Hinkley Point blockaders declare victory over EDF Energy

3/10/2011
For about nine hours, we block­ad­ed the nuclear pow­er sta­tion with up to 400 peo­ple. This was the biggest anti nuclear pow­er action in Britain for quite some years. It marked the begin­ning of a new anti nuclear pow­er move­ment in this coun­try, and you all made this pos­si­ble.
This time, the block­ade was tol­er­at­ed by EDF and the police. Only one per­son was arrest­ed when walk­ing on the pub­lic foot­path along the fence.
He was stopped and searched by police, and arrest­ed for pos­ses­sion of a craft knife. Luck­i­ly, he was lat­er released from Taunton police sta­tion with­out charge.

Those of you who came to the camp after the action are aware of a police inci­dent: a mobile CCTV vehi­cle of Avon & Som­er­set police drove onto the camp site, film­ing all the time. After a while it was pos­si­ble to per­suade them to leave the site.
Stop New Nuclear sees this as a provo­ca­tion, and we made it very clear that this inci­dent destroyed a lot of the trust between the police and the cam­paign that had been built in the run-up to the block­ade.
The police Sil­ver Com­mand has since sent an ‘apol­o­gy email’ that says they’ve delet­ed the mate­r­i­al.

The camp, demon­stra­tion, and block­ade of Hink­ley Point was not a one-off, nor was it the end — it should be the begin­ning of a pow­er­ful and cre­ative anti nuclear pow­er move­ment in Britain, that will stop the plans for eight new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in its tracks. To make this hap­pen, we need you!
We are there­fore organ­is­ing a Stop New Nuclear gath­er­ing in Bris­tol in Novem­ber (unfor­tu­nate­ly, we have not been able to set the date yet), to dis­cuss and plan the next cam­paigns and actions against nuclear new build in Britain. Please get involved — we need to grow as a move­ment, and this means we need more peo­ple organ­is­ing our actions. Please check back for updates and reg­is­ter for the Stop New Nuclear gath­er­ing at http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/gathering2011. More infor­ma­tion will be avail­able soon.

If you have any ideas for action, please share them in our ideas forum at http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/ideasforum.

News from Hink­ley Point
The Envi­ron­ment Agency has extend­ed the dead­line for objec­tions to EDF’s envi­ron­men­tal per­mit appli­ca­tion until 15 Decem­ber. This means we now have much more time to col­lect hun­dreds or even thou­sands of objec­tions. Please down­load the objec­tion sheet from http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/objections-discharges, print it, sign it, and send it of to: PSC, PO Box 4404, Sheffield, S9 4WF

Press release:

Anti-nuclear pro­test­ers have declared the mass block­ade at Hink­ley Point today as a vic­to­ry over EDF Ener­gy. The nine-hour block­ade in Som­er­set attract­ed sup­port­ers from all over the UK. Sev­er­al came from as far afield as Ire­land, Ger­many and Bel­gium.

Stop New Nuclear spokesper­son, Andreas Speck, said the block­ade has put the gov­ern­ment and EDF on the back foot. ‘Fol­low­ing the inter­est this block­ade has attract­ed, both region­al­ly and nation­al­ly, the gov­ern­ment and EDF can no longer claim that the we need nuclear ener­gy to keep the lights on.’

He con­tin­ued: ‘Ger­many has com­mit­ted to a nuclear-free future with­out buy­ing nuclear pow­er from France or build­ing new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment is look­ing at a decen­tralised ener­gy mod­el with a mix of renew­ables and Com­bined Heat and Pow­er (CHP) to bridge the gap left by with­draw­al from nuclear. If Ger­many can do it, why can’t we?’

Ang­ie Zel­ter, who hit the head­lines in 1996 when she and oth­er activists attacked a Hawk jet des­tined to sup­press protests in East Tim­or (and was sub­se­quent­ly cleared of crim­i­nal dam­age by a jury), blast­ed EDF’s claims that Hink­ley Point is sus­tain­able.

She added: ‘Over its life­time, Hink­ley will con­sume more ener­gy than it pro­duces — if you take into account the ener­gy used to extract ura­ni­um and the pow­er need­ed to store radioac­tive waste for hun­dreds of years. It doesn’t add up.’

Zel­ter said the risk of flood­ing is an increas­ing wor­ry. ‘Locals are well aware of the con­stant dan­ger of flood­ing around Hink­ley,’ she con­tin­ued. ‘We have infor­ma­tion from work­ers there that sev­er­al years ago, flood­wa­ter breached the plant’s retain­ing walls.’

She added that this was a par­tic­u­lar con­cern now that EDF wants to build two new mega reac­tors at Hink­ley. ‘Radioac­tive waste from the pro­posed new ERP reac­tors will be so tox­ic that it will have to be stored on the site for over 100 years. With the growth in extreme weath­er con­di­tions there is no guar­an­tee that this waste can be stored safe­ly.’

And Zel­ter blast­ed the gov­ern­ment for claim­ing that nuclear is the only solu­tion to com­bat­ing cli­mate change. ‘If the gov­ern­ment can spend bil­lion renew­ing Tri­dent mis­siles and fight­ing Gaddafi in Libya, why can’t they find the mon­ey to build tru­ly sus­tain­able ener­gy sys­tems that would cre­ate a great many more jobs than the nuclear sec­tor can?’

The mass block­ade was described by Stop New Nuclear organ­is­er, Andreas Speck, as a, ‘cel­e­bra­tion of dis­sent’ with pro-nuclear sup­port­ers being enter­tained by a Welsh choir and pop­u­lar fes­ti­val band, Seize The Day.

A man arrest­ed on a foot­path close to the block­ade was lat­er released with­out charge.

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Reports, pic­tures and video.
More pho­tos
Camp pho­tos
Bridg­wa­ter demon­stra­tion
Block­ade of Hink­ley Point
Some pho­tos and some more
CND uploaded pho­tos here
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