The
UK Government has been warned by environmental campaigners that building new
nuclear power stations in a bid to meet emissions targets would be ‘unsafe,
uneconomic, unpopular and largely irrelevant’, on the day that Sellafield’s
Thorp reprocessing plant was forced to close following a serious radioactive
leak.The criticism, delivered by influential green group Friends of the Earth prior to the emergency closure on Monday, comes after reports of a leaked briefing from the new Department of Productivity, Energy and Industry for Secretary of State Alan Johnson that calls for a quick decision on a possible new nuclear programme.
The Thorp incident, although not posing any danger to the public, could reportedly take months to rectify and does not bode well for the future financial viability or public perception of the industry.
"Nuclear power is unsafe, uneconomic, unpopular and largely irrelevant as a practical answer to tackling climate change. Even doubling nuclear capacity would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at most eight per cent, while adding to a toxic legacy of nuclear waste which the taxpayer will most likely have to pay for and which will remain dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years,” said Friends of the Earth Director Tony Juniper.
”Voters did not have proposals for new stations put to them in the Labour Party manifesto and it is a brave Government that thinks it can push this one though without a popular mandate,” he added.
