Madam, - I see your Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, has been holding forth on nuclear power (Opinion & Analysis, February 6th). Politicians do talk extraordinary rubbish about Sellafield.
A few years ago I was asked to oppose a motion "That this House would shut Sellafield" at University College, Dublin. After Irish politicians had done their worst, I made three points:
1. I had arrived fully irradiated after an hour's flight from Heathrow to Dublin during which I had absorbed more radiation than I would if I were to lunch on fish from the Irish Sea, supposedly polluted by Sellafield, every day for a whole year. So why did the motion not also seek the shutting down of airports?
2. For nearly 50 years Calder Hall nuclear power station at Sellafield had been generating clean electricity, free of greenhouse gases, while you "filthy Irish", as I described my hosts, had been polluting Cumbria by burning peat to generate power.
3. And why did the Irish wish to close down Sellafield when for 30 years it had been taking radioactive waste from Irish industry, hospitals and universities? Where were you going to put it?
The students rejected the motion so decisively that the chairman did not even bother to count the votes. Irish students are not as daft as their politicians. - Yours, etc,
(Sir) BERNARD INGHAM, Purley, Surrey, England.