22nd July 2008

Martin Whiteside, Stroud Green Party Parliamentary Candidate calls on David Drew MP to give up his support for nukes

You have to wonder how the nuclear industry manages to maintain any credibility. We now discover that yet again the estimated cost of cleaning up Britain's atomic waste - which includes locally Berkeley and Oldbury - has risen by a further £10bn. We could have funded two London Olympics just from the rises in the estimated costs over the past two years!

Three times we have seen governments try to find a way to dispose of Britain’s nuclear waste: in 1981, 1987 and 1997. Three times they have failed. Now they are trying again by asking local communities to volunteer to host a repository for radioactive waste accumulated from 55 years of nuclear power and weapons. Will our MP David Drew, who has pushed to see the renaissance of nuclear power, be seeking a local site for the nuke waste?

Margaret Thatcher once tried to build ten nuclear power stations. Fifteen years later, one reactor had been built at twice its original cost. She had been defeated by the economics of nuclear power. Gordon Brown will also be defeated, but how much of our tax payers money will he waste in the process? A prototype for the reactors proposed by Labour for the UK is currently being built in Finland. It is over two years late and more than £1 billion over budget!

Nuclear power will take too long and is too expensive to improve Britain’s energy security or to help it meet the urgent challenge of climate change. Even the government’s advisers, the Sustainable Development Commission, concluded that a combination of increased energy efficiency, renewable sources and clean coal could better meet future energy needs. David Drew are you still wedded to nuclear or will you join us in a genuinely Green, safe and sustainable future?

Councillor Martin Whiteside. Hillside, Claypits Lane, Lypiatt, Stroud, Glos
Stroud Green Party Parliamentary Candidate

Notes:
(i) http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/18/nuclearpower.energy?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/nuclear/nuclear-costs-head-for-the-moon-20080717
(ii) The capital cost of nuclear power has tripled in the past three years.