World takes the nuclear option while we turn our faces to the wind

THE world is going nuclear, but not Ireland. As many as 40 countries are making preparations dramatically to reduce their fossil fuel dependency by introducing or greatly increasing their nuclear power generating capacity. They are doing so for two reasons: the finite capacity of oil reserves and the impact of burning fossil fuels on the production of carbon emissions which, in turn, increase global warming.

Nuclear is their answer and that’s even in countries with massive oil reserves or which are less wealthy than us. Russia, for example, plans to build 42 new domestic nuclear reactors between now and 2030. China intends to increase its nuclear capacity fivefold by 2020 and then triple that again by 2030. Famously, Iran, with its vast oil reserves, wants to build its own nuclear domestic power generation plants.

The world has 438 nuclear power plants as it is, but that number is set to multiply, with the US planning to add 35 more.

Close to home our nearest neighbours, the British and French, have big ideas for nuclear expansion. This week they announced co-operation on the development of new nuclear technology.

The British government has already announced its approval for the construction of a new generation of nuclear power stations to replace the existing 23 plants that are due to close before 2020 and which produce 20% of that country’s energy as it is.

Now it wants to go further. Britain’s business minister John Hutton said this week they should build even more plants to produce “a significantly higher proportion” of its energy needs.

Hutton wants Britain to become a world leader in the development of nuclear power technology and to use private sector finance to do so. He believes that replacing the existing reactors would be equivalent to investing three times the size of the project to build Terminal 5 at Heathrow, but that it could be worth £20 billion to the British economy and could create 100,000 jobs. He claims Britain has the potential to become “the gateway to a new nuclear renaissance across Europe”.

Many climate change worriers are in agreement: nuclear provides no carbon emissions and therefore contributes nothing to global warming (even though disposing of spent uranium poses a different environmental challenge). While oil is a declining resource there is plenty of uranium, especially in the democratic strongholds of Canada and Australia.

Yet Ireland will not be going nuclear. It would be illegal to build a nuclear facility in Ireland because of a law enacted in 1999. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has set his face against nuclear on “environmental and economic” grounds. Energy minister Eamon Ryan has called for a debate but only because he is certain he would win it.

Ryan’s argument is that the country is too small for a nuclear plant, that it would produce too much power. If you point out that the surplus could be exported via an interconnector he argues you cannot become reliant on one source of power and we would need a back-up should it go out of commission.

But it would be possible to buy temporary replacement energy via an interconnector and the technology is improving so much that smaller facilities are likely in the near future.

Irish people tend to recoil when they hear the word “nuclear”, conditioned by a combination of Adi Roche and Homer Simpson to believe nuclear is a massive danger to life and limb, even though much of the modern scientific evidence refutes that.

Roche has been a wonderful campaigner for the children of Chernobyl, but an official UN report a few years ago claimed only 55 people died directly as a result of the Chernobyl explosion. The figure is expected to rise to 4,000 by the end of the century. As many people will die on Irish roads in a decade, but nobody talks of banning cars.

Chernobyl was also a Soviet-era installation that would never have been licensed by the industry to operate alongside the 350 nuclear plants that operate safely in the west. There are 59 in France and plants are also dotted throughout Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Finland and Holland, for example. Do Irish people run away from visiting those countries for fear of accident? Would anyone like to argue that they have noticeably lower environmental standards than we implement?

Nuclear has its dangers and when things go wrong, they go spectacularly wrong. But the fear of something going wrong, and the amount of money invested, tends to act as a protection and the level of care involved is enormous. A Homer Simpson approach to running a nuclear facility would not be tolerated.

Admittedly, many would worry that the construction or operation of nuclear plants would not be done properly. Our record in the building of major infrastructure projects, especially those on behalf of the State, is not inspiring.

Late and over-budget is bad enough, but standards of finish would be of most concern. Just think of the leaking roof at the National Aquatic Centre and the leaks in the Dublin port tunnel. Water leaks in such facilities are one thing, but leaks from a nuclear reactor could be deadly. Who would want to risk that? And given our record of opposing controversial projects on spurious health and safety grounds — think of the opposition to modern clean incinerators that work everywhere else in Europe and the attempts to stop the Corrib gas from coming on-shore — the chances of getting any locality to accept a nuclear plant would be extremely small.

But we have to face up to our needs.

Unfortunately, Ireland is very badly placed to cope with more expensive and harder-to-get oil.

I HAVE quoted some of these statistics on these pages before, but they are worth repeating: oil makes up about two-thirds of our overall energy consumption, which is more than 20 points higher than the EU average.

Our oil consumption doubled between 1990 and 2004 and our use of oil for transport has more than trebled over 30 years because of all the new cars and trucks on the roads.

Add in gas and coal and our fossil fuel use makes up more than 90% of our energy requirements. Imagine if our oil supplies got cut off. We would be goosed.

It’s bad enough that we have no control over their prices. Our Government claims to be dealing with this by encouraging conservation — thereby reducing use — and by funding research into alternative and renewable supplies. The intention is good — and with Ryan in place as Energy Minister and his colleague John Gormley in Environment, something is being done — but the efforts are limited and massively under-resourced.

In any case, it is very doubtful that our conservation efforts — while undoubtedly needed even if we had a domestically produced nuclear supply as well — will be sufficient or possible to enforce without doing economic damage and prompting a public backlash.

And while the idea of generating alternative power supplies from wind and wave is attractive, it has limited feasibility. Making biofuels to replace petrol in cars is not necessarily economically or socially desirable either. Yet we persist in not even discussing the potential for nuclear.

The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.