I would also but I think he enjoys what he does too much to get into politics.

That’s just RTE camera men don’t have a clue…….Miriam does the same.

Miriam just interrupts people

On a more balanced note I probably would agree with a lot of his policies such as greater energy efficiency in houses and pushing the passive house standards.

George Lee began by joining the biggest corrupt party in Ireland. Been an independent changes everything

Mark, the answer to your question is, ZERO thousands have been killed by NP. Wind is useless because it isn’t always windy and there is no wave power, it doesn’t exist.

long island Japan chernoble all killed directly and will continue to kill as Japan and chernoble both have damaged reactors to sort of problem is still there wind and wave yes is affected by weather conditions but money is what is holding exploiting our natural resources on the western sea board and its so rarely flat calm that its not an arguement against . tide energy can also be looked at and thats a garentee to happen .daily .

William, you say “only about 500 died” due to he Chernobyl incident, as a direct result of the blast that might be true but there are still people dying today because of the after effects, we are a host family for the Chernobyl children and every year we have children over to stay who are suffering with various health problems associated with the fallout from that day, thyroid problems ,physical deformities, tumours, and brain abnormalities. we know first hand from our work in Chernobyl that thousands of people have had their lives cut short by the after effects of radiation poisoning. it contaminated the very land that the people relied on for crops , the water table for irrigation and drinking water, there is still a ‘prohibited zone ‘ around the area of the plant . there are fewer children being born as a result of sterilization caused from fallout , entire communities were removed from their homes and families and shipped across the country, sadly many elderly people ‘sneak’ back into the prohibited zones as they want to die in their homeland and also because they know that death will come quicker if they return there, such is the pain of living with the effects of the fallout.
Belarusian authorities will tell you its ‘safe ‘ to go within a certain distance of the reactor and that the fallout is contained, the effects are becoming less and that the ground is ‘ healing itself ‘ sadly their government is no more trustworthy than our own.

Mark, NO ONE is dying as a result of Chernobyl or the Japan accident. You saying it doesn’t change that fact.

Eric, I didn’t say 500, I said FIFTY. As I said to Mark, there are NO people dying today because of the Chernobyl radiation leak. There is no evidence whatsoever that the radiation leak caused “physical deformities, tumours, and brain abnormalities”. In fact the main cause of these problems is alcoholism. The leak did cause about 1,500 Thyroid cancers but bar a handful those children were cured. The radioactive Iodine has ALL decayed several decades ago and it would be impossible for new cancers to be caused. The other problems you refer to are caused by SCAREMONGERING and that’s your foolish contribution to the problem. The World Health Organisation has said that alarmist comments caused the biggest problems so your charities are the main problem not the radiation.

PS I’m afraid the truth is that as a host family for those NOT affected by the radiation leak, you’ve been conned by fake charities.

@Mark Collins, you haven’t a clue, coal and fossil fuels kill far more people every year than nuclear. Look at the numbers who die from respiratory illnesses due to fossil fuel air pollution, look at the greenhouse gasses they emit, look at the number of mining deaths, look at the environmental damage done by extracting these resources. Nuclear fuel is much cleaner and safer than fossil fuels, even if we turn the country into a giant windmill we will still need other power sources as the wind does not blow every day.

okay buddy you disagree with my view on it but what is the size of the exclusion zone around both reactor sites . and do we want that here? other options offer safer alternative and when np moves to fusion ill relook at it as an alt . but to many reactors have failed both in subs and on land to ignore it .

Mark, the Japan accident killed no one and was caused by the biggest tsunami to hit Japan and that did kill 20,000+ people. That was a much greater disaster than the failure of the NP plant. Chernobyl was a product of totalitarian Communism. NP is safe as POF has pointed out. Literally millions die yearly from air pollution. There is no pollution from NP.

proinsias i disagree with old fossil fuel swallowing smoke breathing energy plants are as wrong as np . i firmly believe renewable is the way to go wind wave tide hydro can be used instead of fossil fuels we should be doing more in those sectors rather than expect a np plant to be the pill to sort it out .i dont back the way we do it

William i will correct you on one piont there np produces waste . radio active waste that as of today we bury to solve the problem . ya air is cleaner but at what cost

Mark, the amount of waste NP produces if ALL your energy needs were met by NP amounts to the size of a single bar of soap over your lifetime. Did you know that more radioactivity is released into the air from burning coal than NP? What’s the problem in burying the small amount of NP waste in the ground? That’s where it came from. What cost? NP is a cheap, safe and reliable source of power. You have shown by your comments you know nothing about it. There is no more sources of Hydro in Ireland or we’d be using it. The wind doesn’t always blow, what bit of that can’t you follow? There is NO wave power anywhere in the world.

you may be right on large scale hydro plants but smaller local one hundreds of areas and yes some of the cleaner power is in research level but still if focused on a longer term cheaper way can be found and worked towards if you dont.believe when it goes wrong at a np power plant it is an eviormental disaster then you are burying your head .as for burying waste and pumping warm water back into an echo system that has been.balenced on cold water is wrong sure later generations can fix it dont kick the can down the road here i am and will continue to say there is a better way than fossil fuels and np . cheaper than fossil fuels and while under control safer but when it goes wrong big areas are effected . there are better ways than np and how we do it now .

Mark, there aren’t better ways than NP. Fossil fuels are creating the largest environmental damage imaginable, they’re destroying the atmosphere, you can’t get bigger than that. Renewals are virtually useless. If “local” Hydro was practical then we would be using it. It isn’t so we’re not. Mark I’ve addressed all your claims regarding NP, do you now accept you are wrong?

