Stroud District Green Party

12th May 2009

Stroud District Green Party has serious concerns regarding the nomination by NDA and EON of Oldbury (pictured left) as a potential site for a new nuclear power station. See below key points made in submission and here press release re the submission.


 a.. A new generation of nuclear reactors will be built too late to help tackle climate change and their contribution will be too little when it eventually arrives.
 b.. The building of a new generation of nuclear reactors will be too expensive.
 c.. There will be serious problems dealing with the waste generated by a new nuclear power station. The proposed nuclear reactor will use high burn-up fuel, which will produce highly radioactive spent fuel. There is still much uncertainty about how easy it will be to include this spent fuel in the "geological disposal facility" planned for all the nuclear waste we have already created.
 d.. Nuclear reactors pose a risk of serious accident. The NFLA SSA consultation response suggested a full independent assessment of the possible effects of a nuclear accident or emergency (from terrorist attack) on either a reactor or spent fuel stores.
 e.. Uranium mining to obtain supplies of uranium fuel causes irreversible damage to the environment.
 f.. Nuclear reactors cause environmental contamination.
 g.. The building of new nuclear reactors exacerbates problems of nuclear proliferation.
 h.. Climate change will cause sea levels to rise and there will be an increase in major storms, more intense gales and hurricanes and these, in turn, will produce massive storm surges as they pass over the sea. The result will be a "climatic double whammy" that will savage low-lying regions including the Severn Estuary, where the government proposes to site new nuclear power stations.
 i.. Not only will new reactors divert attention and delay the implementation of a local energy revolution in the immediate vicinity of the proposed sites, but they will sap funding and political energy for implementing a green economic stimulus.
j.. "Powerful new epidemiology evidence indicates increased incidences of child leukemias and embryonic cancers near nuclear power stations."

Register and submit comments via the website by 14th May 2009:
http://www.nuclearpowersiting.decc.gov.uk/signup/