06 August 2011

The nuclear world of Montgomery Burns, Waylon Smithers and Homer Simpson

‘The nuclear industry is indebted to the Montgomery Burns School of Economics, the Waylon Smithers School of Management and the Homer Simpson Employment Agency’

Revd Canon Patrick Comerford,
President, Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Irish CND),
Hiroshima Day, 6 August 2011


It is both a pleasure and a moment tinged with poignancy as I welcome the new Ambassador of Japan, Mr Chihiro Atsumi, to our commemorations this afternoon, along with the First Secretary in his embassy’s culture department, Mr Yamanouchi.

Already Ambassador Atsumi has spoken of how he has been overwhelmed by the warm support from all over Ireland at the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake last March, and how he sincerely appreciates “the kindness of Irish people.”

It was my privilege – yet sad duty – to be chaplain to the Ambassador’s immediate predecessor, Mr Toshinao Urabe, at a memorial service in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, in March for the victims of the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on 11 March, between the organisation of the service and the actual service itself. And so, I sat beside the ambassador that Sunday afternoon as we also prayed for and remembered the victims of the earthquake, the tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear disaster that followed immediately after.

But we should not talk about the Fukushima nuclear disaster in the singular. It was not just one nuclear disaster but a series of disasters, involving equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns and multiple leaks of radioactive materials at Fukushima.

Fukushima is not one but six separate nuclear reactors. Nor was it the only nuclear accident in Japan this year. We are aware of Fukushima because it was the largest nuclear accident this year – indeed the largest nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear power industry executive and an expert witness at the investigation into the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, says: “Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind.”

At the time of the Fukushima earthquake, Reactor 4 had been defueled and Reactors 5 and 6 were shutdown for maintenance. The remaining reactors shut down automatically after the earthquake, with emergency generators running the control electronics and water pumps needed to cool reactors.

The operators believed the plant was protected by a seawall designed to withstand a 5.7 metre tsunami. But the height of the tsunami that hit Fukushima less than an hour after the earthquake was 13.1 metres – two or three times higher than anyone allowed for – either because they were totally unscientific in their predictions, or totally cavalier in the calculations when it came to costs and profits.

Worldwide it appears the nuclear industry is indebted to the Montgomery Burns School of Economics, the Waylon Smithers School of Management and the Homer Simpson Employment Agency.

At Fukushima, the entire plant was flooded, including low-lying generators and electrical switchgear in reactor basements and external pumps for supplying cooling seawater. The connection to the electrical grid was broken as the tsunami destroyed the power lines.

All power for cooling was lost and the reactors began to overheat because of the natural decay of the fission products created before shutdown.

Then, in the hours and days that followed there was a rapid succession of one disaster after another:

● Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced full meltdown.
● Hydrogen explosions destroyed the upper cladding of the buildings housing Reactors 1, 3, and 4.
● An explosion damaged the containment of Reactor 2.
● Multiple fires broke out at Reactor 4.
● Reactor 1 continues to leak cooling water, and the same is probably true of the other two melted-down reactors.
● Despite being shut down, Reactors 5 and 6 began to overheat when the fuel rods stored in pools in each building began to overheat as water levels dropped.

Because of the dangers of radioactivity leaks, a 20 km radius evacuation zone was declared around the plant.

And the disaster continues: machinery in Reactors 1, 2, 3 and 4 has been so badly damaged by floods, fires and explosions, they remain inoperable. Flooding with radioactive water continues to prevent access to basement areas where repairs are needed.

In areas of northern Japan 30–50 km from the plant, measured radioactive caesium levels are so high as to cause grave concern. Food grown in the area has been banned from sale. In Tokyo, people were told not to use tap water to prepare food.

The levels of iodine-131 and caesium-137 released from Fukushima are as frightening as those emitted from Chernobyl 25 years ago. Plutonium contamination has been detected in the soil at two sites in the plant at a density similar to the fallout generated from atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. And, let us remember – there is no safe level of plutonium.

