Ex-UFU chief tells News Letter 'we must be willing to consider nuclear energy in Northern Ireland'

Ian Marshall, who was president from 2014 to 2016, said that opposition to nuclear power is rooted partly in “misinformation” and “NIMBYism”.

Mr Marshall – who is now a senior member of Queen’s University Belfast’s Centre for Advanced Sustainable Energy (CASE) – was speaking after TUV leader Jim Allister broached the issue last week.

Mr Allister had written to the Westminster government saying the Province should consider a new type of power source called “small modular reactors” or SMRs.

The first power plant in the UK to use the technology is currently being developed in Anglesey, north Wales, and Google is also in the process of obtaining SMRs to power AI data centres in the USA.

The UK government had told Mr Allister that the devolved government in Northern Ireland is opposed to nuclear power, which scuppers its exploration in the Province, while Stormont’s Department for the Economy in turn said that nuclear power is a matter purely reserved for Westminster (Mr Allister says that responsibility is likely “a bit of both”).

Northern Ireland’s three existing power plants rely on burning gas.

Mr Marshall, head of business development and policy at CASE, said that French electricity prices are “about one third of what we're paying in the UK”, and “that's because France invested very early on, in the 80s, in the nuclear sector”.

Whilst there has been historic opposition to nuclear power in the Republic (where he used to sit as a senator), Mr Marshall said “I think they're paying 700m Euros for an interconnector between France and Ireland – so it's a bit ironic on the one hand to oppose nuclear, but be quite happy to take those electrons through a cable that come from nuclear in France”.

As to what Northern Ireland should do, he said: “I think what we need to do in NI is to look at all these compenents of this mix.”

On the opposition to nuclear power, he said: “It's down to misinformation and people's perceptions.

"Remember, lots of people that are decision-makers are old enough to remember Chernobyl.

"They're old enough to remember Fukushima.

"So nuclear has a stigma of catastrophe around it.

"That being said, we've big companies developing small nuclear reactors, so the technology has progressed, the safety protocols have gone in...

“We see this with the anaerobic digestion, where people building anaerobic digesters is like building a bomb in your back yard, and it's very much not the case.

"So I think the opposition to nuclear is perception in many cases.

"There's an element for some people of NIMBYism.

"But I do think that probably we must recognise that it's a clean energy source, and it's just one of the other tools we have in our toolbox.

"I think we need to consider it and look at it as one of the options.”

The News Letter has sought the current views of all five of the biggest parties on nuclear power, but at time of writing none had responded.