Nuclear Power Conferences in London Hit by Protests

Tues­day, 18 May 2010 — CAMPAIGNERS from Lon­don and SE Eng­land Stop Nuclear Pow­er [1] protest­ed out­side the Financ­ing Nuclear Pow­er and Nuclear Inter­im Stor­age con­fer­ences in cen­tral Lon­don today. They invit­ed del­e­gates to invest in a green future instead of nuclear ener­gy and demand­ed an end to nuclear waste pro­duc­tion.

The first port of call for the three pro­test­ers, two of whom were dressed in white over­alls, was the Financ­ing Nuclear Pow­er con­fer­ence at the plush Crowne Plaza hotel near St James’s Park. They held up a ban­ner that read “Green Solu­tions Not Nuclear Green­wash” and leaflet­ed del­e­gates and pass­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic out­side the main entrance to the hotel for over an hour and a half, close­ly watched by hotel secu­ri­ty staff through­out.

Two of them then moved on to the Nuclear Inter­im Stor­age con­fer­ence, which was tak­ing place at Dex­ter House at Roy­al Mint Court, adja­cent to Tow­er Bridge. Stand­ing in the court­yard out­side the entrance/exit to the build­ing host­ing the con­fer­ence, they held up a larg­er ban­ner that read “Green Our Future, No to Nuclear” and exchanged ban­ter with del­e­gates and oth­er users of the build­ing on their lunch break. Secu­ri­ty guards were called and the pro­test­ers were told they were on pri­vate prop­er­ty and had to leave, but the pro­test­ers stood their ground. A Police Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Offi­cer then appeared and also tried to get the pro­test­ers to leave, but they refused. Fur­ther back up was called, but the pro­test­ers left before it arrived, hav­ing been there for an hour.

The incom­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive-Lib­er­al Demo­c­rat coali­tion gov­ern­ment has said it will con­tin­ue with the Labour gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy of allow­ing ten new nuclear pow­er sta­tions to be built in Eng­land and Wales. Min­is­ters have said that no direct pub­lic sub­si­dies will be offered for new nuclear build, although a car­bon floor price is pro­posed. Nowhere in the world has a nuclear pow­er sta­tion ever been built with­out pub­lic sub­sidy.

For five decades, the nuclear indus­try has failed to find a per­ma­nent solu­tion for its radioac­tive waste, which remains dan­ger­ous for tens of thou­sands of years. [2] With cur­rent waste stor­age facil­i­ties at Sizewell B in Suf­folk near­ly full, plans are in place to build a new “tem­po­rary” store where waste from the reac­tor will be kept indef­i­nite­ly in the absence of a per­ma­nent solu­tion. This is before con­sid­er­ing the waste from any new reactor(s), which would be more radioac­tive and remain too hot to trans­port for 160+ years.

Cam­paign­er Daniel Vies­nik, 35, from Lon­don, says: “Con­trary to the non­sense that you hear from the nuclear spin doc­tors and their polit­i­cal mouth­pieces, nuclear pow­er is a dirty, dan­ger­ous and expen­sive tech­nol­o­gy that diverts essen­tial invest­ment from gen­uine green alter­na­tives like ener­gy effi­cien­cy and renew­able and decen­tralised ener­gy. It car­ries the risks of nuclear weapons pro­lif­er­a­tion, nuclear ter­ror­ism and a Cher­nobyl-type cat­a­stro­phe [3,4]. Why waste mon­ey on nuclear white ele­phants and dump more nuclear waste on local com­mu­ni­ties when we could build a gen­uine­ly sus­tain­able, nuclear-free, zero car­bon future?”

All images may be repro­duced free of charge for non-com­mer­cial use if cred­it­ed to D. Vies­nik. Please e‑mail for high res ver­sions.

Notes:

1. Lon­don and SE Eng­land Stop Nuclear Pow­er is part of the Stop Nuclear Pow­er Net­work, a UK-based non-hier­ar­chi­cal grass­roots net­work of activists tak­ing action against nuclear pow­er and sup­port­ing sus­tain­able alter­na­tives.
http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net
network[at]stopnuclearpoweruk.net

2. Nuclear Decom­mis­sion­ing Author­i­ty’s Oxide Fuel Top­ic Strat­e­gy (2010) indi­cates that seri­ous ques­tions remain with­in the nuclear indus­try itself over whether any solu­tion for per­ma­nent dis­pos­al of radioac­tive waste will ever be found.
http://www.nda.gov.uk/documents/upload/draft-oxide-fuel-topic-strategy-gate‑0.pdf

3. EDF nuclear reac­tor car­ries ‘Cher­nobyl-size’ explo­sion risk — Guardian, 7 March 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/07/edf-nuclear-reactor-chernobyl-risk

4. Aca­d­e­mics demand inde­pen­dent inquiry into new nuclear reac­tors – Guardian, 11 March 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/11/independent-inquiry-nuclear-power-stations

vd2012-imc [at] yahoo.co.uk
http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net