Letter: Letters: No fifth fuel

From STEUART CAMPBELL

Nick Gotts (Letters, 4 December) claims that energy conservation is
the cheapest way to cut the use of fossil fuels (the so-called ‘fifth fuel’).
The claim is perhaps based on the belief that more efficient use of fuel
will lead to lower fuel consumption.

However, it has been known for at least 125 years that efficient energy
use is associated with increases not decreases in total and per capita energy
consumption (see the work of Stanley Jevons, which is discussed by L. G.
Brookes in Energy and Environment, vol 1, p 318, 1990). Consequently, although
greater efficiency is desirable, it can only have the effect of increasing
consumption of electricity (and fossil fuels if the electricity is not generated
by nuclear power). There is no fifth fuel.

Gotts’s argument against the spread of nuclear power on the grounds
that it can conceal the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons is only superficially
valid. First, although a reactor is needed to produce plutonium, a bomb
can be constructed from uranium (as used at Hiroshima). Secondly, the construction
of a nuclear weapon is a formidable task, involving skills and materials
completely unrelated to those involved in the operation of a reactor.

A country’s lack of a reactor is no guarantee that it cannot construct
a bomb. Conversely, possession of a reactor does not necessarily lead to
the development of weapons. In any case, the plutonium produced in civil
power reactors is not suitable for making bombs (and has not been so used).

Nuclear weapons will be produced and used by those who want to do so
whether or not they operate reactors. Fear of the misuse of nuclear energy
is not a valid argument for failing to put it to good use.

Steuart Campbell Edinburgh