Can you use normal punctuation and capitalisation? Your posts are a nightmare to read.

no i dont accept it because you havent refuted my poins countered with your facts which you believe what about of the draw back hot radiation washed water is flushed out of a plant much hotter than what the water supply is used to run the turbines out into the eviroment . what about exclusion zone sits around the two sites cuting out usable agriculture and living sites and how long will they last . radiation damages and kills cells in all living creatures look at ecoligical damage that is found around the old soviet plant . ( by the way they were as advanced as any western plant ) life continues but has been badly effected . renewables get no credit like all new ideas we need research and funding to improve things wind turbines were rubbushed solar was rubbished and wave is rubbished do some research and see what collages and universities have achived in that field but big established companies want it to continue as before hence slow progress .i am sorry that you find my posts hard to read i am doing my best .

Mark, in my entire life I’ve never heard anyone complain about the effects of putting hot water into the environment. That’s irrelevant. The amount of heat added to the oceans is miniscule.

The exclusion zone is small and also irrelevant in comparison to the size of the countries. Exclusion zones exist everywhere in every country. Try getting into a military base, a waste dump, an airport runway, a large industrial complex, the top of a mountain etc.

Low doses of radiation do not cause harm. The analysis of the bomb drops in Japan showed that. We live in a radioactive environment. You’ve a trillion atoms of Uranium in your body. You eat Bananas, that contain radioactive Potassium.

Solar is also mainly useless as the Sun doesn’t always shine either.

exclusion zone due to fall out cernobyl is 2,600 km2 not a smaller administration area as i can understand .do some research on dead zones caused by the hot water being pumed into a body of water less oxygen is dissolved in hot water harming plant life and on up the food i am not talking of heating oceans but damageing local areas . that in itself is polluting . i agree whole heartedly with fossil fuel being a bad option other options need looking at .we as a people rape our planet with little regard for its long term effects .to solve the energy problem we need joined thinking no single fix is out there . and arguement such as sun doesnt always shine and wind doesnt always blow can be negated by joined up thinking from production storage and supply is needed . so when you say you have answered all my points small amount of buried waste hot water from cooling means its cleaner than fossil but not clean .cheaper till there is a problem and only as safe as our fallible systems make it . if and when fusion is workable i will remain against np there are huge risks and down playing the effects are not the answer people suffered in cernoybl and people will suffer from Japan yes in years it will become less dangerous but they are not safe now if you are so sure its just hype go live near one of the failed np plants

2,600km2 is only 50 miles by 50. A tiny percent of the old USSR. There are a couple of hundred people living there permanently. Another several thousand work in the zone. Tourists visit it. Wild life is thriving. If the Communists had built Chernobyl with a containment vessel like every single reactor in the western world they wouldn’t now need an exclusion zone. Old Soviet reactors are VERY badly designed and built and I was told that by a Physicist that monitors them.

I’m not replying to any other posts you make as it’s too hard to read your posts with no capitalisation or punctuation.

So we can establish William has invested interest in nuclear power. NP is unsafe. We have yet to figure out how to process waste which you’d think they’d sort before using the plants. Thorium may be a viable alternative for nuclear. Local small scale green tech is the way forward as shown in Iceland, Germany and Norway.

thats fine but np still contaminants be it the water or the waste or failing so your all fixing solution has its problems and draw backs

i agree Kevin a much more joined up thinking process is needed to make green energy work

William, yes you did say fifty, I misread that part, if as you say most of the deformities etc are caused by alcoholism , how come so many children are affected? as for thyroid cancers there are not “just a handful” of cases , there are thousands and it has been proven that when the children visit Ireland or other countries is actually does their health a world of good , and the charity that we are with is certainly not fake, everything we do is voluntary, no one get paid or get expenses. maybe if you actually saw the difference in these children from there arrival here to the day they leave you might have a better understanding of their problems, the MAIN PROBLEM was the power plant in the first place not the charities ! I don’t know where you got your information but it certainly does not tally with what I have seen and heard first hand from the children or trained medical staff that are involved with our organisation, maybe the w.h.o. need to take another look also!

Eric, alcoholism is a VERY big problem in Russia. Putin has even brought in laws to try and curb it. It’s also a problem with women, hence the deformities.

The ENTIRE scientific community and the WHO state categorically that there is no evidence of a SINGLE deformity caused by the accident.In fact deformanities would be very unlikely anyway even with large doses of radiation. Only a handful of children died from Thyroid cancer and even with those there’s no way to prove it was the accident. None would have got cancer from the accident if the Communists immediately handed out the Iodine tablets they had.

So Eric is right and the WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION is wrong and needs to take “another look”. Maybe Eric needs to take a proper look. Start of with reading the WHOs reports into Chernobyl.

Are you aware that about a year ago a Chernobyl charity based in Midleton, Co Cork (I think) wrote to the Irish Times and said that they now accepted there were no children injured by the accident needing help and that they asked the other charities to face up to that fact?

By exaggerating the effects of Chernobyl the media and your hocus pocus unscientific silly charities have set back the construction of nuclear power plants around the world AND as a consequence caused the death of millions of people because of the pollution from coal burning which has been used instead. Furthermore we now have Climate Change to contend with and that will kill more people.

Your bogus charities have been responsible for millions of deaths.

PS See here

https://www.drugfree.org/join-together/alcohol/children-adopted-from-russian-orphanages-have-high-fetal-alcohol-syndrome-rates

and here

http://kidstoadopt.org/adoption-resources/medical-conditions/about-fetal-alcohol-syndrome/

No we did not. You do not even understand what medical applications cannabis has nor do you understand its recreational use. You know nothing of this plant.