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Letter to the Irish Examiner |
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Written by Pat Swords
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Thursday, 24 April 2008 |
Chernobyl ‘distortion’ in anti-nuclear argument
LIKE Patrick L O’Brien (Letters, April 5), I have experience working in
the Ukraineon an EU project — in my case for seven months between 2000
and 2003.
During that period I found the level of distortion in the Irish media over Chernobyland its effects to be very disturbing.
For instance, I can recall reading in an Irish newspaper on a plane to
Kiev that 13% of the Ukrainian population was suffering from radiation
illness — a figure equivalent to one-and-a-half times the population of
our Republic. The true figure was that 13% of the 4,000 most active in
the Chernobylclean-up were showing effects of radiation illness.
In the last century this region has experienced two devastating world
wars, a civil war, a famine caused by Stalin that starved between three
and five million people, mismanagement under communism and a corrupt
regime that replaced it. The standard of living is therefore far lower
than what we are accustomed to.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency to dress up this ‘poverty’ and sell it in as part of an anti-nuclear Chernobyl package.
I have no problem with children from the region having a two-week
holiday here in Ireland, but it is wrong to claim this adds an extra
two years to their lives when in fact they receive more radiation on
the plane journey than if they had stayed at home.
Time and time again the public in Irelandare bombarded with anti-nuclear ‘facts’ that are nothing but a distortion of reality.
Adam Douglas (Letters, April 14) claims Mr O’Brien needs a reality check as nuclear is the most expensive delivered energy.
Yet if one consults the most recent green paper on energy from our own
Government one can clearly see how high our cost of electricity is
compared to other EU member states which have lower-cost hydro and
nuclear generation. France, which generates 78% of its electricity from
nuclear, has electricity charges for industry that are slightly more
than half the value here.
In recent years we have seen how our aviation experts were ignored when
it came to the hype over the Y2K bug, how our medical experts were
ignored over the MMR vaccine, how the UN weapon experts were ignored
over weapons of mass destruction.
The Irish Academy of Engineering, in their submission to the green
paper, highlighted that nuclear should be considered and that the
temptation to seek refuge in fanciful ‘solutions’ should be avoided.
Naturally, it was ignored.
Pat Swords
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