But this was not the only nuclear accident in Japan this year. So far this year, there has been a long catalogue of disasters at Japanese nuclear plants:

● The Onagawa Nuclear Plant, the most quickly-built nuclear plant in the world, had a fire in the turbine section of the plant following the earthquake and tsunami in March.
● The Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant was forced to run on emergency power from back-up diesel generators. But those emergency generators were never intended for long-term use.
● Then, on 13 March, 600 litres of water leaked at the Rokkasho spent fuel pool. It is estimated that 3,000 tons of highly radioactive used nuclear fuel is stored there. Should the cooling systems at Rokkasho ever fail, then this radioactive waste is likely to overheat and catch fire.
● At the Tōkai Nuclear Plant, a cooling system pump at the No 2 reactor stopped working on 14 March and two of the three diesel generators powering the cooling system were put out of order.
● The Higashidōri Nuclear Plant was shut for maintenance at the time of the tsunami. But the aftershock on 7 April caused the loss of all external power and the plant had to switch to backup power for cooling the spent fuel pool.
● On 7 April, once again at Rokkasho, the aftershock caused the loss of grid power until the next day.
● A day later, at Onagawa again, a leak of radioactive water on 8 April spilled from pools holding spent nuclear fuel rods.
● Then, on 2 May, higher levels of radioactivity were found in the cooling water at the Tsuruga Nuclear Plant. Only then – almost two months after Fukushima – did the operating company decide to check for radioactivity on a daily basis, which it had been doing merely on a weekly basis.

No wonder Montgomery Burns, Waylon Smithers and Homer Simpson come to mind when I think of the nuclear industry, no matter what part of the world I am in.

Looking out to Bradwell from the monastery orchard in Tolleshunt Knights, Essex (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Last week, I stood in the peace and tranquillity of an orchard garden in a monastery in rural Essex, looking out towards the sea. Below, the estuary of the River Blackwater spread out on its way to join the North Sea. But standing out as an ugly carbuncle, just miles away on the shore below, was the hulk of the Bradwell nuclear power station, a disused Magnox power station at Hinkley Point.

The history of Bradwell, like every nuclear plant, has been one of disaster after disaster – from the theft of 20 uranium fuel rods for their scrap value by workers in 1966, to the discovery of cracks in welds shown up only after electronic scans in 1980, to a fire as recently as January as the disused plant was still in the process of being decommissioned.

Decommissioning began when Bradwell was closed in March 2002. But, despite yet another catalogue of disasters, despite Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, despite the catalogue of disasters throughout Japan alone this year, the British Government has gone ahead full steam and on 23 June named Bradwell as one of the eight sites to be opened as new nuclear facilities by 2025.

It appears we learn nothing from our past mistakes. Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Bradwell, Sellafield … the list of disasters is endless, yet governments continue to build, to build and to build.

And if they build as if there were no tomorrow, we can be assured there will be no tomorrow.

Nuclear waste never goes away. We may forget about it, we may bury it, we may think we have forgotten about it. But it remains, for thousands, and thousands, and thousands of years.

There is a symbiotic relationship between the nuclear power industry and the nuclear weapons industry that is both insidious and nefarious.

There is an unbreakable chain between nuclear weapons and nuclear power … one pays for the other.

There is an unbreakable chain between Hiroshima 1945 and Bradwell 2025.

And Fukushima is a warning call to us all. Now is the time to recommit ourselves to a nuclear-free world, a world free of nuclear energy and a world free of nuclear weapons.

With a new government in Ireland, the best commitment it can make to our future and the future of generations to come, the best hope it can offer, is to provide a renewed and a reinvigorated Irish leadership working proactively and taking initiatives for a world free of nuclear weapons.

It is a challenge that I hope our government takes up so that once again we can restore the moral and ethical image of Ireland that has been lost in recent decades. Is that too much to hope for?

Canon Patrick Comerford is President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. This address was delivered at Irish CND’s annual Hiroshima Day commemoration in Merrion Square, Dublin, on Saturday 6 August 2011.

Saint Dominic’s heirs, Pugin’s heir and a literary legacy in Tallaght

Edward Brady’s rustic limestone and slender gothic arches in cast concrete at Saint Mary’s were awarded a European Heritage Award in 1975 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

I found myself on the Pugin trail once again today. Next Monday [8 August] is the Feast Day of Saint Dominic, and so – in preparation for a reflection next Monday at faculty meeting in advance of the new academic year – I visited the Dominican Priory and Church in Tallaght this afternoon [5 August].

The community at Saint Mary’s Priory in Tallaght is the second largest Dominican community in Ireland – the largest is at Saint Saviour’s in north inner city Dublin. The Priory Institute, which runs theological courses and offers part-time distance education in theology leading to a primary degree, has its headquarters in the priory.

The Retreat Centre at Saint Mary’s welcomes a multitude of groups, young and old, throughout the year, the archives of the Irish Dominican Province are housed at Saint Mary’s, and this is home too to the Dominican Prior Provincial and his team.

The Dominicans were founded in 1221 and first came to Dublin in 1224. They settled in Tallaght in 1856, acquiring the site of the former castle and residence of the Church of Ireland Archbishops of Dublin.

