Wickham's musings from Chalke

John Humphrys in the Sunday Times has noted that by 2020 90% of our gas for electricity will have to be imported. This will have to come from countries such as Algeria, Turkmenistan, Iran and Nigeria. All these countries have dubious politics; they harbour terrorists and don’t have a way of life that remotely resembles ours. Whereas oil is quickly loaded onto tankers that are reasonably secure, gas would be piped in long pipelines, easy targets for terrorist attack.

This means that these countries will become rich at our expense. Will they try to change western business methods and culture? An obvious comparison should be made with Saudi Arabia which moved from 1950s poverty to extreme wealth now. Although we disagree with Saudi traditions, especially punishment methods, they have adopted western business methods and relations are normally cordial.

We had trouble in the early 70s when Opec raised oil prices by a huge percentage, but recently Opec countries have on the whole realised that they have to cooperate with the importing countries and act responsibly otherwise everyone suffers. Will it be the same with the emerging rich gas exporters? It’s a risk I would try to reduce as much as possible.

We are phasing out all nuclear power stations by 2010, coal-fired stations are also fading away due to environmental concerns, our North Sea gas won’t last long and renewable sources can’t provide a steady-enough supply and can’t be built in sufficient capacity by 2020.

My conclusions:-

We will probably have to risk that gas-exporting countries will adopt reliable business ethics and form an organisation similar to Opec but at the same time we should push ahead with renewables as fast as possible to have some home-produced energy to offset the risk of supply disruption from gas-exporters.

Although I am green by nature, I am also sure that nuclear power will have to take the load at some point in the future – if not within our lifetimes then perhaps within a century or so. This means we should carry on with research into waste storage and disposal. I also believe that we should build a new generation of power stations on the same sites to provide core home-produced capacity and keep the technology advancing steadily. The radiation risk is already there – it won’t go away for thousands of years so we might as well keep it in the same places under our control and recycle the sites to produce more power.

I believe the Swedes are constructing a deep under-sea depository for nuclear waste that will keep it well away from human contact. We should be able to do something like that. It would be difficult for terrorists to reach – especially if flooded for additional protection. We have been investigating sites such as deep clay depositories but these are on land and near human habitation. The Swedish approach seems sensible and worth further thought by British engineers. Like the Swedes, we have lots of granite under our seas which is dense and outside volcanic and earthquake zones (and is itself slightly radioactive).

It is too much of a risk to rely heavily on imported energy from risky sources and financially better to keep most of the production cost flowing around our own financial system, not escaping elsewhere.

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I can hear the drone of combine harvesters from two directions and the sloes are going purple – is summer drawing to a close? One of the robins has moulted and lost its tail – it is just a ball of fluff with a beak and two spindly legs and looks very silly.