TRANSCRIPT EXTRACT FROM ANY QUESTIONS, BBC RADIO FOUR, 24 JUNE 2005

FROM: Redruth School Technology College, Cornwall

PRESENTER: Jonathan Dimbleby

PANELLISTS: Ben Bradshaw

Angela Browning

Matthew Taylor

Zac Goldsmith

TOM SCOTT (CORNWALL SWITCH) Would the panel prefer to live next to a wind farm or to a nuclear power station?

DIMBLEBY [CLAPPING] You can have more than two words on this Zac Goldsmith.

GOLDSMITH  I would definitely rather live near a wind farm. Nuclear power plants [CLAPPING] they come with so many costs again on every level - security costs, waste costs, financial costs - that I would do a great deal in fact to avoid having to live near one. And I very much hope that the current hints that we're going to see a revival of nuclear power are binned. Nuclear power, if you internalise all the real costs of nuclear power - the waste that's piling up in this country, Michael Meacher described the current waste situation as a problem for which there is no solution, he was the minister in charge of handling - not literally handling - overseeing nuclear waste in this country. If you internalise all those costs nuclear power represents by far and away the most expensive form of energy generation in the history of energy generation. And now following 9/11 we have a whole new chapter that's opened on nuclear power in terms of the security risk. Bearing in mind not a single nuclear power plant in Europe was built on the assumption or within the range of possibility that terrorists were actually willing to die in the cause of their struggle. All the major nuclear institutions have highlighted this - the International Atomic Energy Authority have said that the likelihood of a terrorist flying a plane into a nuclear power plant is now much more higher than it was pre 9/11 - it stands to reason, but it's good that they're acknowledging that. I think just to put the risks in context. Two Greenpeace activists were able to enter Sizewell B, which is one of the most vulnerable plants in Southern England, dressed as missiles with briefcases with bomb written on the side and no one stopped them. Now if two Greenpeace activists can do it [CLAPPING] I think al-Qaeda could too.

DIMBLEBY  It is on the government's agenda to consider the option of nuclear energy. Ben Bradshaw.

BRADSHAW  But it's not [indistinct words] but to answer the question I too would rather live next to a wind farm, I also rather we built more offshore as well, so we didn't have quite so many over the countryside.

DIMBLEBY  Would the reason for that be sort of that it's just less ugly and more attractive, rather than the issue of whether you feel you'll be safer or not?

BRADSHAW  For me both. I mean I think people feel very personally about wind farms, I mean if you did a poll of the people in the audience here you'd probably get some saying they didn't have a problem with them and others saying they think they're absolutely hideous, I mean that is what the research shows. I personally I think they look quite nice.

DIMBLEBY  Let me just - I'll let you carry on but let me just come back to our audience here because Cornwall is famous or depending on your perspective - notorious for a number of wind farms. Who likes - who's easy about living near a wind farm? Who's not easy about it? Who lives near a farm wind within say five miles? You're all very easy and none of you live very close. But that does not in any way undermine the view that you take, I grant you. Straight on with the minister.

BRADSHAW  But on the issue. We haven't ruled it out because I don't think it's sensible for any government to rule out anything forever. But Zac's absolutely right - there are really serious questions that would have to be resolved, he's mentioned the waste issue, which has not been resolved, he's mentioned the basic economics of it which has not been resolved and he's also mentioned the security risk, which has not been resolved. And I certainly would feel uneasy about pressing ahead with the new generation of nuclear power until those questions were properly resolved.

DIMBLEBY  Angela Browning.

BROWNING  Well as things stand at the moment in this country we're due to be free of nuclear power generation by 2020 because all those old magnox reactors are coming to the end of their life and are going to be decommissioned and run down and they, at the moment, provide about 20% of our electricity supply. And I think the sorry thing about this debate is that the questioner quite rightly and for obvious reasons said nuclear or wind farm - I think it's been terrible that the government has put all its eggs into wind in terms of alternative energy. They seem to do [CLAPPING] they seem to put everything into land based wind power - I have to say coming from Devon, where there are many applications for wind farms, as I drove through Cornwall this evening I thought how wonderful they looked in Cornwall. But the point is this we need alternative energy, we need money to go into all those other forms whether it's tidal, whether it's biomass and not just have all our eggs in one basket. But the problem with the nuclear debate - and I have an agreement with Ben on this - as far as any government is concerned we have to look, I believe, at whether we should be renewing some of that nuclear, purely to guarantee continuity of supply, so that we don't have what happened in America when by 2015 we have a really serious danger of having interruption of electricity supply. And that is now becoming quite desperate because the lead time, if there was to be redevelopment of new nuclear stations, the lead time is so long. As it happens we buy in quite a lot of nuclear from France. And I would just say this - it's not next door but it's over the channel and so I don't think we can all think well nuclear will be nothing to do with us, we're quite happy to take the French nuclear electricity supply when it suits us, we really must be quite serious about saying should we have our own replacement.

DIMBLEBY  Matthew - Matthew Taylor.

TAYLOR  Well given what I read about the government being precipitously about to back nuclear and given what I've just heard from Ben the issue of redundancy pay for ministers resigning may be more immediate to him than we imagined. The fact is I can see a wind farm from my kitchen window. When I was 16 the then Conservative government was proposing to build a nuclear power station more or less outside my parents' kitchen window in [name] and my first ever campaigning was knocking on doors both in Hale and then protesting - stopping the diggers going into a field in [name], that's what I first did, that was the first campaigning, nothing to do with party politics. [CLAPPING] And I have to say having been offered the choice of a nuclear power station outside my parents' kitchen window I'm very glad that I've instead got a wind farm viewable from my kitchen window.

DIMBLEBY  If you were in the predicament where I believe I'm right that wind energy is presumed only ever to be able to produce 20% of need, if you also needed to combat the CO2 emissions very thoroughly and it was put to you that nuclear energy was the most effective option at that time, and given what Angela Browning has said about nuclear power from France, would you rule it out entirely or not?

TAYLOR  I've never ruled research into nuclear power, if we can solve the problems then we solve the problems but the fact is we don't know how to deal with the inheritance for generations in the future of the waste, we don't know how to protect the nuclear power stations adequately from terrorism and perhaps most important of all in the world that we're now in if we were to go down the nuclear route what do we say to Zimbabwe, what do we say to Iran, what do we say to Syria, what do we say to Korea - all these countries that we know may have used the nuclear power if they get it. [CLAPPING] So - and there's something - if the government is really worried about this they can do absolutely immediately because on current finances it is worth our while every single one of us to spend the money to save energy equivalent to 25% of all the energy used in this country, it would actually be cost effective for us to do it today, like that, you cut 25% of our energy use and there's another 25% which we have the technology to save though as yet it would be marginally more costly than doing what we do. To save the world that seems to me a price worth paying.

DIMBLEBY  I'm going back to [CLAPPING] back to Tom Scott who put the question.

SCOTT  Well I'm very glad to hear that the panel has such warm feelings about wind farms and haven't been taken in by some of the shameless misinformation that's been spread about them recently.

DIMBLEBY  Okay you may wish to spread more shameless information in Any Answers or express your views one way or the other about all of this, the number, just to remind you, is 08700 100 444 and the e-mail address any.answers@bbc.co.uk. We'll go to our next question please.