Let’s get real about nuclear option

WELL done to Patrick O’Brien (Letters, April 5) for clearly stating the compelling case to consider nuclear power for Ireland.

We face two major problems — global warming and peak oil and gas — which leave us with very few options for our future energy supply. Remember we are currently 90% dependent on imported fossil fuels which will become scarcer and therefore more expensive.

There is a place for renewable energy, such as wind power, but it does not supply the steady, reliable electricity that nuclear power can provide: wind power electricity has a load factor of about 30% whereas nuclear electricity has about 85%.

It has been shown (Royal Academy of Engineering) that nuclear electricity costs about half the price of onshore wind electricity and about one-third the cost of offshore-generated electricity. There certainly is a renaissance in nuclear power: there are currently 439 nuclear power reactors in the world with 35 under construction and 319 planned or proposed.

Ukraine, where the Chernobyl accident occurred, has 15 reactors, with plans for another two while proposing 20 more. Finland, an environmentally friendly country, has four reactors and is building a fifth with proposals for a sixth. However, we in Ireland, partly because of misguided information from the likes of Adi Roche and Adam Douglas (Letters, April 14) continue to bury our heads in the sand and will suffer the economic consequence of very expensive electricity.

The Chernobyl accident, which occurred when an unauthorised experiment was taking place on a poorly-designed reactor with no containment vessel, resulted in 55 deaths and maybe 4,000 extra cancers which will probably be undetectable against the normal 23% incidence (Chernobyl Forum Report). They also reported no extra birth defects attributable to the accident.

It should also be noted that the USA, which operates 104 reactors, has not had a single death associated with them.

When we have an accident we do not stop using the technology, but strive to learn from our mistakes and improve the technology. For example, about 5,000 coal miners are killed in China each year and, in 1979, a hydroelectricity dam collapsed in India killing 2,500 people: but we do not stop using coal or hydroelectricity.

I would have no problems living beside a nuclear power plant but would hesitate to live beside a coal-fired plant, with its huge polluting emissions. Coal is an option we will continue to use as oil and gas decline. Let us get real and have a proper debate on nuclear power.

Philip W Walton

Emeritus Professor

of Applied Physics

NUI Galway