Its time that we addressed our energy crisis sensibly

I believe that it’s time we had a really sensible approach to our energy issues, because this madness of taking hundreds of thousands of acres of our farmland to put windmills and solar panels that cannot guarantee continued energy and continue to precipitate the need for gas and coal-fired electricity just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Personally, I am concerned about the amount of farmland we are using. If you’ve taken a look at the foundations for one of these enormous wind turbines, you’ll see that for the current wind turbines being installed everywhere, we’re looking at somewhere around 800 cubic metres of concrete and who knows how much steel in between that is buried into the ground. That will destroy that farmland indefinitely, and yet most of the time these wind turbines aren’t actually working.

We’re in this situation because 20-odd years ago, plans were not put into place to build new nuclear power stations, and we have become dependent on importing gas and imported energy. This is not where we should be. A country like the UK should not be dependent on anyone else for energy or food, and food is the one that really concerns me, but we’ll cover that separately.

You may or may not be aware of Rolls-Royce modular nuclear reactors. We have advanced so much in our nuclear energy, and these modular reactors are absolutely incredible. They are built off-site in a factory. It takes around four years to prepare the site and two years for construction. The reactors are taken, as the name suggests, in modular form and then literally put together on site. So we’re looking at a total timeframe of 6 years. I’m not sure if that can be cut down a little more, but they have a small footprint, they don’t look offensive, and they will supply energy 24/7 for 50 or 60 years.

I do believe that these could solve our initial problem or our current energy problem, and at the rate that we are going, I do believe that we will have a much cleaner alternative at the end of the life cycle of the current nuclear reactors.

For those of you who are not aware, the nuclear reactors we have at the moment operate on something known as nuclear fission, which is actually the splitting of an atom. So effectively, how nuclear reactors work is they create a mini atomic explosion in a controlled manner to generate energy. Whereas nuclear fusion, which has been proved to work but is going to need a lot more research until we get there, actually works by fusing atoms together, creating implosion. There is no need—whereas nuclear fission requires uranium which then results in nuclear waste—nuclear fusion runs on hydrogen. It is completely safe. If anything goes wrong, then the process simply stops without any toxic fallout. It really is the energy of the future, and we should be investing everything we possibly can into achieving energy independence through nuclear fusion in the future.

But it is still years away, and in the meantime, we do need modular nuclear reactors around the country. I’m not sure what the exact figure is for the number we would need throughout the UK to ensure that we are energy independent. At the same time, not only can they provide energy, but they can also provide a clean source of hydrogen which can then be used for everything from running cars to running boilers. So the prospect is so promising, and it is political and financial madness not to be going full-on for nuclear reactors throughout the UK.

We are very advanced. Our modular nuclear reactors are absolutely incredible, and within five or six years, if it were handled properly, we would no longer be dependent on any other country for our energy. And yet we have these people who are in cloud-cuckoo-land because they are destroying our farmland. Our food production, which is less than 50% and falling, is critical, and yet they persist with soiling our countryside with these ugly contraptions and taking farmland and using them not just for solar farms but for wind farms as well, causing all sorts of other forms of pollution because these things are not recyclable. And there are thousands of them now. What is going to happen to them at the end of their life?

So unfortunately, unless people speak up about this, then things will get from bad to worse. We haven’t really made our way of life cleaner. All we’ve done in reality is subcontract anything that is not clean to other nations. We have our own oil, we have our own gas, and yet we’re not using it, but we are paying more to buy it from other countries. The gas that comes from the US costs us more than our own, which is beneath our very feet. It is literally political madness and financial suicide to keep going down the road that we are heading now.

I would urge you to take some time to look into the difference between nuclear fusion and nuclear fission because it’s very interesting. And also perhaps take the time to look up Rolls-Royce nuclear modular reactors. They are absolutely fascinating. They’re British, they’re made in this country, and they could solve our energy problems within five or six years, if not less. That’s all for now. Thank you very much and bye-bye. I’ll see you next time.