Let’s look at the nuclear option, but spare us the scientific snobbery

OF all the snobberies, scientific has to be the most infuriating.

From the IT expert who asks if you’re sure the computer is plugged in, to the car mechanic who claims such a defect could never have occurred under best driving practice, their message is crucifyingly clear: “You have no idea how this thing works, which puts you completely at my mercy, and I’m not going to entertain your inane questions, ignorant observations or fanciful fears”.

Sadly, we’ve already had a taste of this in what are only the very early days of the inevitable debate over nuclear power in Ireland. Dr Ed Walsh, a founder of the University of Limerick, was doing all right on this touchy subject, up to a point.

A supporter of nuclear power as an answer to national energy requirements, he spoke up, argued articulately and ensured air time for an issue that is not so much an elephant in the sitting room as a giant woolly mammoth on the sofa.

But then he went on RTÉ’s Prime Time and turned on Green Party TD Eamon Ryan. “Are you scientifically literate?”, he demanded of Ryan who had been giving a convincing presentation from the anti-nuclear stance.

The non-scientific Ryan was stopped in his tracks for a second or two and although he recovered well, pointing out that he was a politician and policymaker — which gives him both the right and responsibility to contribute to the discussion — trumpets of triumph could almost be heard blasting from the virtual science lab that was Dr Walsh’s corner.

But this was no victory for scientific debate. It was a cheap put-down that stinks of snobbery.

It’s hard to believe that Dr Walsh meant it as harshly as it sounded. If his reasoning was applied to its logical conclusions, no one would be entitled to discuss religion unless they had spent seven years in a seminary studying theology.

Football stadiums would be empty because no one would be allowed support one side or the other unless they had played, won and suffered hamstring injuries in the appropriate colours.

The lecture halls and tutorial rooms of the University of Limerick would be deathly quiet because no student would be considered worthy to question or challenge until graduation day. As an educator himself, that is presumably not Dr Walsh’s vision of the learning process.

But it is probably a foretaste of what’s to come in the debate around nuclear power when the first item on the agenda will be who gets to join the exclusive club where opinions may be voiced.

Here’s a suggested ground rule: the only people not entitled to speak on the subject are those who refuse to listen to the views of others.

Admittedly, that’s going to be a painful process for the proponents of nuclear power. They must have ground their teeth flat when Bertie Ahern remarked last week that if a national poll were taken, the majority would be opposed to the nuclear option.

So now we have imaginary polls dictating the stance of a Taoiseach who has no scientific background. What next, the boffins might ask. Will he be consulting the tea leaves at the bottom of his mug?

Anecdotally (more teeth grinding), the likelihood is that Bertie is right. The generation who grew up with Hiroshima gave birth to the generation who grew up with Three Mile Island who gave birth to the generation who are growing up with the legacy of Chernobyl. Nuclear science has an image problem, and public trust is thin on the ground.

Scientists say Chernobyl could never happen again because apparently the Russians used a flawed design and skimped on safety features. But to presume that we would do any better is just another form of snobbery.

The Russians were putting men into space before we had a national television service.

What have we done to prove our superior technological ability? Built a port tunnel with too low a ceiling, an aquatic centre with too flimsy a roof, a tram network that doesn’t network, e-voting, PPARS.

Let’s not even get started on the roll-out of broadband or the lack thereof. In fact, don’t even get hi-tech — just go to your local Tesco and count the number of self-service checkouts actually functioning.

In all these cases, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with the science. It’s the appliance of science that causes trouble because that’s a job for humans — and humans are flawed, fickle and prone to failure.

THE idea that suddenly we will morph into a shining example of infallibility just because the science is nuclear is wishful thinking.

We all know the people who would run our nuclear power plants. They aren’t the Ed Walshs of the world. They are Larry the layabout who does the bare minimum to qualify for his pay slip, Eithne the eternally in love who gets distracted by every fleeting fling, Fergus the football fanatic who is perpetually toasting his team’s victory or drowning the sorrows of their defeats.

They will have off-days, low concentration days, high irritability days, bad judgement days, hate-your-job days, hate-your- life days. Everybody does. Nuclear power plant workers will be no different.

If they do make mistakes, we’ll be relying on systems and safeguards to compensate for their neglect — systems and safeguards that have failed elsewhere.

If there was another failure, we are now told, the consequences would be nothing as apocalyptic as Chernobyl at first seemed because the revisionist scientific view of Chernobyl is that it really didn’t do much harm at all.

Anecdotally, in Bertiescience, the public have a problem with that. It was scientists — chemical, medical, agricultural, environmental — who had us believing that Chernobyl was a disaster beyond compare and beyond repair in the first place. It does nothing to build up public trust when scientists start changing their mind. All it does is make it harder for the pro-nuclear lobby to use science to fight their corner.

Dr Walsh is right to be provocative. Regardless of what Bertie says, or Dick Roche or Noel Dempsey, nuclear needs to be on the agenda for discussion.

We are heading for an energy crisis and preparing policy papers on renewable energy that will kick in slowly and restrictively over the next 15 years, as is the current Government plan, sounds very much like avoidance tactics in the run-up to a general election.

When industry starts hollering that energy costs are putting them out of business and that a return to pre-boom days looms, whichever government is in power will react and fast, and nuclear power will be on the agenda.

When that time comes, we’re going to need to know where we stand on it and to know that, we’re going to need to understand what it has to offer, what it will cost, what the estimable dangers are and what the alternatives are.

A truly public discussion around the issue would at times be noisy, excitable, irrational and not at all scientific because that’s how we are as people. The likes of Ed Walsh can get the debate going, but they can also kill it stone dead before it has time to breathe.

You can lecture and you can educate — they’re two different approaches — but either way, if you exclude most of the classroom from the start, there’ll be hardly anybody around to hear your views.