1 April 2015

Cam­paign­ers from South-west Against Nuclear, Nuclear Free Bris­tol & Bris­tol CND have today shut­down the EDF shut­down at Hink­ley Point B in Som­er­set “We have come here today to car­ry out a citizen’s shut­down. It is incon­ceiv­able that Anglo-French gov­ern­ments think they can get away with extend­ing the life of reac­tors well past their designed life-time, we have cho­sen April fools day for our shut­down to high­light the fact that this is no jok­ing mat­ter”

At this moment Hinkley’s reac­tor 4 is closed for work to extend it’s life­time – thou­sands of work­ers have been brought in at a cost of £40 mil­lion to elec­tric­i­ty con­sumers. Green Par­ty M.E.P Mol­ly Scott Cato says “The esti­mat­ed costs for pro­long­ing the life of age­ing nuclear pow­er sta­tions are almost cer­tain­ly under esti­mates and will esca­late, par­tic­u­lar­ly against a back­drop of falling renew­able ener­gy costs. We need to ramp up renew­able ener­gy capac­i­ty as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, not throw more mon­ey at keep­ing these age­ing dinosaurs going. To do so will leave an even big­ger lega­cy prob­lem with mount­ing nuclear waste dis­pos­al costs well beyond the next 35 years. In real­i­ty we should actu­al­ly extend the waste dis­pos­al costs for the next 1,000+ years to account for the true life costs!”[1]

Said Nuclear Free Bris­tol cam­paign­er Jane Bak­er “This is throw­ing good mon­ey after bad on a worn out and dan­ger­ous reac­tor well past its retire­ment date. Plant Life­time Exten­sions are a fool’s game. We say the safest thing is to shut it down.” All UK reac­tors are age­ing and engi­neers know that machines have the high­est risk of fail­ure at the begin­ning and end of their life­time [2]

Last year EDF who oper­ate the gas cooled nuclear reac­tors in the UK moved the safe­ty lim­its for loss of graphite in the core.” Dori­an Lucas, a nuclear spe­cial­ist at ener­gy con­sul­tan­cy, Inen­co, said “Britain has no choice but to gam­ble with extend­ing the safe­ty lim­its of the country’s age­ing fleet of nuclear pow­er plants to avoid the loom­ing spec­tre of 1970s-style black­outs” [3] This is despite hav­ing been warned back in 2006 by inde­pen­dent Expert John Large of John Large & Assoicates that extend­ing the life of Hink­ley B would be “Gam­bling with Pub­lic safe­ty” [4] Pro­fes­sor Steve Thomas of Green­wich Uni­ver­si­ty qes­tioned the Office for Nuclear Regulation’s mov­ing of the safe­ty goal-posts [5]

Con­cerned cit­i­zen Pan­do­ra Swan of South­west Against Nuclear asked “Since when is an unin­ter­rupt­ed elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply become more impor­tant than pub­lic safe­ty? Besides Hink­ley B is shut­down now & the lights are still on, a quick tran­si­tion to ener­gy effi­cien­cy and 100% renew­ables are what is need­ed for a sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty that doesn’t com­pro­mise on pub­lic safe­ty”

On Feb­ru­ary 13th 2015, in Bel­gium the Nuclear Indus­try reg­u­la­tors found thou­sands of cracks in crit­i­cal com­po­nents at two of their reac­tors. Two lead­ing mate­r­i­al sci­en­tists said that the per­va­sive and unex­pect­ed crack­ing could be relat­ed to cor­ro­sion from nor­mal oper­a­tion, with poten­tial impli­ca­tions for reac­tors world­wide. [6]

Just in case you think we’re over­stat­ing the case – nuclear work­ers at plants across Swe­den Bel­gium & France have raised con­cerns about pri­vati­sa­tion of the indus­try & an appar­ent shift from zero-risk to cal­cu­lat­ed risks which they feel are unac­cept­able in the nuclear indus­try. [7] Many doing dan­ger­ous work in the indus­try are sub-con­trac­tors and so have no path of recourse when their health & safe­ty is com­pro­mised by EDF.[8] Work­ers at EDF’s Chi­non plant in France were pres­sured by man­age­ment not to report defects when inspect­ing reac­tors on their outages.[9] These con­cerns ulti­mate­ly result­ed in EDF work­ers going on hunger-strike on the ninth day the local com­mu­ni­ty joined them & block­ad­ed the plant for three days. This was claimed to be a con­se­quence of the pri­vati­sa­tion of the indus­try in France. With Are­va going bust & EDFs finances look­ing very shaky, what pres­sure are EDF putting on their work­ers at Hink­ley dur­ing this out­age?

Says Row­land Dye of Bris­tol CND “In the U.S util­i­ties are shut­ting down plants despite them hav­ing received per­mis­sion to extend their lives”[10] Nuclear acci­dents are irre­versible and unin­sur­able, caus­ing dev­as­ta­tion for gen­er­a­tions and, to land air and sea. On aver­age there is a major nuclear acci­dent every 10 or 20 years, Not the rare event the indus­try likes to claim but that’s ok because the indus­try are hard at work try­ing to per­suade us that Nuclear acci­dents such as Cher­nobyl & Fukushi­ma have no last­ing con­se­quences.”

The risks of nuclear pow­er are not nec­es­sary when we can pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty sus­tain­ably. Nuclear pow­er pro­vides less than 15% of the UK’s elec­tric­i­ty, and is eas­i­ly replace­able by renew­ables.

https://southwestagainstnuclear.wordpress.com

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For Live Inter­views Row­land Dye 07711214168
Notes to Edi­tors
[1] – con­tact Mol­ly Scott Cato’s media office at media@mollymep.org.uk
[2] – Web­site ded­i­cat­ed to reli­ab­bil­i­ty engi­neer­ing http://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue21/hottopics21.htm
[3] – Util­i­ty Week 28th May 2014 http://www.utilityweek.co.uk/news/eti-seeks-small-scale-nuclear-reactor-proposals/1013232
[4] – John Large quot­ed in the Nu-clear News http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo63.pdf
[5] – Pro­fes­sor Steve Thomas quot­ed in the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/04/uk-may-need-to-gamble-with-nuclear-safety-to-avoid-blackouts
[6] – Green­peace Inter­na­tion­al http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/cracks-in-belgian-nuclear-reactors/blog/52139/
[7] – Noth­ing to Report A Doc­u­men­tary made in France but with Eng­lish voice over & sub­ti­tles pt2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh7kmfi-l7s
[8] – Noth­ing to Report A Doc­u­men­tary made in France but with Eng­lish voice over & sub­ti­tles pt3 http://youtu.be/Kxx5HceTXBE
[9] – Noth­ing to Report A Doc­u­men­tary made in France but with Eng­lish voice over & sub­ti­tles pt4 http://youtu.be/SmZQd0HTMOc
[10] – Noth­ing to Report A Doc­u­men­tary made in France but with Eng­lish voice over & sub­ti­tles pt6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3PGv5QTO‑k
[11] – NWISE Nuclear Mon­i­tor http://www.wiseinternational.org/node/4050