15th December 2005

Malcolm Lynden's claim to represent all the residents of South Gloucestershire when he calls for more nuclear reactors at Oldbury is quite extraordinary (Front page, Thornbury Gazette 9/12/05). Setting aside that Oldbury is an entirely unsuitable site which is increasingly at serious risk from rising sea levels, the arguments for nuclear are completely flawed.

Nuclear power is more expensive than renewables and not the answer to climate change: it is neither carbon emission free nor would new power stations come on stream for at least ten years. No safe solution has yet been devised to store its toxic radioactive waste, some of which is dangerous for thousands of years. It also leaves us vulnerable to the possibility of nuclear accidents or even terrorist attack.

Malcolm Lynden in his role as 'independent chair' of the Oldbury Site Stakeholders Group has previously attacked the Green party's concerns re safety at Oldbury. Yet we still have no satisfactory answer about the huge concerns raised by independent scientists of running reactors at Oldbury with 35% depleted uranium cores.

Furthermore the history of BNFL and safety is not great: Sellafield reprocessing plant this year saw 83,000 litres of radioactive liquid leak. An internal investigation found that despite 100 warnings including alarms, no action was taken for 9 months because workers considered the new plant could not fail. It even transpires the reason
for the 'accident' was because in construction a safety device was 'inexplicably' not fitted.

The Buncefield fire shows accidents can happen. We do not need to take the risk. We need to use a safe energy mix of renewable energy sources, cleaned up fossil fuels and energy efficiency measures - all of which are safe, effective and proven technologies that are available now.

Martin Whiteside
Green Party Stroud District Councillor