News

CANE have been drafting a response to the consultation on the set of national policy statements which were published on the 9 November, documents which amounted to around 1,500 pages in all, excluding all of the references to external documents. Our response was submitted in time for it to be automatically sent to the Environment and Climate Change Select Committee for its consideration as well as to DECC.

The papers contained a series of unsubstantiated assertions, excused on the grounds of overwhelming national need, an excuse which itself does not stand up. CANE await an outbreak of common sense among ministers and would be pleased to hear that the government will not be relying on a unsustainable, costly and unsafe technology to solve our climate change problems.

As recently as five years ago we were told that nuclear power would never be economic and would not form part of our generating mix. It made no sense to replace one unsustainable and polluting technology with another. It is interesting to speculate why the government has changed its mind. Costs of decommissioning these leviathans is huge. We are currently spending around £1 billion a year on decommissioning and although we expected the programme to be finished in 20 to 30 years, it now seems that it will be at least 70 years before the legacy of Sizewell A and B are finally removed from our Suffolk countryside.

You may be aware that there was a significant leak of cooling water at the Sizewell A power station around 2 years ago. The water leaked from a corroded pipe in the cooling ponds. This corrosion had been observed at similar power stations in the USA and CANE was amazed that the UK regulators did not follow up these incidients. The leak went totally undetected by the site safety systems and was only discovered by a worker who saw water on the floor. We must thank this person for his vigilance, as the consequences of it being undetected could have been a significant release of radiation. As it was, we are told that the leak was small and very little contaminated water was discharged to the sea. If this is the case, why was the public not told of the leak when it occured and had to wait for two years and a request under the Freedom of Information Act for the details to be released?

CANE is concerned that there is considerable uncertainty about the effects of low level radiation, with studies in Germany and the UK demonstrating a possible link between childhood cancer and the distance one lives from a nuclear power station. Given this uncertainty, and the failure of the sites safety systems, it is surprising that the operators were not prosecuted for the breach of their licence conditions. CANE is trying to find out why.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) stated that their latest estimates of the cost of decommissioning is around £70 to £80 billion and that the final outturn costs may even be twice that amount. If this cost were to be added into the price of electricity, then nuclear would be the most expensive electricity in the world. Why do the government find nuclear so attractive? Beats us!