Telegraph News The nuclear option

Despite their pragmatic attitude to nuclear fuel, it has not passed the Finns by as they build Europe's first nuclear reactor in over a decade (see today's print story Finns give nuclear power a positive reaction) that this month marks the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
The people I spoke to in the municipality of Eurajoki, which is home to the Olkiluoto plants (see www.olkiluoto.info), recalled vividly the events of 26 April 1986.
When alarms rang at the plant signalling that something was wrong, it took the Finnish government 48 hours to react. It wasn't until the Swedish government broadcast the news, followed by the Ukrainians, that it was finally taken seriously.
Many have not forgiven their government for that. Reindeer meat was off the menu for months because it was so contaminated due to the animals' dependence on lichen (which itself was heavily contaminated).
Washing that had been drying on the line at the time was mostly thrown away.
The council leader, Juha Jaakola, told me that they immediately redesigned their plans for the town hall to provide a bunker where school children could be sent in case of a similar accident happening on Olkiluoto. Now it is used as a bowling alley, but it is still intended to function as a bunker in an emergency.
Even two decades on, the berries and mushrooms in much of Finland are still affected by the fall-out. Yet the Finns in their admirably pragmatic way have for the most part managed to draw a line under the incident, viewing it as belonging to another age, another era of technology, another political system.
The same thing, they insist, could never happen at their plants. A so-called core catcher ensures that a meltdown could be carefully controlled and, say the safety experts, the plant will be able to withstand the impact of the largest fully-tanked jet planes.
The Finns admit it's not necessarily ideal, but ask what else they can do in an age in which energy has shot to the top of the political agenda.
Whatever one's feelings on nuclear power, the Germans could certainly do with taking a leaf out of Finland's book when it comes to the question of whether it has a future in Europe or not.
In Germany, where nuclear provides half of the energy needs, the debate is more emotionally charged than anywhere else in Europe.
But with only 38 per cent in favour of it, there's great support for the parliamentary decision made in 2000 to phase out nuclear power, and a great deal of resistance to mutterings within the conservative wing of the new government to reverse that in the light of the current energy debate.
Christian Wilson, from the French-German company which designed the Finnish plant, and himself a German, maybe tries to simplify the issue too much when he says: "Nuclear power is normal energy production with all its advantages and disadvantages."
He also rather dubiously claims that it is safer than mining, which kills hundreds of people every year. But he gives a good analysis of the German attitude.
"It's to do with its history and the resulting pacifism, 1968 and the rise of the Greens, who played a prominent role in government. You have to approach the nuclear question very carefully and from a very particular angle when you're talking to the Germans."
He concludes that what Germany needs is a shortage of electricity, which there has not been since the war and which would soon win them over to the idea of nuclear.
"If your electricity is always there to power your bakeries, hospitals and public transport you don't have to care about how it is produced," he says. "Germany has had a very solid grid since the war so has never had to think about where it comes from."
But a new film is likely to have the opposite effect. The Cloud is the fictional account of a horrendous nuclear accident in Bavaria which kills 38,000 people within a short time. Chaos breaks out and Germany is relegated to the status of a third-world country.
It is based on a book by Gudrun Pausewang which has been on the school curriculum since its publication following the Chernobyl disaster.
And just to push the point home that although fiction, it could indeed happen, viewers are informed that Germany has 18 nuclear power stations which have registered 114 "accidents" since 2004 alone.
It is not necessarily a useful way to pursue the debate.
It's a shame that the German filmmaker did not make instead a film about the real-life tragedy of Chernobyl which ruined thousands of lives, rather than one which feeds an already angst-ridden nation with a scaremongering but thankfully hypothetical version of a nightmarish series of events.