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Letter: How Can the Government Still Promote Nuclear Power

Posted on: Monday, 31 October 2005, 09:01 CST

By PAT KNOWLES

Dear Editor, - The latest nuclear safety scare over the nuclear dump site at Drigg in Cumbria (a mere six miles from the controversial Sellafield plant) reveals that yet another site presents a nuclear hazard.

Officials from the Environment Agency are warning that the radiation levels at the dump could far exceed acceptable levels should further waste be dumped on this site.

The local green councillor and sustainable development expert John Whitelegg claims that children's health is already at risk.

Coun Green said: "The area surrounding Sellafield is already the most radioactive in the world, with a staggering rate of childhood leukaemia ten times the national average.

How can the Government continue to present nuclear as a safe, clean solution to the problems of climate change especially after the incident at Sellafiels only a few weeks ago?

When the first nuclear power stations were built at enormous cost, we were reassured that once they came on stream, they would be cost effective but it was not long before news of frightening incidents began to leak out while evidence also showed that stations built near the coast were discharging waste products into the sea.

Studies of this contamination were difficult to prove in the face of Government denial but this has at last been achieved: the most damning evidence emmerges as the existing stations reach the end of their life span and the cost of decomissioning was plain.

How can the Government justify building more nuclear stations when their early claims of safe, clean and cheap energy production are proved to be false. Even more important, what can they now explore as sustainable alternatives

PAT KNOWLES Green Party

Source: Birmingham Post; Birmingham (UK)

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