Madam, - Dr Peter Sutherland, economic commentator David McWilliams, and more recently your correspondents Phillip W. Walton and Frank Turvey are among those promoting the cause of new nuclear reactors for electricity production. Tony Blair's government, advised by an extremely pro-nuclear chief scientist, Sir David King, appears already to have decided to build 13 new civil reactors and revamp the Trident nuclear missile arsenal.
Nuclear reactions are the only single activity in history to have put life on earth in jeopardy. Most of us are aware of the potentially fatal toxicity of plutonium and other radioactive materials produced by fission. Nuclear reactors add to the ever growing stockpiles of nuclear waste and it is not good enough to say that these can be dealt with by deep burial. The reality is that nobody anywhere has a solution for the problem of nuclear waste.
Clean-up costs are rarely if ever included in the balance sheets of nuclear companies. The current nuclear clean-up allocation in the UK is about £50 billion, well exceeding Ireland's annual capital and current spending estimates. No nuclear plant that I know of is insured to any significant degree against public harm from a nuclear incident and no self-respecting insurer would provide such cover.
While it is true that oil production is moving into its declining decades and carbon emissions are too high, these facts do not justify an activity that will only create greater problems in the long term. The real surely lies in the noble arts of research, development and inventiveness. In the meantime we must diligently assume collective responsibility for the large quantities of existing nuclear waste. - Yours, etc,
NEIL PATRICK McCANN, Larch Hill, Delgany, Co Wicklow.