Allerdale and Copeland Green Party

Nuclear Power in the NW in the shadow of Fukushima

Professor John Whitelegg from North Lancashire Green Party restates the case against nuclear energy in the light of the ongoing nuclear catastrophe in Japan

WHEN THE HISTORY of nuclear electricity generation is finally written readers will wonder how a supposedly intelligent species could embrace a technology with such enormous destructive potential. The catalogue of disastrous consequences associated with Chernobyl and Fukushima tell their own story and point unerringly to the need to follow the German and Swiss examples and terminate nuclear electricity generation and shut down the plants.

Nuclear power is a moral and ethical issue of enormous importance. Should we embrace a technology that is used to produce electricity to boil kettles, operate lights and run domestic appliances when the consequences of human error and technical failure are so very dramatic and long lived?

Should we embrace a technology that requires the transport and storage of highly dangerous nuclear materials across the country and across the world often on trains that traverse London or go though all our main population centres in the NW? The risks are too great to be tolerated and the time is long overdue when we should embrace alternative sources of electricity generation especially the so-called renewables (wind, wave, tidal, solar) that do not carry the risks associated with nuclear.

The moral and ethical issue is made considerably easier to handle because scientific analysis shows that we can shut down the nuclear option and meet our electricity demand from efficiency savings microgeneration, renewables and some gas and coal (Stockholm Environment Institute, 2009). We do not need nuclear power.

Getting rid of nuclear power brings about a large number of co-benefits in addition to the elimination of unacceptably high risks. These include large scale job creation of the kind already seen in wind energy in Denmark and photo-voltaics in Germany. The UK has considerable resources of renewable energy in its wave and tidal environment and exploiting these resources can create thousands of jobs in places that really need them including Liverpool, Fleetwood, Morecambe, Heysham, Barrow, Whitehaven and Workington. These jobs will be additional to the many thousands of jobs that will still be needed to deal with decommissioning of Sellafield, Heysham reactors and the other nuclear facilities associated with fuel fabrication in the NW.

A nuclear free future for the NW is something really worth fighting for. The region can be freed from the multiple risks

of nuclear accidents and failures, it can be transformed into a shining beacon of innovation and job creation linked to renewables and the billions of pounds likely to be thrown into the nuclear option can be put to socially useful and sustainable purposes rather than increasing the likelihood of a major ecological disaster.

Reference Stockholm Environment Institute (2009) Europe’s share of the climate challenge

Nuclear Pledge

The nuclearpledge.com website has relaunched to counter the imminent threat of new nuclear power stations in the UK. It encourages people opposed to nuclear power to make a "pledge of resistance" based on what they can reasonably do in their own lives - from writing letters to MPs to withholding the 'nuclear subsidy' from their electricity bills, to engaging in direct actions. "The idea is that everybody can engage in the nuclear resistance in their own way", says founder Oliver Tickell. "Everyone making their pledge sends the vital signal that they are not prepared to be trampled by the nuclear juggernaut.
We now know that a majority in the UK is opposed to new nuclear stations and we need to get our voice heard." Founded in 2006, the site has now 'outsourced' its pledge-taking function to gopetition.co.uk to following problems with its original software that made it vulnerable to spammers. Make your pledge now'
 

The Green Party is the ONLY party opposed to nuclear power and the proposed underground repository which could have devastating effects on our community

(see the Green Party’s press statement on nuclear power below)

The unacceptable risk of nuclear power

04 APRIL 2011

In elections campaigns this spring, for the Welsh Assembly and local elections in England, the Greens are the only political party opposed to nuclear power.

The Greens retain this position for a number of reasons.

1) Nuclear power will not help meet our short-term carbon reduction targets to prevent the risk of runaway climate change.

• In the UK, nuclear power provides less than 4% of our energy.
• We don't run our cars on nuclear power, and we don't heat our homes with nuclear power. And housing (27%) and transport (21%) comprise 48% of the UK's total carbon emissions.
• Globally, even if nuclear power capacity was quadrupled by 2050, the share of nuclear in world energy consumption would be below 10%. Doing that would require one new reactor to be built every 10 days from now until 2050. This would cost over US$10 trillion.

2) Nuclear power carries inherent risks, and is particularly vulnerable to the potentially deadly combination of human error, design failure, and natural disaster.

• Commenting on the risks of nuclear power, Caroline Lucas said:

"Since Chernobyl, nearly 800 significant problems and accidents have been officially reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"If a catastrophe does happen, then the impacts when we're dealing with nuclear power are potentially uniquely catastrophic.

"The nuclear industry is engaged in a massive fight-back, trying to present itself as a safe clean energy of the future. Fukushima reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth."

3) Investing in nuclear power will deter investments in renewable energy.

• In a debate on The World Tonight on Radio 4, Caroline Lucas said:

"It might sound reasonable to say that climate change is so urgent, that we need to use all energy options to address it. . But there's a fixed pot of money, and a
fixed amount of political will.

"If the government is putting money into nuclear, it gives the sign to investors that it's still serious about nuclear, then that means that money isn't going into the kind of supergrid that we need with Europe, and into serious investment in renewables and energy efficiency.

"If we were to make a serious investment in energy efficiency, properly capitalise a Green Investment Bank that would be allowed to lend immediately, put billions into, for example, a street-by-street insulation programme, or really invest in renewables, we wouldn't need nuclear. "

• In contrast to new nuclear power plants, renewable energy and energy efficiency projects are cheaper, quicker, and crucially safer, ways of meeting our energy needs and emission reduction targets.

You can also watch a trailer for a Finnish film called Into Eternity about burying Nuclear Waste at http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/