Busy bees in the Priory Gardens ... once the grounds of Tallaght Castle, the country residence of the Archbishops of Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

The last archbishop to live in Tallaght was Lord John George Beresford (later Archbishop of Armagh), who found the house so dilapidated that he had an Act of Parliament passed in 1821 removing f any diocesan responsibility for maintaining this country seat. In 1822, his successor, Archbishop William Magee leased the property to Major James Palmer (1780-1850), Inspector General of Irish Prisons and son of Archdeacon Henry Palmer of Ossory. But the lease included a condition that Major Palmer must demolish the old castle lest it ever become a monastery.

Palmer dismantled all but the mediaeval tower, and from the materials built himself Tallaght House on the site of the present retreat house.

The demesne then passed to Sir John Lentaigne, who sold it to the Dominicans in 1856. A tower that was once part of Tallaght Castle still stands and is part of the Priory building.

The founding of Tallaght Priory was a milestone in the revival of the Dominicans in Ireland. In May 1864, Father Goodman, the Dominican Provincial, laid the foundation stone of the priory, which was designed by AWN Pugin’s former collaborator, James Joseph McCarthy.

The original priory church in Tallaght, designed by AWN Pugin’s son-in-law, George Coppinger Ashlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

In October 1882, Cardinal McCabe laid the foundation stone of a new church, designed in the Early English style by Pugin’s son-in-law, George Coppinger Ashlin (1837-1921), who had been a pupil of Pugin’s son, Edward Pugin. Ashlin is generally regarded as the heir in Ireland to the Pugin tradition, working in the partnerships of Pugin and Ashlin and Ashlin and Coleman.

The new church was dedicated by Archbishop Walsh in October 1886 as a memorial to Father Tom Burke, the renowned preacher who had died three years before, and who was buried in the cloister.

In time, Ashlin’s church proved to be too small for Tallaght’s fast increasing population, and in the early 1970s the church was extended and adapted to the new liturgical reforms.

The priory church was enlarged by a new nave that became the main body of a remodelled church. On the outside, the extension by Edward Brady is in harmony with Ashlin’s older building through the use of rustic limestone and slender gothic arches in cast concrete. This imaginative and innovative work received a European Heritage Award in 1975.

But in the reordering of the church, Ashlin’s rood screen and altar were removed, although the place of the rood screen can be determined by following the decoration on the windows on the original north and south sides of the church.

In the original chancel, six statues remain:

● Saint Anthony – not the Franciscan but Saint Antoninus, a 15th century Archbishop of Florence;
● Saint Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers, since known as the Dominicans or Blackfrairs;
● Two Tallaght saints, Saint Maelruain and Saint Aengus;
● Saint John the Divine – a statue that is a reminder of the Dominican emphasis on preaching the Gospel;
● Pope Pius V, a Dominican friar who was later canonised but is probably best remembered in history for his excommunication of Queen Elizabeth I for schism and for his refusal as Pope to abandon his Dominican friar’s simply white habit – a decision that has led to every subsequent pope dressing in white.

The Retreat House opened in 1936 and was rebuilt in 1957. For more than 70 years it has been an oasis of tranquillity for countless people, as Tallaght developed from a small country village into the third largest centre of population in Ireland.

Antoinette Fleming’s Dancers (1988) in the Katharine Tynan Memorial Plot in Tallaght (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

On the way back from Saint Mary’s and the Priory, I stopped to look at The Dancers, a sculpture is by Antoinette Fleming installed in 1988 in the small pocket park in the corner of the Priory grounds and named the Katharine Tynan Memorial Plot.

Katherine Tynan, (1861-1931), a major literary figure associated with Tallaght, was a daughter of Andrew C Tynan, and at the age of 17 she published her first book of verse, which was followed two years later by her first novel. She was one of a group of Irish writers who lived in London in the 1880s and who came together to make the Irish Literary Movement.

During 1888 and 1889, her home at Cherryfield House on Firhouse Road was a gathering place for the Sunday Literary Society, which included Katherine Tynan, Maud Gonne and Douglas Hyde. Many of the leaders of the emerging cultural movement visited her at her home, and she was a close friend of W.B Yeats and the painter Jack Yeats, who painted her portrait.

Her prolific output included 18 volumes of poetry, 105 novels and 38 other books, including five volumes of autobiography. She also worked for improved conditions for shop girls and single mothers and was an opponent of capital punishment. She campaigned for votes for women, and with Lady Aberdeen she attended the World Congress of Women in Rome in 1914.

