The morning started with a meeting of Environmental Protection UK Northern branch on which I represent Stockton Borough Council. This meeting was at the Hartlepool Power Station and included a guided tour. Security was impressive, but took up so much time that we didn't see as much of the power station as originally planned. The view from the top outside was beautiful but as no cameras are allowed on the site I can't share it with readers.
I didn't realise till today that there is a dedicated Police force for defending nuclear installations and that they are armed and not under the control of the local police. I can see the logic but it leaves me a little uneasy.
An hour to read some papers ready for a meeting next week before a short meeting about the Western Area partnership board and then a member seminar. Local residents might have seen some of the publicity surrounding a young girl and her mother who were seriously let down by Stockton council and other agencies like police and probation services. This afternoon there was an opportunity for councillors to discuss the issues and ask questions of the Director of Children's Services. Serious, sensible discussion and again a sense that although things had gone seriously wrong in the past lessons have been learned and we can be reasonably hopeful that the same sort of thing won't happen again.

The nuclear option

The announcement that Hartlepool is one of the possible sites for a future nuclear power station is bound to generate a fair bit of heat locally before it comes anywhere near to generating electricity. It's not unexpected of course - any site which already has a nuclear station must have been in the running because the issues of geography and so on have already been resolved to the satisfaction of the authorities.
I'm not one of those who absolutely oppose nuclear power, but I do oppose using any process which produces a byproduct that doesn't have an end use. Nuclear waste is enormously difficult to deal with, we haven't yet resolved the issues of how to store it successfully for the necessary thousands of years before it decays to harmless and the technical problems of decommissioning nuclear stations arent' yet fully solved. Given all that, I don't see how we can possibly contemplate building more stations, generating more waste and leaving our grandchildren a toxic legacy to solve. Then on top of that we have the considerable carbon diocide emissions of the construction process - all that concrete, all the fuel coming from overseas because we don't have native supplies.
Add to that the fact that we need to get smarter about tracking radioactive material around the globe and keeping it out of the hands of potential evil-doers and I ask myself what we could achieve on greener technologies with the same amount of investment.
No - I still need convincing that the nuclear option is the right one.
Though given this story maybe miracles do happen.