An option that isn’t worth considering

I’M afraid Patrick L O’Brien needs a reality check if he believes nuclear power is the future (Letters, April 5).

He states that “worldwide there is a revival in the nuclear industry”, yet unit closures continue to far outpace new operations. He then claims this revival is “for cost and environmental reasons”, yet, according to most international cost assessments, nuclear power generates the most expensive delivered energy — the dependence on state subsidies is never factored in by the nuclear lobby.

As for the environmental question, the nuclear system generates large amounts of waste at each step, from the uranium mine to plutonium separation, and no solution for safe storage has yet materialised.