Sir, – In the last six months or so, there have been many letters published on these pages advocating from various directions for the development of nuclear fission power plants in Ireland. The fact that such developments generate epoch-lasting waste which we have no way of processing or securing is not discussed. The fact that such developments would require importing an expensive non-renewable resource is not discussed. The fact that such developments would be opposed in any region where they are proposed is not discussed. The fact that such developments would be illegal has been discussed, but only to suggest that we can get around that by deleting the offending lines from our democratically passed acts. And the fact that such developments would cut against the global trend, which has seen the amount of electricity produced from nuclear sources more than halve since the 1990s is not discussed.
Discussions proposing nuclear power as an environmentally friendly option repeat this pattern of meandering around unspeakable complications. Few of us have a grasp of the engineering feats that may unfold within small reactors, but we do have a sense of what the words Fukushima and Chernobyl have come to mean. – Is mise,
KEVIN HARGADEN,
Jesuit Centre
for Faith and Justice,
Dublin 1.