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The ESB has told an Oireachtas committee that nuclear power is not needed in Ireland for the foreseeable future. Fluctuating oil prices and climate change have led to calls for a debate on nuclear energy as a way to end Ireland's dependence on fossil fuels. However, ESB chief executive Padraig McManus told the Oireachtas committee on energy and natural resources today that Ireland could comfortably meet its energy demands if clean-coal technology and inter-connection with other countries is implemented successfully. He said nuclear power was unlikely to be on the agenda for at least another 25 years.

A NUCLEAR disaster in Ireland would kill up to 350 people, an assessment warned in 1978 as plans were discussed for a Co. Wexford plant. A decade before the Chernobyl disaster devastated parts of the Ukraine, the Irish assessment estimated the number of deaths that could result from a major nuclear accident here, according to State papers released last week under the 30-year rule.

It's being claimed levels of radioactive contamination in the Irish Sea pose no danger to human health. Senior Government Scientist Dr Paul McKenna has been responding to concerns over the latest official data from radioactivity monitoring. The Celtic League has highlighted that levels of Technetium 99 in Manx lobsters are higher than those found in seaweed in Ireland.

Professor Emeritus John C. Ringle ("U.S. would benefit from nuclear power, "Opinion, Aug. 21) asserts, "France, Great Britain, Japan and Russia derive great benefit from reprocessing, " and concludes, "We [The US] should be doing the same." Advertisement I write from London, England. I cannot speak for France, Japan or Russia, but can enlighten your readers that the chemical separation of plutonium from uranium and fission products in irradiated nuclear fuel through the process called nuclear reprocessing has not proved a great benefit to Britain. It has resulted in significant radiological pollution of the Irish Sea, angering our neighbors, Ireland, for several decades, as well as Nordic neighbors, Norway, concerned over radiological pollution of their pristine fishing waters.

In 2005 two 11-year-old girls from Belarus came to stay in rural Ireland with Philip Watson, as part of a scheme that runs recuperative breaks for children affected by the fallout from Chernobyl. Three years on, Watson tracked them down to see if their lives had changed It's four o'clock on a fine spring afternoon and my girlfriend, Jacqueline, and I have driven for five hours to meet two 14-year-old girls. We are on the other side of Europe, in remote, secretive Belarus, a country ruled by such an authoritarian, old-style Soviet president that it has been described by the US administration as the continent's 'last dictatorship' and only remaining 'outpost of tyranny'.

Councils in the North are being asked by the British government to take in nuclear waste. London has said that any council agreeing to bury nuclear waste would benefit economically and has invited councils for exploratory talks.

DUBLIN, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c89774) has announced the addition of "U.S. Nuclear Power Industry Analysis" to their offering. Nuclear power is a type of nuclear technology involving the controlled use of nuclear reactions, usually nuclear fission, to release energy for work including propulsion, heat, and the generation of electricity. Nuclear energy is produced by a controlled nuclear chain reaction and creates heat - which is used to boil water, produce steam, and drive a steam turbine.

Civic competition is a deep and ancient force. Ever since towns were towns, they have found ways to assert their superiority over one another, through commerce, war and other, more sporting encounters. The thrill of outdoing a neighbour, the fear of losing to the rivals from along the shore, are apparently universal human urges and the world crackles with all kinds of local contests, from the town lantern competitions of the Philippines to America's "Best Tennis Town" and the tidy villages of Ireland.

A STUDY into the effects of radiation from Sellafield on fishermen operating in the Irish Sea found they are only exposed to low levels. By Robert Johnson A report by the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland said those who are most exposed still only receive a radiation dose of less than one unit a year, out of the 4,000 units that the average Irish person is exposed to annually. David Pollard, director of the institute's monitoring and measurement services, said: "The levels are very low, but obviously there is particular concern because of the presence of Sellafield."

PLANS BY the British government to press ahead with a new generation of nuclear power stations, including two proposed sites near Sellafield, have been criticised by Irish environmental groups and anti-nuclear campaigners. A list of 11 potential sites earmarked by companies interested in building the power plants was published yesterday. Nine have previously been home to nuclear reactors - including Dungeness in Kent and Sizewell in Suffolk - while two others are near Sellafield.

"Police arrested 10 demonstrators on Monday at a nuclear arms site in southern England, where two Nobel Peace Prize winners joined hundreds of protesters, a spokesman said. Five were detained after gaining access to the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston, where warheads for Trident submarines are made, and five outside, said the Thames Valley police spokesman. Organisers said around 800 people joined the protests, including Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1997 for campaigning against landmines, and Mairead Maguire, who won in 1976 for her work in Northern Ireland."

"Hundreds of peace activists from across the UK will try to blockade a nuclear weapons site where warheads for the Trident submarines are made. Organisations including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament are staging the protest at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, Berkshire on Monday."

"An association based in Switzerland is helping its European neighbours in their search for a good place to dump nuclear waste. Ten nations have enlisted the aid of Baden-based Arius, or Association for Regional and International Underground Storage. They hope to consolidate their radioactive waste within a single location. The countries in question include Austria, Ireland, Italy and seven others - but not Switzerland. In 2006, the federal government enacted a ten-year moratorium on the export of nuclear waste - the storage of which is the producers' responsibility."

It will take over 100 years before the toxic nuclear site at Sellafield is safe, it has been revealed. A Westminster report claims that the UK's largest atomic power-station, overlooking the Irish Sea, won't be completely clean until 2120.

SELLAFIELD HAS the world's biggest stockpile of plutonium and uranium and storage tanks contain highly volatile radioactive waste "more dangerous" than the Chernobyl reactor, according to a study published today. The study, Voodoo Economics and the Doomed Nuclear Renaissance, also says the British government is now unlikely to meet its 1998 commitment under the Ospar Convention to reduce "close to zero" Sellafield's radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea by 2020.

Twenty two years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Plaid MEP Jill Evans says tomorrow's anniversary (Saturday) serves as a timely reminder of why nuclear power must be phased out. The radioactive cloud spread radiation from Chernobyl right across Europe, and more than 300 farms in the north of Wales are still affected by restrictions imposed in the aftermath of the disaster.