This won’t be a long read.

The JCFJ has been consistently opposed to nuclear power in Ireland and even though the government is now proposing to change the law around this technology, our position hasn’t changed. 

When the Taoiseach spoke in support of James O’Connor’s bill, he noted that “fossil fuels have done extremely serious damage to the world.” I would encourage him to consider the impact nuclear fission has had.

It is fashionable in some quarters to imply that opposition to nuclear power is a form of empty-brained ludditism. It remains essential always and everywhere to remind people that the Luddites were in fact a fascinating revolutionary movement dedicated towards honouring human dignity. But the JCFJ is not instinctively opposed to technology. We just prefer better technologies to worse ones.

Why would we build nuclear when the combination of solar, wind, and improved batteries will meet our needs?

Across the world, we face a stubborn political problem not with anti-tech movements but tech boosterism. This week we saw one Irish commentator speculate that in the future, nuclear power stations will be so small and efficient, they will fit on the back of trucks. We would like to sell that man some real estate on Mars.

Even if the technology wasn’t problematic, it is unlikely that Ireland could get a nuclear power station built before 2066. We have solar panels on about 175,000 Irish homes. What about using the technology we have to increase that rapidly to every suitable house? Would that not be a more solid and immediate investment of our resources?

But one cannot emphasise enough how the technology isn’t just problematic. It too is largely fantasy. The excitement in Irish discourse is around what is called Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs). These are meant to be a gamechanger for nuclear power. They have been just about to transform the terrain now for almost a generation. But it remains the case that Small Modular Nuclear Reactors largely exist in labs and on blueprints. They are not yet on the back of trucks. They are barely even in active operation.

If that changes in the decade ahead and the technology matures, then the JCFJ would welcome a forthright conversation about whether they are needed. Until such a time discussion is a waste of valuable time and is an unserious contribution to how we face the deepening climate crisis.

But as it stands, SMRs are largely hypothetical, systematically fail to deliver the economy of scale that makes traditional nuclear power so attractive, and have no clear price tag. And that is a key factor to remember here. There is a vast amount of money involved in these builds. Conservative estimates put the cost of the Hinkley C power plant in England at £30 billion (and arriving years late). As we can testify from attending global COP meetings, there is always going to be money available for anyone who wants to lobby and advocate for nuclear power.

James O’Connor is a TD in Cork East. We presume that that is where he wants to build a nuclear power station. Since Irish people agitate to oppose cycle paths, bus lanes, and schools for kids with disabilities, it really does seem remarkable to us that the so-called hard-nosed realists who want to embrace this technology never seem to engage the democratic reality of getting planning permission for it. Even if you were a fully paid-up member of the Nuclear Booster gang, how is this a feasible development?

And there remains the great unstated question that surrounds all nuclear power. What do we intend to do with the waste? Because of the pressing challenge of climate collapse, it matters that nuclear power does not emit carbon. But in the broader picture of environmental devastation, it is crucial that we attend to waste emissions generally. And there is still no viable way to deal with the waste from nuclear power generation. Finland has been most serious in dealing with this issue and it took them 20 years to build and cost them a billion euros. That “This place is not a place of honour” could become a slogan indelibly associated with the Onkalo facility should give us pause for thought.

In summary: Nuclear power plants are always more expensive than they say they’ll be. They are never as reliable as they say they’ll be. They never deliver electricity as cheaply as they say they will. The new technology is largely imagined technology. No one wants it near their house. And even if all these challenges could be surmounted, the price and effectiveness of renewables continue to collapse.

Oh, and also, where are you putting the waste?