Madam, - David McGuinness (July 12th) asks: "Has anyone calculated when the day of 'peak uranium' will be?" He is touching on one of the latest myths regarding nuclear power; that there will be insufficient supplies of uranium to sustain the nuclear power industry.
It would be remarkable if the owners of the dozens of nuclear power stations currently under construction around the world did not ask themselves the same question before embarking on their projects. The question has, of course, been studied intensively, by the OECD and others. The answer is that, while uranium is indeed a finite resource, there is enough uranium to sustain the expansion of the industry for the foreseeable future. - Yours, etc,
JOHN STAFFORD, Dargle Wood, Knocklyon, Dublin 16.
Madam, - Aonghus Shortt, (July 13th) states that future reactor designs will make much more efficient use of these uranium resources. This sounds exactly like the self-serving pronouncements from the oil companies 20 to 30 years ago. Yet pro-nuclear activists, blinded by their own beliefs, cannot see the comparison and the reality that uranium is a finite natural resource. - Yours, etc,
EWAN DUFFY, Castletown, Celbridge, Co Kildare.