Sir – As you say in last week's editorial, we do need to address the question of more nuclear power stations as proposed by the government. Mark Lynas's statements would appear to back the Government’s argument but not necessarily the ‘mainstream’ argument.

Mark Lynas coyly likens coming out in favour of nuclear power as being like coming out to parents as a gay however, being a gay is not harmful or dangerous. Nuclear power is.

The Government certainly is trying to push nuclear power as the environmental option. However, carbon dioxide is produced in the mining and carriage of materials for nuclear power. What is more worrying is the fact that they still haven’t discovered ways of securely storing the stockpiles of nuclear waste that have already been produced. In the new plans for ‘greater efficiency’ spent fuel will be left on site and above ground indefinitely if encapsulation and disposal prove impossible. Such stockpiles would be highly vulnerable to leakage and overheating, not to mention sabotage.

Traditional coastline sites may no longer be secure because of imminent sea level changes, so they might well start looking at inland sites like Didcot.

Then the point is, that unless we are happy to have nuclear power stations in our area or waste stockpiled near us, we really shouldn’t wish it on anyone else. Both Mark and Chris Goodall say the Government is allowing us to slide ever nearer to the point where nuclear or coal are the only two options but even so nuclear power stations would take at least a decade to build.

In that time we should put money and resources instead into the whole raft of renewable options and carbon reducing technologies in the large scale way that Germany is already doing.

I certainly don’t want to leave a toxic and lethal legacy for future generations.

Nuala Young, Green city councillor, Oxford