Nuclear Power is Not the Solution

This was the view that greeted British Prime Minister Tony Blair when he arrived at a conference centre in London last week to announce the re-opening of the debate on Nuclear Energy. The daredevil Greenpeace protesters, dangling from the roof, dropped flyers and demanded to be allowed speak at the event in return for ending their protest. They were refused and of course arrested.

Blair gave the speech in an adjoining room making his case for a re-evaluation of the nuclear option. The argument goes as follows: though nuclear power is costly, oil and gas are getting more and more expensive, supplies are dwindling, and reserves are in unstable parts of the world; nuclear power is a secure source of energy for Britain that won't produce the carbon emissions like fossil fuels and so won't contribute to global warming.

It sounds like the perfect solution but we've been down this road before. In the 1950s civil nuclear technology was heralded as an endless, cheap and safe supply of power. It turned out to produce waste that's almost endlessly radioactive, it's not cheap, and as the accidents at Three-Mile-Island and, more disastrously, Chernobyl proved nuclear power can be far from safe. Add to this the recognised problem of increased rates of cancer among those who live near nuclear plants and the modern threat of terrorist attacks on such institutions, and the nuclear option seems to be less of a panacea for dealing with the current energy crisis than Tony Blair would like to say it is.

These proposed new power plants would be located on current nuclear sites so as to encounter less obstacles in the planning process. This would be of major concern to people in Ireland as the Sellafield nuclear power and reprocessing plant in Cumbria has long been blamed for making the Irish Sea the most radioactive in the world. Waste from the plant- admittedly of lower radioactive content than previously - pumped into the sea, has been linked to cancer in the north-east of the country and there has long been a campaign to have the facility closed down. Indeed it was due to be shut in 2010. This date looks unlikely if Britain pursues a renewed nuclear program as the site would surely be pick for one of the new power plants.

What astounds me is not only the disregard for human health in the UK and indeed Ireland that this idea represents, but also the brushing aside of other forms of energy generation to take over from fossil fuel. The atrocious weather in this part of the world rules out solar power as a viable option to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power. However that same weather gives us (as I've said before) truly endless potential for energy generation should we stump up the cash for expensive and ugly wind turbines instead of expensive, ugly and possibly lethal nuclear power plants.

While Blair says he only wants a debate on nuclear energy his speech was clearly a U-turn from the view his government held on the issue just a couple of years ago when nuclear power was ruled out. It is a lazy, short-sighted and reckless idea that must be fervently opposed not only in Britain but in Ireland as well.