The Government is planning a new nuclear whitewash that will waste £billions of taxpayers’ money.
They rushed to judgment on Fukushima before the facts were known and they have excluded ‘cost’ from their review of the UK new nukes programme.
In the past two days, France is alerted to the spiraling cost resulting from Fukushima. And Greenpeace has acted to block the rush to build unaffordable and uninsurable nuclear plants.
The French nuclear safety watchdog has asked EDF to fix a series of “gaps and weaknesses” in its €6bn ($8.6bn) flagship project to build a next-generation atomic plant in northern France, putting more pressure on a programme already beset by spiralling costs and delays. In a letter to the company, sent at the end of June but which came to light on Wednesday, the country’s atomic watchdog highlighted 13 areas of concern about what is one of the world’s biggest and most important nuclear power developments. The 1,650-megawatt plant at Flamanville in Normandy is the first new reactor to be built in France in 15 years.
Greenpeace UK has today (August 26, 2011) served legal papers on the government for unlawfully failing to take into account the implications of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in their future planning for the building of new nuclear power stations at sites in Britain. In a 1611 page legal submission to the High Court, Greenpeace is seeking a Judicial Review of the government’s decision not to take into account specialist advice on the implications of the Fukushima disaster on future reactors, which it has an obligation to do.
The case made by Greenpeace against the government and the secretary of state Chris Huhne includes: That the secretary of state unlawfully chose to press ahead with his plans for new nuclear reactors at eight sites in England and Wales (through the Nuclear National Policy Statement) without waiting to take into account relevant considerations arising from the Fukushima disaster; That the government appears to have regarded Dr Mike Weightman’s Interim Report into the lessons from Fukushima as a ‘green light’ for proceeding with the Nuclear National Policy Statement even though that the report highlighted areas of serious concern requiring further investigation and that Dr Weightman’s review remains ongoing;
That communications between government officials and nuclear companies seems to show that there was no real intention to properly consider the implications of the disturbing events at Fukushima with an open mind as to what careful analysis of those events and their aftermath might reveal about the safety of nuclear power and the UK’s ability to respond to a major nuclear incident
That he failed to fully consider all the risks of flooding to a nuclear site despite the evidence of how flooding affected operations at Fukishima. Five of the eight sites identified for new reactors are wholly or partly in areas classified by the Environment Agency as being areas of high flood risk; That he failed to wait for analysis of the lessons from Fukushima on how electricity supply, both on and off site, including back up sources and supplies can be guaranteed in the event of an emergency over suitably long timescales in order to provide vital cooling for reactors.
The root causes for the Fukushima station blackout and loss of power supply have not yet been properly analysed; That the Nuclear National Policy Statement fails to fully consider the lessons from Fukushima on the need for emergency planning for on and off site consequences of a nuclear accident involving a much wider emergency situation with radiation releases over a prolonged time and involving a need to evacuate and re-house large numbers of people. The Japanese emergency planning system demonstrably failed to provide early and sufficient protection for the civilian population in Japan.
Greenpeace UK 26th Aug 2011
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