In claiming that "nuclear power is potentially far more dangerous" than other industries, Paul Rogers (Lifestyfe, April 7) is comparing the worst conceivable outcome of a barely credible accident to a nuclear plant with the actual results of relatively commonplace incidents elsewhere.
The argument is thus fundamentally if unconsciously, dishonest; in
this kind of compa.rison, conventional hazards should be represented by a similarly improbable disaster, such as an overwhelmingly release of burning petroleum in a town with all escape barred and emergency services paralysed.
The opponents of nuclear power tend to misrepresent it as a gratuitous addition to the other hazards of life. If it were, they would he right to object, hut in fact it reduces the need for fossil fuels with their attendant serious losses of life and health.
Success in their campaign would therefore bring an increase in the kind of risk to which they object. If they were to consider their arguments more thoroughly, I suspect that we should hear a great deal less of them.
P. D. Wilson Holmrook,
Cumbria.