Jamie Smyth visited a giant nuclear plant being built on an area the size of 27 football pitches
Next to a heavily forested nature reserve on the west coast of Finland, several hundred construction workers are building the world's biggest nuclear power plant.
The scale of the Olkiluoto 3 project is breathtaking. The reactor and turbine buildings cover an area the size of 27 football pitches.
More than 250,000 cubic metres of concrete is being pumped onto the site and a gigantic steel case, 50 metres in diameter and 63 metres high, is being prepared to house a reactor that could generate enough energy to meet a third of Ireland's entire annual demand for electricity.
"This is the future," says Pertti Simola, chief executive of the Finnish utility TVO, which owns two of Finland's four nuclear plants and is building Olkiluoto 3.
"Finland needs more nuclear power to meet increasing energy demand, cope with the future retirement of other plants and to help the state meet Kyoto commitments . . . I don't see many other viable options for energy."
Olkiluoto 3 is the first new nuclear plant in Europe for 10 years and has become a flagship site for a nuclear industry desperate to persuade the world it is a safe, reliable and cheap form of energy. Next week British energy minister Malcolm Wicks will visit the plant, no doubt eager to see if it can be replicated on sites such as Sellafield.
The proposed 1,600 megawatts pressurised water reactor will be the most powerful ever built.
A consortium that includes the French company Areva and German firm Siemens are responsible for delivering the plant, which will create proportionately less waste while delivering energy more efficiently than all existing nuclear plants. To allay safety concerns, the plant design will encase the reactor core in five metres of concrete, which is enough to shield the radioactive core from an airline crash.
Even the worst-case scenario - a core meltdown - could be handled without any radiation escaping into the atmosphere thanks to its emergency cooling tanks, say its designers.
Crucially, the new plant will not be a drain on the public purse, says Mr Simola, who insists that the energy produced will be cheaper than from any other possible source.
"We didn't get any public subsidy for the €3 billion investment. There were no soft loans, no government guarantees and no shareholder guarantees," he says. "Our investors, which are six big Finnish firms, want cheap energy and trust us to deliver."
However, not everyone is convinced. Greenpeace opposes the fifth reactor and has identified problems in its construction.These include a miscalculation in the composition of the concrete used in the foundations below the reactor and a problem with the design of the turbine in Japan, which caused delays of 13 months.
"The design of the nuclear plant is new," says Harri Lammi, a Greenpeace energy expert. "We don't know what impact the problems with the concrete will have on the plant over its lifetime . . . sea air could cause problems if the concrete mix is not right and fuel may escape."
TVO management dismiss Greenpeace's concerns as far- fetched and point to public opinion in Finland, which shows two-thirds favour nuclear power.
This marks a big turnaround from the 1980s and 1990s when, following the Chernobyl disaster, the public and politicians turned their backs on the nuclear option.
Key to changing public attitudes has been TVO's decision to deal with the nuclear industry's biggest public relations problem, radioactive waste. During its lifetime, Olkiluoto 3 and the two existing smaller nuclear plants on the site will produce 5,500 tonnes of highly dangerous spent radioactive fuel and waste.
Until now, waste has been stored temporarily under water in huge fuel ponds at nuclear sites. Given that the waste will stay hazardous to humans for tens of thousands of years, temporary storage is widely viewed as unsustainable and potentially dangerous.
To solve the problem, TVO set up a subsidiary firm, Posiva Oy, to build one of the world's first underground nuclear waste repositories.
"Nuclear waste has always been an issue which raises strong emotions," says Timo Seppala, senior manager at Posiva Oy, "but in Finland we are quite pragmatic and we have a strong belief in technology. We plan to bury 2,900 copper canisters containing nuclear waste deep at a depth of about 400-500 metres in tunnels."
Exploratory work has already started at a site about a kilometre from the nuclear plant, where bore holes have been drilled into the granite bedrock.
"It is difficult to find any risks," says Mr Seppala, pointing to the entrance of a tunnel that is already under construction.
"The geology in this area means there are no big earthquakes and there is a layer of clay that would act as a buffer for the radiation even if one of the canisters was pierced. Local people are also already accustomed to nuclear plants."
Surprisingly, public opposition to the repository or the new reactor has been muted in the area. TVO and Posiva say this is due to the creation of 1,500 jobs, taxes paid to the local authorities and the strong safety record of the existing nuclear plants.
On a national level, public acceptance of nuclear power has been boosted by a spike in oil prices and the Russian/Ukraine gas crisis earlier this year, when Russia temporarily halted supplies to western Europe, raising concerns about future energy security.
However, Finland's decision to "go nuclear" and build a fifth reactor, which was taken by parliament in a free vote of MPs in 2004, has had political consequences. On foot of the vote, the Greens left the five-party coalition government, forcing the staunchly anti-nuclear Green MP Satu Hassi to resign as minister for the environment.
She is highly critical of the lobbying campaign undertaken by nuclear activists in the run-up to the parliamentary vote and the compliant attitude of politicians and media.
"I don't think any payments were made to people to support nuclear, but there is a very strong friendship network at the upper layers of Finnish society.
"People attend the same hunting clubs, sauna clubs and so on. I feel this is one of the reasons the press here is so passive on the nuclear issue and there is no real criticism."
Ms Hassi claims to have been labelled a Russian sympathiser by some journalists for opposing construction of Olkiluoto 3 back in 2004.
The decision to build has also caused a drop-off in interest and investment in renewable energy in Finland, according to Ms Hassi, who is now an MEP.
But many other politicians who previously opposed nuclear energy, including Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen, are shifting position. He voted in parliament against building the fifth reactor, but asked recently about nuclear power, he said he was now 50-50.
This change of heart could be important following the next election in March 2007, when many Finns expect a debate to start about building a sixth reactor.