Is our future Nuclear?

Recent, tragic occurrences in Japan have raised yet more concerns over the use of Nuclear power in the long term. The government has been a key driver in the establishment of Nuclear Fuels in the UK funding research and build costs of power stations up and down the country.

However, this is also, potentially, the most environmentally damaging energy source. Whilst it is low carbon and a good chunk of the material can be recycled it can have devastating implications on the global environment when it goes wrong. The mining of Uranium is hardly clean either.

The question has to be, why does the government continue to support and plough capital into Nuclear power but is so reticent to do so with true renewable energy such as tidal, wave, wind and hydro? With our geography and topography these are surely where our future energy opportunities are. When will people sit up and start thinking long term.

I am sure that all those NIMBY's who oppose wind turbines would rather have 20 turbines on the landscape than a new Nuclear Power Station on their doorstep. It seems to be that we have to start making that choice sooner rather than later, however to achieve the scale needed we need national and local government to support with more than just words.

Localism and Global Issues

Localism has been something I have been passionate about for several years now. The idea of developing local communities, helping people re-engage with their neighbourhood and preventing big corporate culture from dominating our high streets.

With a low carbon economy, these ideas begin to be more relevant as we look at restrictions on global travel, renewable energy production requiring smart grids to be effective etc.. But we still live in a planet challenged by resource deprivation, mass poverty and poor health care.

I have heard the saying charity begins at home all my life and I do agree that principle, but if we focus purely on our neighbour do we miss a chance to make real change.

In reality our neighbour has never been further away, whilst at the same time never closer. The communications era has lead to a shrinking world. Someone living in my village has never read my blog, but I know people as far away as South Korea have. Does the term neighbour redefining in our global network.

The skills and ideas that we generate in the UK are equally relevant in South Korea, Libya or Argentina. Whilst the Global mastodons will continue to grow and reach new markets so the challenge of localism becomes ever more important. Towns in the sub continent and Africa need the skills and ideas to become self supproting to create jobs and provide food for their families in the same way that we do.

We should not be focussed on localism solving local issues but localism and networks of locallities changing the global framework and reinventing how we live our life.