Email: lftrs@hotmail.co.uk Let me know how you would vote!

Novel method of assessing public opinion on meeting carbon targets.‏

To chris.huhne.mp@parliament.uk

From:	Colin Megson (lftrs@hotmail.co.uk)
Sent:	26 May 2011 22:49:50
To:	chris.huhne.mp@parliament.uk

Dear Mr. Huhne,

I read the article in The Engineer (Low-carbon policy won't drive out manufacturers, says Huhne. 24 May 2011 | By Stephen Harris) and posted a comment, generally as follows:

Nuclear: Cheap as chips.

See: Royal Academy of Engineering Study - http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publications/list/reports/Cost_of_Generating_Electricity.pdf

Nuclear - 2.2 p/kWh
Onshore Wind - 5.3 p/kWh
Offshore Wind - 7.1 p/kWh

I've got a good idea Mr. Huhne:  Why don't you let manufacturers who support Nuclear pay nuclear prices and those who support Wind pay their preferred Onshore or Offshore prices?

Come to think of it, why don't you let the rest of us do it?

Although a flippant comment, this idea may have some merit, because it is so easy to test. It could well return the best possible quantitive data on the willingness of the electorate to pay for their preferred method of meeting carbon targets. Today, such is the issue of the cost of energy to every individual, that your decisions now may well make you or break you and the Government, by the time of the next election. This information could be of more value to you than a dozen select committee enquiries.

Set up a well publicised website, with the above cost information and a voting window, to allow parties to tick their supply of choice. The most foolproof method I can think of, to prevent voting fraud, will be to allow everyone on the electoral register to vote, with their National Insurance Number being the key to access.

What do you think?

Regards,

Colin Megson.

Dear Prime Minister

                                                                                                           21 May 2011.

10 Downing Street,
London,
SW1A 2AA,

For the attention of the Rt. Hon. David Cameron.

Dear Prime Minister

“I want us to be the greenest government ever”.

A year ago at the DECC, these were your very words and to do this, you are taking a predictable route of giving everybody in the mix a little bit, but inordinately pouring money into the populist option of renewables. This will divert much needed investment away from the NHS and other essential services.

May I propose ‘Plan B’, to take you into realms of ‘greenness’ about which you can only dream, meet our carbon targets ahead of time, take a huge chunk out of our £14 billion or so energy trade deficit and maximize energy independence.

You will not know of the capacity of this home-based resource, but you will be able to raise a green banner behind which every environmentalist can get. Not one extra square inch of our precious land need be sacrificed in accessing this fuel which can provide all of the UK’s electricity needs for the next 50 years and, it will be free of greenhouse gas emissions.

This resource is the lifeless, environmental abomination of fly-ash, with an average thorium content of 17 parts per million. Mining 60,000 tonnes of fly-ash yields 1 tonne of thorium, which can supply 1 GWyear of electricity; this is enough for all the electrical needs of a city of 1 million people for 1 year. Preposterous as it seems, 3,200,000 tonnes of coal have to be imported (£80 million) to supply the same amount of electricity, which means that the energy from fly-ash thorium yields 50 times more energy than the original coal burned.

You will need to spend a piddling £300 million on the first-of-a-kind 100 MWe Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR), which can be available in 5 years and factory produced units rolling off production lines in 10 years. Unlike PWRs (the UK’s new-build nuclear), LFTRs have extraordinary intrinsic, passive safety characteristics, making them capable of surviving a Fukushima level incident unscathed.

Extraordinary courage is needed to do something so revolutionary and such thoughts are likely to be kept away from you. However, I do hope your ‘knowledge filterers’ let you have a look at this data, for no other reason than it being an eye-opening ‘thought for the day’.

I must see what Archbishop Rowan has to say.

Yours sincerely,

That's it Folks!

04/05/2011

Dear Mr Megson,

Thank you for your submission to the Committee’s inquiry on nuclear research and development capabilities.

With regards

Rachel