Bite the bullet

The truth is that the only serious game in town that is going to plug the energy gap is nuclear

The article "Shadow cast over Wind Power" (PE March) took me back 40 years to my time at university. 

In a series of lectures on alternative energy sources, one young lecturer warned us to beware of anybody who thought that wind power could ever have more than a marginal effect on our energy supply. His argument was that the number of turbines required to provide more than a few percent of the necessary power, would be so large that they would affect the climate. The energy in the wind may be large, but it is not infinite, and if you extract thousands of megawatts from it, you're left with less wind... That argument has stuck with me ever since and I've trotted it out many times, without anything to back it up beyond a gut feeling that it feels right. Forty years on, I've finally seen some serious work reported that confirms what that prescient lecturer (whose name has long gone) predicted. Let's hope that the powers-that-be wake up to this reality before too much damage is done. The truth is that the only serious game in town that is going to plug the energy gap is nuclear, with all its problems. The sooner we bite on that particular bullet the better.

Tim Kirker, Halifax

Next letter: Learning the lesson