ENERGY was on the agenda at a packed Labour Party annual conference in
Blackpool. I warned delegates that as much as we might like windmills to
generate our electricity rather than nuclear power stations, it just wasn’t
practical. It would, I said, take 35,000 windmills—spaced out for
aerodynamic reasons—to match the output of just one medium-sized nuclear
power station. My warning received loud catcalls from the Green contingent in
the audience, but louder cheers from delegates of the Amalgamated Union of
Engineering Workers, who represented many nuclear power workers.
That was, of course, in 1980. A recent…
