Madam, - It was encouraging to read your Editorial of January 3rd, pointing out that lessons have to be learned from Russia's cutting-off of gas supplies to Ukraine. In your own words, this action is "a nuclear option".
The term is apt. Years ago France realised the vulnerability of relying on foreign sources of energy. Today, nearly 80 per cent of its electricity comes from nuclear power. In Ireland we are almost totally dependent on the whims of other countries for our supplies of fuel.
We need to be much more independent as regards our energy supplies. When will we realise that we shall eventually have to take the nuclear option? Now is the time to start planning. - Yours, etc,
DAVID SOWBY, Knocksinna Crescent, Dublin 18.
Madam, - Was it unconscious irony that caused you to place Adi Roche's letter on Chernobyl directly under Wesley Boyd's report of awards by the Plain English Campaign for examples of gobbledegook? Ms Roche asks us to dismiss the public health findings on Chernobyl by international bodies (WHO and IAEA) because they are "asking the wrong questions". So seeking answers to straightforward questions is not to be allowed?
She even lists the questions she would censor, apparently unaware just how revealing these are of her prejudices against hard facts that conflict with her preferred truth: "How many died? How many will die? Is the cancer or illness definitely caused by radiation? Why are you all so healthy?" Significantly, Ms Roche does not counter with a single figure the evidence from these bodies that that the Chernobyl explosion did not cause catastrophic mortality.
Undoubtedly, incredibly brave firefighters sacrificed their lives in containing the nuclear leak. But is the common perception true - that in the surrounding populations, thousands have died of exposure to radiation and that birth deformities have dramatically increased? Do the facts support this view? What if it were not so? Surely this has been comprehensively established by multi-annual public health studies?
That the desperately deprived children of Belarus and Ukraine urgently need care and that Ms Roche's project has carried out admirable work for them, and deserves our continuing support, are undeniable. Even without nuclear accidents, we know that orphanages elsewhere in Eastern Europe were starved of funding, early medical interventions for birth defects were sadly lacking, and these poor children also demand our support. So can we glibly pin all the blame on Chernobyl, and nuclear power generation in general?
Ms Roche's first sentence shows her anti-nuclear motivation for writing, and also her misunderstanding of the primary reason for everyone to reconsider the role of nuclear power generation. It is not primarily about increased oil prices, as she declares; it is much more about security of supply, reducing our dependence on finite energy sources from politically unstable parts of the world, and also crucially about addressing global warming by reducing greenhouse gases. These are valid, indeed compelling, reasons seriously to consider nuclear power as part of the solution to our energy needs.
A guru of the Green movement, James Lovecock (Gaia concept), has now been persuaded by the facts to change his mind and recognise the need for nuclear power in the medium term. Can we hope that an influential opinion former such as Ms Roche can similarly accept facts instead of trying to persuade us to ignore straight answers to challenging but direct questions? - Yours, etc,
HENRY J. COONEY, Holmwood, Cabinteely, Dublin 18.