ANYONE who saw The China Syndrome on television recently would have been entitled to conclude that there is something scary and sinister about the nuclear industry. That scene in the control room when Jack Lemmon and his colleagues desperately to prevent the power station overheating seemed to confirm the validity of Murphy's Law - anything that can go wrong twill go wrong, and at the worst possible time.

That the film was released at around the same time as a real nuclear accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island power station in Pennsylvania gave it a powerful resonance. Three Mile Island and The China Syndrome combined to deliver a body blow to the nuclear industry, leading to the cancellation of several multi million dollar reactors in the US and elsewhere.

Public fears about the nuclear in much more serious accident at Chernobyl in the Ukraine 10 years ago this April. The spread of its deadly radioactive plume across - northern Europe, after a virtual "meltdown" at the plant, dramatically underlined how exposed we all are to the risk of nuclear accidents in faraway places. Traces of it were found even on sheep in Donegal.

It is no wonder, therefore, that people living on the east coast shivered over the revelation last September, via a court case, that there had been a serious accident at the ageing Magnox nuclear reactor at Wylfa, on Anglesea, over two years earlier.

As far as is known, the Irish authorities were not notified of this accident when it happened, in what was surely a breach of the common courtesy one might expect from our nearest neighbour. The people of Ireland, and Britain, were kept in the dark.

Nuclear Electric, the operators of Wylfa, ended up having to pay a fine of £250,000. But the case demonstrated that, the remaining Magnox reactors on Britain's west coast, all of which have passed their use by date, represent a continuing - and quite incalculable - risk to people on the east coast of Ireland.

And this risk is more threatening than the day to day discharges of radioactive materials from the operations of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd, at Sellafield.

Last autumn, the High Court decided to allow four Dundalk residents concerned about Sellafield's impact on public health and the environment to take a legal action against BNFL.

TODAY, the Supreme Court will begin hearing the appeal by BNFL, which is arguing, essentially, that the Irish courts have no jurisdiction in the matter. And although the Government is named as a co defendant in the action by the Dundalk residents, counsel for the Attorney General will be in there supporting them against BNFL.

Indeed, depending on the outcome, the Government might even agree to defray their legal expenses.

However, it is of little consolation us that the British government, in a White Paper last year on the future of its nuclear energy policy, envisages that the older Magnox power stations, as well as the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plants, will remain in public ownership under a new government owned company. This will ultimately be integrated with BNFL and Nirex UK, another public company charged with the unenviable task of dealing with nuclear waste.

The rest of the industry, and its more modern factors, will be transferred to the private sector.

Of course this makes sense - in crude economic terms. It would "have been impossible to privatise the entire industry, not least because even sharp suited analysts in the City of London were horrified by the long term costs of managing nuclear waste.

For example, there are already several tonnes of deadly plutonium in sealed tanks at Sellafield. Plutonium has a "half life" of 24,000 years; in other words, after this length of time, it will have lost only half of its radioactivity.

After another 24,000 years, as Avril Doyle has noted, the radio activity "will have decayed to a quarter of its original amount, and so on, halving itself again every 24,000 years.

Thus, plutonium will pose a measurable hazard for hundreds of thousands of years. Ordinary people could be forgiven if they find the length of time incomprehensible; it is like contemplating infinity.

But to put it in perspective, just think that it is less than 1,000 years since William the Conqueror landed at Hastings.

In this context, the arrogance of today's nuclear industry is surely breathtaking. What it expects, indeed requires, of countless generations of human beings, into the far distant future - effectively forever - is that they will look after the deadly waste which it inevitably generates.

This means containing it, in one way or another, so that none of its radioactivity leaks into air, soil or water, because of the potentially catastrophic effects on human health and the environment.

And we've already seen those effects following the Chernobyl disaster just 10 years ago, when thousands of people were condemned to a slow death from cancer and a vast acreage of agricultural land was rendered useless for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years.

IT IS against this bleak and terrifying background that we must view Nirex UK's plans for a "deep waste repository" (under ground nuclear dump, in ordinary language) near Sellafield.

For the moment, all the company wants is permission for a "rock characterisation facility" - an Orwellian formulation, if ever there was one - to test the geology and hydrogeology of the rocks some 700 metres below Longlands Farm, in Gosforth.

However, having spent at least £195 million on this project, there every reason to believe that Nirex will come back in four or five years' time with fully fleshed out plans for an underground dump at the same site, with the capacity to contain 400,000 cubic metres of low and intermediate level nuclear wastes.

Nirex cannot possibly guarantee that such a dump would remain safe thousands of years, not least because of the complex and changing geology of the area.

Not only that. Since the waste will be deposited on an irretrievable basis, it will not be monitored. So nobody will know whether it is in danger of leaking out. But there's more, Nirex, as the QC representing Ireland at the current inquiry complained, actually sees the Irish Sea "as a safety device to dilute and disperse radioactive releases that the UK is not willing or able to accommodate on its own territory".

The Government, quite properly, regards this as totally unacceptable and has signalled by the presentation of a very impressive case at the Nirex planning inquiry in bleak, run down Cleater Moor, five miles from Sellafield - that it will almost - certainly take legal action against Britain if the RCF scheme is approved by Mr John Gummer, the Environment Secretary.

The pity is that it took so long for an Irish Government to wake up to what was going on.