Your editorial (December 12) hit the nail on the head. The Nationalists are being more than a little disingenuous when they say we "no longer need" nuclear energy and downright hypocritical to then "welcome" the good news that the life of Hunterston B nuclear power station is to be extended by five years.

The Nationalists remain in denial about the need for nuclear power because they are driven by populists who think (wrongly) that Scots reject the arguments for replacing our ageing nuclear plants with their modern, more efficient less waste-producing successors. In fact, we need to replace our nuclear capacity with new plant if we are not to move from being an electricity exporting country to one that imports, including that produced from nuclear power, from the rest of the UK. We also need nuclear energy if we are to secure our supply and not be dependent on imported gas, and keep pensioners and others on fixed incomes warm in winter at affordable prices.

Just as importantly, the Nationalists need nuclear if they are to have any hope whatsoever of meeting their carbon reduction target of a year on year decrease of 3%.

Hence the hypocrisy. The SNP needs nuclear power and it knows it. But, as with a range of other subjects from class sizes, to police on the beat to student debt, it specialises in saying one thing in opposition but doing another in power. The SNP has no long-term strategy to meet our energy needs. And, as yesterday's report reminded us, it has no idea how to address the issue of fuel poverty. That's why the SNP constantly spins that it is someone else's responsibility and refuses to challenge the practices and tariffs of Scotland's major energy suppliers whose interests apparently take precedence over ordinary Scots and their environment.

Allan Wilson, 44 Stoneyholm Road, Kilbirnie, Ayrshire.

Let us put the extra five-year extension to the life of Hunterston power station to good use. Use the time to build and extend the hydrogen manufacturing and storage schemes, such as the one proposed for the Kilbirnie area in North Ayrshire. This scheme is linked to the wind farms in the area and would use surplus power from the wind turbines to make hydrogen. This gas, in turn, would be used to generate electricity when the wind conditions were poor.

It should even receive the backing of the green lobby as we shift from dirty oil-powered vehicles to carbon- free hydrogen and electric-powered ones. This would also generate jobs as Scotland can be in the forefront of this new way to heat our homes and "clean power" our transport. Finally, it would cut our reliance on foreign oil supplies.

Steve McIntosh.

16 Quarrelton Grove, Johnstone.

Your correspondent Helen McDade (Letters, December 11) is right when she says 7000 wind turbines won't reduce emissions. The only way wind farms can reduce emissions from electricity generation, which is only responsible for about 25% of all emissions, is for it to displace fossil generation. Wind, being intermittent, variable and unpredictable, and power stations, being unable rapidly to adjust output, create a situation in which wind farms cannot displace fossil generation and, therefore, cannot reduce CO2 emissions.

A stable public electricity supply will only continue if wind-generated electricity is backed up by conventional generation. The claim of supplying X households is nonsense and the use of the word "supply" is inaccurate when used in connection with wind-generated electricity.

Nick Dekker (also December 11) mentions the consumer subsidy of ROCs. This is what makes wind-farm construction so profitable. A recent Public Accounts Committee report said: "Taxpayers will be subsidising wind farms by £6.5bn by 2010" and "the bill for renewable sources of energy will soar after that".

Wind-generated electricity is neither clean nor free.

A R Nelson, 5 Scarletmuir, Lanark.