answer is that it will always be much less reliable than nuclear and if
the interlink is DC, as has been proposed, will not help support frequency
or provide reactive power to help prevent voltage collapse in the already
fragile north of Scotland grid.
DB Watson,
Saviskaill,
Langdales Avenue, Cumbernauld.
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