Greens guru offers to bury nuclear waste in his garden

LONDON, ENGLAND - Professor James Lovelock, the scientist who inspired the Greens, recently offered to store high level nuclear waste on his land if it would help to revive the fortunes of atomic energy in Britain.

In May, the Prime Minister said that a new generation of nuclear power stations would have to be built to meet energy needs and avoid dependence on foreign imports, pre-empting the Government's own energy review.

But the economics of the nuclear industry have always been dogged by the failure of politicians of all parties to decide what to do with the high level nuclear waste.

In April the argument over what to do with Britain's 60-year legacy of civil nuclear waste returned to where it was a decade ago when a committee recommended burying it in a hole in the ground.

But where that hole should be remains the big issue.

"I have offered to take the full output of a nuclear power station in my back yard," said Prof Lovelock, who lives on the border between Devon and Cornwall.

"I would be glad to have it. I would use it for home heating. It would be a waste not to use it."

His neighbours are enthusiastic supporters, he said. "They are all farmers and they have got a strong sense of the value of money."

As for the local council, "one can just imagine putting in planning permission to store high level nuclear waste".

The green movement has "built up a miasma of fear" about nuclear waste, he said.

"I am a scientist when they [environmentalists] are mostly not," he added, arguing that new reactors should be built on the old sites.

The green movement's recommendations of sustainable development and renewable energy are well intentioned but too late, said Prof Lovelock, who was discussing his ideas at the Cheltenham Science Festival, which is backed by The Daily Telegraph.

He added that many members of the current Labour Government "are old CND [Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament] marchers. It was a dream of theirs to have a nuclear-free Britain and they hate to see that dream being spoiled. But we are facing a serious energy shortage if we don't do something about it".

Prof Lovelock is best known for his ideas that portray Earth as a living thing, a super-organism - named Gaia, after the ancient Earth goddess - in which creatures, rocks, air and water interact in subtle ways to ensure the environment remains stable.

Meanwhile as if the prospect of drought, heat waves and more violent storms is not worrying enough, Prof Bill McGuire of University College London, gave a warning that climate change could also trigger volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis.

The idea that climate change is linked to geological catastrophes is not as far-fetched as it might sound, Prof McGuire, a director of the university's Benfield Hazard Research Centre, told the festival.

"Evidence is stacking up that changes in global climate can and do affect the frequencies of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and catastrophic sea floor landslides," he said. "Not only has this happened several times throughout Earth's history, the evidence suggests that it is starting to happen again.

"There is a growing consensus that if climate change continues unchecked, we can expect not only a warmer future, but a more geologically turbulent one too."