So there it is, then. Perhaps it’s all a dark conspiracy. Yesterday’s Denbighshire Free Press’ front page shouted, “Nuke plant shocker” and although any North Wales atomic power station’s unlikely to be on the shores of Llyn Brenig, it could be at Trawsfynnydd, 40 miles away as the gamma radiation drifts, or 70 miles away at Wylfa. Quite frankly, the prospect is frightening, the more so when you consider the whole-life costs of nuclear power don’t produce anything like the almost free electricity promised us in the 1960s. Far from it.Which almost seems to leave us with no choice when it comes to accepting the local Clwyd Power Station: the proposed wind farms of Coedwig Clocaenog Forest. The newspaper reports that FoE feels that Cymru could meet its energy needs without a further nuclear plant. Said a FoE spokesman, “Wales is blessed with an abundance of natural energy resources, such as tidal, wave and wind power…”
So even FoE looks as if it might back schemes like the Clwyd Power Station. Shouldn’t FoE instead be looking at diverting the wind farms’ public subsidy into micro-generating schemes at a very local, individual level? And supporting the views of locals, so that it’s the communities themselves who decide upon the industrial fate of their own natural back yard.