Nuclear proven to be safe

Neil Overy’s attack on nuclear safety (Important questions of safety the pronuclear lobby dare not ignore, October 17) is not only nonsense but stale nonsense that has been proven wrong for decades.

Nuclear power has by far the best safety record of any energy technology, including coal, gas, hydro, solar and wind, and the least waste problem. In 60 years since it began, accidents in nuclear power have killed in total fewer than 100 people. Accidents in coal, oil, hydro and gas have killed tens of thousands of people.

The effects of long-term exposure to low radiation are well known: there are none. Radiation is utterly natural. The radiation we get from nature is hundreds of times greater than that from nuclear power. The radiation released in the Fukushima accident exposed the public to less than some populations get naturally.

The radiation from Chernobyl, the world’s worst nuclear accident, has killed fewer than 60 people, according to the Chernobyl Forum, the most comprehensive scientific report on the accident. Estimates of future casualties are bad guesses based on the false assumption that slightly elevated radiation does harm. It doesn’t.

All energy technologies, including solar and wind, leave “deadly” toxins that last forever. These include mercury, lead, cadmium and arsenic from coal, solar and wind power. Only nuclear has procedures for managing its waste safely. In China the toxic wastes from the mining of neodymium, used in the generators of some wind turbines, have caused cancer, skin disease and infant abnormalities, and ghastly pollution of the environment. (These wind wastes include thorium, which is radioactive. But since it has a half-life of 14-billion years its radiation is too feeble to worry about.)

Chernobyl was caused primarily by bad reactor design, Fukushima by a disgraceful failure to protect its power supply (for the cooling pumps) from a 14m tsunami. Both are well understood and will not happen again.

Andrew Kenny Sun Valley