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The cooling towers, right, and nuclear reactor containment buildings, left, at Plant Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant are shown in Waynesboro, Georgia. John Bazemore
Power up
Ireland 'cannot rule out' nuclear power says the Energy Minister
Alex White says he understands concerns over nuclear power.
THE MINISTER FOR Energy says that nuclear power will have to be looked at in the future.
In an interview published in today’s Irish Independent, Alex White says that while he understands peoples’ concerns about nuclear power, it cannot be excluded from any conversation about future energy use.
“You can see people’s historic concerns and understand them, and I would have shared them, but you have to look at the other side of the table.
We have a dependence on damaging carbon-based energy sources which are effectively destroying the planet. You cannot preside over a full debate by excluding anything.
White’s department is currently working on a long-term plan for the country, but White says that the nation’s politicians had not performed well in what he called a “crisis” around energy use.
A Green Paper on energy earlier this year suggested it was “technically possible” to build a nuclear plant to replace the Moneypoint energy plant.
White says that discussion on the issue may be premature.
“We’re not at any stage near having a proposal for a nuclear power plant, but we may also be too small.”
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