28/06/2011

Available for over a year

Building a nuclear power station is a big and expensive business. Yet we have been running nuclear ships and submarines on small nuclear power plants for decades. Would it not be cheaper, easier and safer to build many small scale nuclear power stations rather than the big ones currently under consideration by the UK Government. Also, ecologists are putting a monetary value on nature in order to persuade our money driven economies to preserve them. But is this really a constructive way to conserve nature or is it just another way of pandering to our selfish view that the world is there to serve us. Why does one blue tit spend twenty minutes inside a bat box each night and what was it that prompted a midnight blackbird serenade. Answering these and other questions this week are Yvonne Rydin, Professor Planning at University College London, Conservationist Derek Moore and Professor Philip Stott, an environmental scientist from the University of London. Presenter: Richard Daniel Producer: Toby Murcott A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.