Renewable energy appears to be opening up an almost unbridgeable gap in the debate over who can responsibly and sustainably heat our homes and power our factories of the future.
 
While there is a case to be made – if yet to be convincingly proved - that Scotland with its five million souls has the potential to become self sufficient in green energy sources, the idea that green is the answer to the world’s future energy needs is utterly fanciful.
 
The time has now come for the nuclear sector, for so long the bogey men of the energy debate, to start using new emerging evidence about the industry to prove that although green power has a role in the energy mix, nuclear is the only clean, sustainable source capable of supplying the levels of power that will be demanded by the planet’s seven billion strong, and rising, population in the future.

A new book by eminent Oxford physicist Wade Allison, should provide the industry with a cornerstone to start rebuilding its tarnished reputation and help create an understanding that the nuclear option is the only safe and affordable way to an energy secure future.
 
He has a compelling argument against one of the anti nuclear bodies most decisive arguments, cost.
 
On current building and safety regulations nuclear is prohibitively costly, but Professor Allison argues that is because nuclear reactors are ridiculously over engineered on safety grounds and if they were actually designed with risk levels calculated at a more reasonable level their unit cost would plummet.
 
He says that radiation is nowhere near as dangerous as its reputation would have us believe. 
 
In his opinion safety levels within nuclear installations are needlessly kept at an almost untracable 1msv per hour. Compare this with radiation treatment for cancers where patients are exposed to 5500msvs per hour or in fact in many parts of the world where people live normal lives with background environmental radiation levels in 200-300 msv range. Construction cost are hugely inflated to keep these safety levels articicially low.

What about Chernobyl anti nuclear campaigner will argue? Well on close examination of all the evidence no more than 60 deaths can be directly linked to that terrible accident. While 60 deaths are unfortunate however they occur, remember they are the only deaths ever to have happened in the nuclear industry in the last 50 years, anywhere in the world.

Compare this to the 112 deaths constructing one of the world’s largest hydroelectric green power stations the Hoover Dam a PowerStation that provides 4.2 billion kilowatt hours, slightly less than the output of one average sized nuclear plant.
 
Now hard statistics only tell part of the story and simple comparisons are rarely anything but odious. But the fact is, it is time the reality behind the industry’s safety record started to make up part of the argument rather than continue to let blind prejudice obstruct its progress. Yes, the waste problem needs to be addressed but the Stone Age didn’t end because the world ran out of stones, technology moved on and so it will again, a solution will be found.
 
But we can’t afford to wait, now has to be the time to start setting the record straight and winning the popular backing for the next generation of reactors, because when the lights start to go off it will all be too late.