Names that are synonymous with nuclear failure

Sir, – Ann Baily (Letters, January 14th), like a number of other recent letter writers, advances the environmental and economic case for the use of nuclear energy in Ireland.

To do this she references a booklet, Nuclear Energy in Ireland – Preliminary Study. It considers in great detail the many aspects of Ireland “going nuclear”. Significantly the study fails to mention, even once, names that are synonymous with nuclear failure – Windscale and Sellafield, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. The word “accident” is only used three times in the 42-page study and one of those is with regard to how “. . . Ireland can respond quickly to any major accident at an overseas nuclear installation”.

Those who describe the safety of modern nuclear power, and the wonder of small modular reactors, are in reality hiding behind science. They deliberately ignore the messiness of life – the human mistakes, the wars, the unforseen natural disasters.

I trust the science behind nuclear power. It’s the unpredictably of life that I worry about. – Yours, etc,