I have been following the correspondence regarding the Navitus Bay Wind Farm with interest, and particularly the debate about the green credentials of wind power and nuclear power.

If one is really concerned about saving the planet, one should aim to do away with fossil fuel burning altogether, and its carbon dioxide problem.

Fossil fuels have a finite quantity left to use, so we will need to do without them eventually.

The problem with wind power is its inconsistency, and as a result, the output from wind turbines needs to be backed up by the same output from a power station.

On a cold and foggy day in November, it is likely that there will be insufficient wind to generate any electricity, and so 100 per cent of the back up will be used, pumping out carbon dioxide.

In the summer on a windy day, the turbine power will be turned down, as it will be greater than needed, and cheap simple ways of storing large amounts of electricity are not yet available.

So the best a wind farm can achieve is to reduce the use of its back up fossil fuel power station, by perhaps an overall figure of 50 per cent, although some feel it may be even less.

This is not very green, more like turquoise.

However, a nuclear power station will modulate up to its maximum output to match the demand in summer and winter, without any carbon dioxide emission. What could be greener than that!

You cannot see radiation, and too much of it does dreadful things, but we no longer produce reactors similar to Chernobyl, and we do not consider building one next to an ocean with a possibility of a tsunami.

And, by the way, I understand that the world’s nuclear power stations produce in a year, an amount of high level nuclear waste that could be contained in the about volume of Beale’s store, but I am not suggesting that they do so!

Low and intermediate waste would take up 20 times this volume.

So, many people do not want to live near a nuclear power station, but we in the south are within reasonably close proximity of these already, because France have four nuclear power stations on their north coast between Cherbourg and Calais, with a total output 1.5 times the entire nuclear output in the UK, and a quarter of the entire French nuclear output.

The only option open to us, and to save the planet, is to build more nuclear power stations ready for when the fossil fuels run out, or become too expensive, and to back up the existing fossil fuel stations with wind farms etc to reduce the carbon monoxide emission until then.

Once these fuels have run out, the wind farms will be superfluous, unless cheap and acceptable means have been found to store electricity, so that they can add a little to the electricity generation.

By then everything will be powered by electricity, or heat pumps and the like, and there will be no carbon dioxide emitting from chimneys and flues, and power generation within the country will need to be greatly increased, but that is something for our great great grandchildren.

Don Driver,

Dudsbury Crescent,

Ferndown