Sir, – Your distinguished columnist William Reville comes out strongly in favour of small modular reactors, much hyped by the nuclear industry worldwide but without any evidence that they will succeed (“Ireland needs to bite the bullet on nuclear energy”, Science, October 6th). None are commercially available and development is decades away. The cost of the electricity they will produce is entirely theoretical and again the low estimate of costs is entirely that of a biased nuclear industry.
By comparison, Ireland has fantastic opportunities to produce renewable energy, especially onshore and offshore wind, solar and tidal power. Both wind and solar are far cheaper than nuclear will be in any form and are proven technology that can be installed now. Any peaks and troughs in availability can be solved by battery and other storage methods. Ireland could even export renewable energy within a few years, helping the economy enormously. – Yours, etc,
PAUL BROWN,
(Former environment
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correspondent,
The Guardian),
London.
