“CAUGHT out again” was this magazine’s verdict on the recent volcanic eruption near the town of Goma in the Congo (2 February, p 3). Geologists knew it was gearing up for something nasty, but they were still surprised when the lava began to flow. I fear that next time the headline could be “Caught out yet again”. However, Hilary Benn, the junior minister for international development, gives me some grounds for hope that the science of volcanic prediction is about to sharpen up.
Benn says the Department for International Development (DFID) has doubts about traditional approaches to volcano monitoring. Although data from seismographs can be helpful, it doesn’t tell us exactly when an eruption will happen. And the DFID funds seismographic monitoring only on the island of Montserrat, via the British Geological Survey. Over the three-year period up to this summer, this have will cost the DFID £2.66 million. A new £1.2 million volcano observatory should greatly reduce monitoring costs when it becomes operational.
Elsewhere, the DFID is tackling geohazards mainly through developing low-cost improvements to planning and policy, rather than installing expensive equipment. Its programme for infrastructure and urban development research, for example, funds studies into ways of incorporating better hazard-avoidance strategies within development planning.
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One recently approved research project will look at using data from weather satellites to analyse the temperature of volcanoes. The aim is to develop an inexpensive system for sounding the alarm before eruptions. The project builds on similar work in North America, and the aim is to test the low-cost technique in developing countries. If successful, Benn says it could be integrated into their emergency planning systems.
To respond effectively to natural emergencies, governments need to make sure that such prediction and monitoring are a part of overall strategy. Also vital are community awareness and plans for evacuation, emergency shelters and reconstruction. So the cost of monitoring apparatus is only part of the overall cost of establishing and maintaining a strategy for coping with natural disasters, says the minister.
Certainly, doing something about volcanoes might earn Britain some much-needed goodwill in the world—something that it’s not getting by being party to bombing or sending troops to Iraq or Afghanistan. MARTIN O’NEILL and his fellow MPs on the Trade and Industry Select Committee should be congratulated on their report, The Security of Energy Supplies, published in February. Surely the government should now do what the committee asks: “make a clear statement on the future of nuclear energy as soon as possible”.
O’Neill accepts the need for possible government intervention in the market to ensure that Britain meets targets both for the environment and for long-term security of supplies—including continued coal-fired generation. To its credit, the select committee has faced up to the fact that energy prices may have to rise to meet the costs of a diversity of energy supply in the short and medium term. The committee is clearly aware of the potential dangers of relying too heavily in the long term on supplies of natural gas from the former Soviet Union.
What is now dawning on the majority of MPs is that the nuclear option actually offers the best low-cost approach to securing our energy supply and combating environmental threats such as carbon dioxide emissions. But those who, like myself, are stridently pro-nuclear, would do well to be tactful and admit the truth—that coal and renewables have their place alongside gas and nuclear.
