More power to us if we choose nuclear option via Irishtimes.com

OPINION: Instead of seeking partners to exploit hoped-for offshore fossil fuel resources, Ireland should consider building some medium-sized nuclear plants, writes JOHN GIBBONS

LAST MARCH, shortly after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Fintan O’Toole memorably described a nuclear power station as “a concrete testament to hubris”. The term, he reminded us, came from the ancient Greek, and is a “warning that there are boundaries we should not cross”.

The damage to the nuclear power plants resulting from a massive earthquake followed by a mega-tsunami apparently proved not the mistake of siting these facilities in a vulnerable coastal location, but rather, the folly of building any system that can ever fail catastrophically.

In December 2009, on the eve of the ill-starred Copenhagen climate change conference, O’Toole wrote passionately about the choices we make with values, alluding clearly to the threat to “the future of humanity through climate change [and] . . . finite nature of many of the physical resources it consumes”.

Who could disagree with either of these propositions? First, never engineer systems that can destroy us, and second, accept that human existence itself hangs on the whim of a functioning biosphere.

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