Madam, - The response by the Finnish ambassador (July 3rd) to the anti-nuclear piece by Oisin Coghlan of Friends of the Earth (Head 2 Head, June 25th) was a refreshing contribution. It helps to dispel at least some of the myths and correct some of the wrong assumptions surrounding nuclear power. There were many others contained in Mr Coghlan's piece that need to be addressed also.
One of the first of these is his assumption that nuclear power offers no solution for transport, nor for heating. If that is the case, neither wind nor wave power offer solutions either. But anti-nuclear campaigners often lose sight of the obvious: the DART and Luas run on electricity.
Future generations of road vehicles are likely to be electric, the Metro will be electric, and electricity is essential to power heat-pumps, night-storage heaters, etc. As the prices of oil and gas go up, and supplies go down, there will be a massive increase in demand for economical alternatives.
It has often wrongly been said that nuclear energy is too expensive, and Mr Coghlan makes the same claim. Why, then, are electricity charges in France so much lower than the EU average, when 78 per cent of France's electricity comes from nuclear plants? As Jerry Shanahan pointed out in the same debate, nuclear-generated electricity costs €4 to €8 per megawatt hour, coal costs €13 to €26, and gas €19 to €42. In any case the answer to this objection surely is - as in Finland - to let industry take up the opportunity, or not. It has always been implicit in the Irish nuclear debate that a nuclear station must be a public investment.
Mr Coghlan is right to support energy conservation, of course, but the energy problem cannot be conserved away. He points out that energy demand can be reduced by 20 per cent by 2020, but how is the remaining 80 per cent to be found? While Ireland has wind and wave energy potential, there are severe limits to what these sources can provide. Because of its intermittency, wind power is very difficult to manage. As for wave power, this has been researched for more than 30 years with very little to show for it. The energy crisis is almost upon us, and it is too late to entrust our energy future even to promising technologies, let alone unproven concepts. - Yours, etc,
JOHN STAFFORD, Dargle Wood, Knocklyon, Dublin 16.