As someone who invested a £1000 in British Energy and received for my pains £1.75 back, and recently finding out that 593 people are employed at Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station,the nuclear industry has got to come up with more convincing figures than these to get anybody to invest. Roy Winter, Yarm

With the finite supply of oil and other fossil fuels becoming more expensive by the month, it will not be long before nuclear is cheap as chips in comparison. Unfortunately, planning and building of quality nuclear establishments will not happen overnight, it takes years of planning and building. Now is the time to start the process. Let's not continue to be at the mercy of the oil producers who have us by the throat. Dominic Tattersall, Burnley

I am completely appalled by the conclusion "... embrace nuclear power as the alternative" to this otherwise relatively sensible editorial. Quite right, that the current petrol "panic" is purely down to speculation; partially right that the "problems with oil lie further down the line", although it seems increasingly obvious that the oil-related problem of global warming is no longer something we can put off. However, it is preposterous to suggest that nuclear power is any sort of alternative, and by no stretch of an even rather credulous imagination can it be seen as safe, clean, or efficient. Safe? - what about the disasters at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Windscale? Clean? In addition to this accidental nuclear pollution, and as well as the still unanswered quandary of what to do with waste toxic for millions of years, the reality is that enormous quantities of fossil fuel are used to mine, mill and enrich the uranium needed to fuel a nuclear power plant, as well as to construct the reactor itself. Efficient? In its early years, nuclear power was to provide cheap, even unmetered energy. We are still waiting, and in the meantime, the taxpayer continues to subsidise BNFL. Kim Ashton, London

As a nation we aren't going to reduce our demand for energy any more than we will increase our waste recycling or give up our cars. The man in the street spends no time at all contemplating how his energy is produced, so long as it is always there when he wants it. Fossil fuels are a limited resource that will become exhausted sooner than we think, regardless of the environmental damage they cause. Sustainable sources will not provide sufficient supplies. We can have our pipe dreams of adequate "clean" energy, but in reality, we have some tough choices to make. Or rather, someone will have to make them for us. If we were not concerned enough to elect a government based on its nuclear weapons policy, we are certainly unlikely to be concerned on a national level about the risks of nuclear power. As long as its not in my backyard... Mark Bennett, Hengoed, Wales

Whatever the rights or wrongs of a UK nuclear energy programme one should ponder this fact about our near neighbours. The French are planning to renew all 58 of their nuclear plants (supplying a massive 80 per cent of their current energy needs) at the rate of one a year from 2020. Are we stupid or are they stupid? Name and address withheld

There is only one way forward, which is to take good advantage of all the resources we have bled our planet dry for and construct a worldwide eco-friendly system of power production and water purification. There is enough available natural sources and we have more than sufficient resources. It is the time to set aside completely our terrible preoccupation with power sources that pollute and threaten the Earth. Steve Ward, Hastings

Nuclear technology which has received unlimited patronage and financial support over the last 50 years, yet the nuclear industry now finds itself in a situation similar to the last colony of dodos. In my view, the failure has been the unquestioning, uncritical support that has been offered by generations of politicians with their "if it's nuclear it must be good" approach. Hence the shambolic lurching from one reactor system to another, the pursuit of ludicrous schemes (breeder reactor) and above all the obsession with reprocessing. The nuclear industry has had everything it demanded but like a spoilt child, the things it needed most were discipline and a clear sense of direction. Nuclear power may have a future, but continuing uncritically to sing its praises will just continue the mistakes of the past. Paul Randall, Chichester

Climate change is a political problem needing a political solution. But we need to be careful before going fully nuclear because the technology uniquely captures governments in a cycle of investment decisions that once started will take about 100 years to exit - 10 years to build the reactor, 60 years to operate the reactor and 30 years to decommission it. What other technology has the capacity to bind government decisions for 100 years? Ian Jackson, Manchester

There is now an emerging technology that can get rid of nuclear waste. The process is called actinide transmutation and essentially just needs the use of a different design of reactor. The result is that the reactor burns its own waste up as it runs, resulting in almost nil waste having to be removed and dealt with. The very same process that creates the energy in the first place in a reactor, and which splits atoms into smaller, radioactive ones as a result, can be left to run and further split the waste atoms into yet smaller yet atoms, until they reach a stable, non-radioactive material, at which point the substance is removed from the reactor. This kind of reactor was first tried in the 1960s, and worked then, although there were some difficulties with materials with which to build the reactor. Now materials have advanced to the level needed. A nice side-point is that we can feed our stockpiles of waste into a reactor of such a design, and it will all get burned up too - actually generating electricity from the waste. Pete Collins, Woking

Nuclear power is most definitely not the way forward. Until there is a way of safely disposing the radioactive waste products nuclear energy should not even be considered. The estimated £50 billion it will cost to decommission some of the UK's nuclear sites could have been spent on developing the technology and infrastructure for renewable energy sources. Name and address withheld

All of the comments ever made about nuclear power being safe or ‘tried and tested’ are completely unfounded and can be invalidated by an absolutely basic understanding of human history. High-level radioactive waste (such as material from the core of the nuclear reactor) can have a half-life of longer than 100,000 years. No human civilisation that I have ever heard of has survived more than 2,000 years. Humans are inanely curious and are constantly digging up what has been buried by past civilisations, the better concealed the more curious we are. You work it out! If nuclear waste is not a danger now, it is almost certain to be at some point in human "evolution". Climate change also poses an immediate and long-term threat to humanity, but there is absolutely no point in fighting fire with fire using a knee-jerk short-term solution. If we are to address the issue now, we have to fundamentally question our current energy economy, and use solutions that, although costly and inconvenient in the short-term, will provide for a healthier environment and human population in the long term. Furthermore, I suggest that if any nuclear power stations are to be built in the future, they should be put in the back gardens of proponents of "safe" nuclear power. Christopher Royal, Brighton