President Mary opened this tiny park in Tallaght in 1998. Katharine Tynan’s nephews included the comedian Dave Allen (born David Tynan O’Mahony) and his brother Peter Tynan O’Mahony, who was one of the journalists who recruited me to the staff of The Irish Times in the mid-1970s. Both were born in Cherryfield House, but all that remains of the house today are traces of the stone walls and its gardens.

Earier in the day, I had lunch at the other end of Firhouse Road, in the Riverbank Restaurant Restaurant at the Victory Conference Centre. This restaurant has so much promise it would be good to see it opening late into the evening too.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Mission must seek to ‘heal hurts of world’

The Church of Ireland Gazette in its current edition [5 August 2011] publishes this photograph and half-page news report on Page 5:

Canon Patrick Comerford (extreme right) is pictured at the Affirming Catholicism conference with (from left) Canon Charlotte Methuen, Keble College, Oxford, and Ripon College, Cuddesdon; the author, Janet Morley; and Bishop William Mchombo of Eastern Zambia.

Mission must ‘seek to heal hurts of world’ –
C.ofI. theologian tells London conference


Mission cannot be reduced to personal evangelism and one-to-one encounters and has no purpose “unless we have an understanding of what Good News is and have a vision of what the Kingdom may be like,” Canon Patrick Comerford, lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin, told the recent annual conference of Affirming Catholicism held in St Matthew’s, Westminster, London.

He continued: “If the Church is to have an integrated approach to proclamation, then it must be in both Word and Sacrament; it must provide example in discipleship; it must seek not only to invite people to be Christians but also to invite them into the Church; and it must have a vision of the Church as a foretaste of the Kingdom.”

Canon Comerford told the conference that, in its mission, the Church must “seek to heal the hurts of the world and to reconcile its brokenness.”

A member of various USPG boards, he went on to say a major portion of the mission agency’s financial resources was devoted to health care and educational projects because it was a “part of Christian responsibility to share our resources.”

Referring to the fourth and fifth points of mission as defined by the Anglican Communion, Canon Comerford told conference delegates that people who “seek to transform unjust structures of society” and who “strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth” need to be affirmed “as engaging in mission, as missionaries.”

Affirming Catholicism is a movement existing in almost every English diocese – with provincial groups in Scotland, Wales and Ireland – which seeks to bring together and strengthen lay and ordained people who recognise the positive and inclusive elements in the Catholic tradition of Christianity.

The website says that the organisation is “working to make the Catholic element within Anglicanism a positive force for the Gospel and a model for effective mission today.”

Its president is the Rt Revd Michael Perham, Bishop of Gloucester.

7 August 2011:

The August 2011 edition of the
Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough carries the same photograph and the following report on page 10:


Mission must ‘seek to heal hurts of world’
Irish theologian tells London conference


Mission cannot be reduced to personal evangelism and one-to-one encounters and has no purpose “unless we have an understanding of what Good News is and have a vision of what the Kingdom may be like,” Canon Patrick Comerford told the annual conference of Affirming Catholicism in London.

Speaking about prayer, mission and the work of USPG – Anglicans in World Mission, Canon Comerford said: “If the Church is to have an integrated approach to Proclamation, then it must be in both Word and Sacrament; it must provide example in Discipleship; it must seek not only to invite people to be Christians but to invite them into the Church too; and it must have a vision of the Church as a foretaste of the Kingdom.”

He told the conference in Saint Matthew’s, Westminster, that in its mission the Church must “seek to heal the hurts of the world and to reconcile its brokenness. As Christians we are called to share our relationships in the mission of God to the wider world, bearing witness to the kingdom of love, justice and joy that Jesus inaugurated.”

Canon Comerford, who is a member of the boards of USPG Ireland and USPG Northern Ireland and of the council of USPG, said a major portion of USPG’s financial resources are devoted to health care and educational projects, “not because we are a charitable giver in some way that makes us an Anglican Oxfam or an Affirming Catholicism version of Christian Aid,” but because it is a “part of Christian responsibility to share our resources,” and because this “is an expression of the priorities of Christ and the priorities of the Church.”

Turning to the fourth and fifth points of mission defined by the Anglican Communion, he said that people who “seek to transform unjust structures of society” and who “strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth” need to be affirmed “as engaging in mission, as missionaries.”

Canon Comerford’s paper was entitled “Prayer, mission and building the kingdom: the work of USPG.” The conference – ‘Thy Kingdom Come! Prayer and Mission in the building of The Kingdom’ – was also addressed by Bishop Musonda Trevor Mwamba of Botswana; Janet Morley, author of All Desires Known and Bread of Tomorrow; and Bishop William Mchombo of Eastern Zambia.