A FRAWT ISSUE

A few days ago, EDF had to shut down one of the two reactors at its Torness nuclear power station in Scotland for safety reasons.  The French company somehow neglected to mention this fact in public.  The reactor will not go back online until safety checks and maintenance work have been carried out.

Sadly, a culture of secrecy is, and always has been, part and parcel of the nuclear industry.  People very seldom get to hear about it when a nuclear reactor is suddenly shut down - and often remains shut down for weeks or months on end.  Oh no - we just continually hear from those who haven't yet woken up from the fifty-year old nuclear dream that nuclear is "cheap", "clean" and "reliable".  In reality, it is none of those things.  But, while other power companies have been dropping nuclear like a hot rock, EDF has had its people camped out in Whitehall, trying to pressurise the government into reneging on its pledge not to offer new nuclear the massive public subsidies it has always relied on.

The latest?  EDF is saying it will try to extend the life of the existing nuclear power stations.  Like Torness, which is actually quite a recent one (it came online in May 1988).  So we can look forward to even more sudden shutdowns of nuclear reactors, with neither the companies nor the government telling us it's happened.

And they say that wind power is unreliable!!  And it's "totally dependent on subsidies"!!  The kind of idiot who makes those remarks clearly isn't really living on planet Earth.

One of the newest batches of nimby fools who claim to have made their home on planet Earth but really occupy a small corner of cloud-cuckoo-land call themselves FRAWT.  They're based in the Vale of Feldon, South Warwickshire, close to the proposed site of five turbines.  Naturally, without having the foggiest idea what they're on about, they're opposed to the turbines.

Why?  Because they live in "Shakespeare Country"!  Actually, they don't.  Shakespeare's country was Arden, on the other side of the River Avon.  Just because Shakespeare travelled through an area doesn't make it "Shakespeare Country".  And besides, who are these ignorant drones to suggest that Shakespeare would have been opposed to wind turbines?  Or that a landscape loosely connected with William Shakespeare should be preserved exactly as it is in the early 21st century (nearly four hundred years after Shakespeare's death) with no development of any kind whatsoever, except for the ungainly houses built by people who've just moved to the area and are now trying to stop anything else from happening.

The FRAWT website is yer typical nimby whinge - the usual mindless guff about bats' lungs exploding near turbines (has that ever happened in the UK?  No.)  There is a reference to a "paper" published by Dr Carl V. Phillips about the quote-serious health problems-unquote connected with wind turbines, but no mention of the fact that Dr Carl V. Phillips was dismissed from his university post for publishing lies on behalf of the tobacco industry (the same tricks deployed by the tobacco industry in the past are now used by climate sceptic and anti-renewables groups in order to mislead people over issues that are much more serious than smoking).

One very interesting deviation from the truth on the FRAWT website concerns house prices.  In the past, nimby groups like the woefully dishonest and aggressive VVASP misquoted a 2007 RICS-sponsored study of windfarms and house prices in order to give the false impression that a windfarm can knock 54% off the value of your home.  But that lie will no longer fly, because the report actually revealed that there was no evidence of windfarms impacting on house prices.  So how have FRAWT dealt with this hiccup?

FRAWT have the audacity (and dishonesty) to make the claim that the 2007 report, commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and carried out by academics from Salford University, "has been shown to be flawed by many".  That is not true.  However, FRAWT also claims to have a "library of correspondence from estate agents" and others which, surprise-surprise, supports their prejudices, even though ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE EXISTS FROM ANYWHERE to show that windfarms harm the local propert market - except where the nimbies are causing trouble and driving prospective buyers away!

So - in the weird and whacky world of FRAWT ("Next-door to Shakespeare Country"), the scientific approach  to evidence gathering is "flawed".  Unsupported anecdotal evidence is the new "fact".

