Chernobyl ‘distortion’ in anti-nuclear argument

LIKE Patrick L O’Brien (Letters, April 5), I have experience working in the Ukraine on an EU project — in my case for seven months between 2000 and 2003.

During that period I found the level of distortion in the Irish media over Chernobyl and its effects to be very disturbing.

For instance, I can recall reading in an Irish newspaper on a plane to Kiev that 13% of the Ukrainian population was suffering from radiation illness — a figure equivalent to one-and-a-half times the population of our Republic. The true figure was that 13% of the 4,000 most active in the Chernobyl clean-up were showing effects of radiation illness.

In the last century this region has experienced two devastating world wars, a civil war, a famine caused by Stalin that starved between three and five million people, mismanagement under communism and a corrupt regime that replaced it. The standard of living is therefore far lower than what we are accustomed to.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency to dress up this ‘poverty’ and sell it in as part of an anti-nuclear Chernobyl package.

I have no problem with children from the region having a two-week holiday here in Ireland, but it is wrong to claim this adds an extra two years to their lives when in fact they receive more radiation on the plane journey than if they had stayed at home.

Time and time again the public in Ireland are bombarded with anti-nuclear ‘facts’ that are nothing but a distortion of reality.

Adam Douglas (Letters, April 14) claims Mr O’Brien needs a reality check as nuclear is the most expensive delivered energy.

Yet if one consults the most recent green paper on energy from our own Government one can clearly see how high our cost of electricity is compared to other EU member states which have lower-cost hydro and nuclear generation. France, which generates 78% of its electricity from nuclear, has electricity charges for industry that are slightly more than half the value here.

In recent years we have seen how our aviation experts were ignored when it came to the hype over the Y2K bug, how our medical experts were ignored over the MMR vaccine, how the UN weapon experts were ignored over weapons of mass destruction.

The Irish Academy of Engineering, in their submission to the green paper, highlighted that nuclear should be considered and that the temptation to seek refuge in fanciful ‘solutions’ should be avoided.

Naturally, it was ignored.

Pat Swords

Hillcourt Road

Glenageary

Co Dublin