BUILDING nuclear power stations in Ireland is not going to happen. But that won't stop some people from wanting to waste time and resources debating the issue.

So who benefits? The main boosters for nuclear are:

1) Amicus, an ESB trade union desperate to distract attention from the urgentlyneeded reforms that will see its power diminished; 2) the Chinese Communist Party;

3) professional media controversialists who wrongly see this as harmless fun; and 4) Dick Cheney. The more time we waste debating nuclear, the less time and resources we'll have to actually do the more profitable work of improving energy efficiency, deploying technologies we will actually use and making Ireland a world-class site for cleanenergy innovation.

I'm no sandal-wearing, muesli-eating crusty. I believe in free markets and profit-maximising capitalism. I don't give a fiddler's fart about some hippie morality agonising about nuclear technology.

I'm from the country that nuked Japan. Twice.

Nuclear isn't a bad idea because it's wrong. Nuclear is a bad idea because it's stupid. It's crap business and worse economics. As Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute puts it, "nuclear power died of an incurable attack of market forces." If only people would stop trying to revive the corpse.

If nuclear power is such a great deal, why is there not a single cent of private capital at risk in new nuclear building anywhere in the world?

Why, even after the US Congress in 2005 offered to spend $38bn to entirely subsidise the building of six new plants, did business credit rating agency Standard & Poor's leave its risk profile for nuclear precisely the same? S&P calls nuclear a "risky business practice" because most of the issues involved - like where to put the waste (under the Hill of Tara? ) and how to really account for the additional carbon footprint from mining, enrichment and construction - are further away than ever from being resolved.

"Why should we take the word of central planners in Beijing over capitalists in New York?" asks Lovins. "I don't get it. If you take markets seriously, you have to pay attention to market behaviour."

Nuclear advocates conjure up studies to make it seem economic, even arguing it's cheaper, which is breathtakingly dishonest. The cost of a delivered kilowatt hour from nuclear is actually up to twice as much as for wind. If you want to reduce the perkilowatt cost for electricity and reduce carbon emissions, nuclear compares very unfavourably to a combination of 'negawatts' - electricity never used because of conservation measures - and 'micropower'.

'Micropower' - industrial combined heat and power units plus small-scale renewables at your house - used to be considered fringe.

No longer. Micro-power in 2002 surpassed nuclear in worldwide installed capacity and today accounts for onesixth of all generation. And because the model is less industrial age and more like an energy internet, it is more reliable. Oh, and with no union jobs and almost entirely from private capital.

In fact, last year saw a record $100bn in investment in renewables, up from $80bn in 2005 - R&D for solar (where Silicon Valley sees a medium-term goldmine), wind turbine building, next-generation 'smart' electricity grids, biofuels.

If Ireland allows itself to get drawn into a pointless debate over the nuclear red herring, it will be our fault - because the Irish media will have given credibility to a topic that will get a lot of people quite upset, and thus more tuned in.

The future of your kids is worth more than protecting a handful of union jobs in outdated, centrally-planned electricity factories. Because we have shied away from this fight, keeping our energy future in the hands of some relic trade unionists, it's not going to be easy. It may already be too late to save jobs at multinationals which gave up waiting on us to get our energy act together. We may have to buy unions off with a fat pension pay-off along with their P45s. Every minute we waste on this nuclear red herring means that pay-off goes up. Amicus understands this. Do my misguided pro-business friends?