No surprise, either, to find that, according to the liars of FRAWT, the government's established guidelines on windfarms and noise - ETSU-R-97 - is also "a thoroughly flawed document".  Do we reckon they've been talking to the Incredible Stigwood, who never fails to object to a windfarm and hates ETSU-R-97 because it works and contradicts all his bonkers theories?  Maybe.  More likely, FRAWT are throwing their astonishing lack of expertise into the ring, making claims they can't back up about things they simply don't understand.  Or, as we call it in the field, LYING.

Like their LIE about "Most countries (except the UK)" having a "2KM 'set-back' distance from houses".  Absolute drivel.  Totally wrong.  Another stinking nimby lie.  Probably raided from the dishonest websites of a dozen other identikit nimby groups.  They all trade lies.

It would be worth mentioning the rising global costs of imported fossil fuels, the soaring costs of new nuclear, and the tendency of nuclear reactors to be shutdown without a moment's notice.  That might offset their thoroughly misleading chart about the relative "efficiency" of wind power.  Indeed, the very fact that they dare to refer to "efficiency" in such a context just goes to show what a bunch of ignorant duffers they are.

Or we could point to the many national surveys which have consistently shown that the clear majority of Britons support wind power.  41% of those polled recently by YouGov are even interested in generating their own renewable energy.  That means that about four times as many people want their own wind turbines or solar panels than are opposed to all wind turbines full-stop.  71% of consumers are worried that MORE THAN FIFTY PER CENT OF THE FOSSIL FUELS USED TO GENERATE OUR ELECTRICITY ARE IMPORTED FROM OVERSEAS.  That includes nuclear material - which is a fossil fuel - and explains why our energy bills are rising (the liars at FRAWT are trying, as usual, to blame the fuel bill rises on renewables: yet more evidence of how thick/deluded/dishonest they are).  If we as a nation want to be more self-sufficient in energy terms, we have no choice but to cut back on polluting coal, expensive gas, and expensive, dangerous and unreliable nuclear.

After all, if Spain can now get up to 60% of its electricity from wind power, why can't we?  Given that we import more fuel than the rest of Europe, where every citizen is currently paying more than 700 euros for fuel imports, why can't we harness the abundance of wind and wave power that is all around us and save ourselves a packet?

Why should we in the UK miss out on the long term economic growth that is being stimulated by renewables everywhere?  Just because a few selfish fools who happen to live several miles from Shakespeare Country don't want a few turbines in the area?  Why must our economy shrink, our fuel bills rise, our energy security be sacrificed and our lights go out just to pander to a tiny minority of proven liars?  Why must we let these idiots pretend that there isn't a climate crisis happening RIGHT NOW, just because they're stupid enough to think they own the view of somewhere that's Not Quite Shakespeare Country?

Shall we let you in on an open secret?  Nimby maniacs like the frauds of FRAWT know absolutely nothing at all about windfarms.  They were offered the chance to be taken on a visit to the Low Spinney windfarm in Leicestershire.  But they refused to go.  Why?

Because if they found out what a genuine working windfarm is actually like, they could NEVER justify their blinkered, ridiculous, deceitful, misguided opposition to such a perfectly reasonable, harmless, beneficial and vital development.  To maintain the poisonous fictions they have been ramming down their neighbour's throats and hurling, sputum-flecked, at their local councillors, the FRAWT fools have no choice but to preserve their blissless ignorance.  If they had gone on the Low Spinney visit, all they would have heard was their fellow passengers wondering what all the fuss was about.

The only option for the head-in-the-sand, right-wing bilge-spouting nimby is enforced ignorance, it seems.  As their atrocious websites repeatedly prove.  Perish the thought that a diehard nimby of the FRAWT variety would ever consent to visit a windfarm while normal people are around.  What good could that possibly do for their outrageously self-serving bigotry?

So - another group of nimby nobheads to add to the list. The wind blows, but nimbies just suck.  FRAWT has joined the nimby Hall of Infamy, traitors to their nation and their planet (Earth, that is, not the bizarre planet Pseudo that the FRAWTSTERS are their like inhabit).