I AM in total agreement with Dr Scott Marmion (Letters, October 7) with regard to building more nuclear power plants but using thorium rather than uranium.

Unfortunately there have been accidents in nuclear power stations which have blighted the furtherance of nuclear technology to the detriment of building more of these sources of electrical power.

However, one should look at the remarkably few nuclear accidents in a measured way rather than condemning nuclear out of hand.

Probably the most serious accident happened at the Chernobyl power station in Russia, which resulted in the town of Chernobyl being evacuated and the damaged reactor building being entombed under concrete.

Then there was the tsunami-caused incident at Fukushima in Japan when the cooling water pumps were flooded and put out of action, resulting in the reactors overheating and releasing dangerous amounts of radioactivity.

The accident at the Three Mile Island power station in the US was another.

Possibly the first nuclear accident was at the Pile No 1 at Windscale (now known as Sellafield), when there was a huge fire started in the Pile.

The common factor in these accidents, bar Fukushima, was human error and not anything to do with nuclear.

So what does this diatribe lead to?

That Dr Marmion is correct and we should build more nuclear power plants using thorium.

Philip Roe, Roman Avenue South, Stamford Bridge