A group set up in support of the barrage proposal are making a host of misleading and exaggerated claims. They repeat the spurious claims from developers that a barrage is designed to provide flood defence and the amazing idea that the turbines would be so benign that not only can salmon pass through unharmed but also that a man can too!
Research has shown that up to 15 % of small salmon ‘smoults’ returning to the sea are killed by these sort of turbines. What chance would adult breeding salmon have as they are swept up and down the estuary by the tides, having to face the grinding turbines more than once.
If their claims are true, then send me through the turbines! Let’s see if the whirring blades of high pressure turbines will leave me alive let alone unscathed. I’ll see you on the other side.
Barrages are not ‘green energy’ and the claims for them continue to be exaggerated whilst ignoring scientific research from around the world.
1 comment so far
your right, I’m doing an EIA on the proposed barrage for my dissertation. 40% of adult salmon and 53% of eels are likely to be killed on a single passage, and most have to pass through at least twice. Fish can be killed by decapitation, pressure changes causing gas filled spaces to expand causing eye popping and cavitation causing particles from the propeller blades to turn the fish into pulp. I wouldn’t like to be sent through the turbines if a fish can’t make it!
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