Green MLA hits out at UK nuclear power plans

British government plans for a new generation of nuclear power stations are disastrous for national and environmental security, it was claimed today.

The North’s first ever Green Party Assembly Member Brian Wilson cited ten reasons why nuclear power should be opposed.

“The reality is that nuclear power is not just unsafe but unsustainable,” the North Down MLA claimed.

“The waste disposal problem has never been resolved by the nuclear industry. No-one has resolved the challenge of long-term storage of nuclear waste.

“Nuclear is not safe. Fifty years after Windscale (Sellafield) and 20 years after Chernobyl, scientists cannot guarantee against human or operational error and the risk of catastrophic consequences, along with the secretive culture of the nuclear industry.

“This is a compelling argument for rejecting the nuclear option.”

Mr Wilson also argued the cost of providing back-up-power for nuclear stations was prohibitive.

He said renewable sources could provide all of our necessary power.

“Our untapped wind resources are equivalent to many times the total output of our power suppliers,” he said.

“There is no need to revisit nuclear power, which imposes unacceptable risks.”

The Green Party MLA said nuclear power would not solve climate change.

A doubling in global nuclear power by 2050 would only lead to a five per cent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions – less than one tenth of the reductions scientists said were needed.

Mr Wilson insisted energy efficiency provided a better economic and environmental return, delivering up to ten times the gains in comparison to money spent on nuclear.

Nuclear power, he claimed, would not heat homes nor power cars.

“As oil runs out we may have to power our cars by hydrogen or by electric battery power,” he said.

“Both these forms of stored energy are generated from electricity. It makes more sense to use intermittent wind power rather than nuclear power to provide them.”

The North Down MLA warned nuclear power led to nuclear weapons, arguing in the United States and the UK had been inseparable from nuclear proliferation.

Mr Wilson also said nuclear power would only reinforce the problem of more energy being wasted in the centralised electricity transmission and generation system than is used heating every house and apartment in the country.

He also warned nuclear power would further deplete uranium resources by the middle of this century.

The Green MLA was responding to Business Secretary John Hutton’s announcement in the House of Commons that a new generation of privately-constructed nuclear power plants was needed to replace Britain’s ageing reactors.

With a third of the UK’s generating capacity coming off-line within the next 20 years, and increasing reliance on imported energy, it was clear investment was needed in a range of new infrastructure, he told MPs.

“The government believes it is in the public interest that new nuclear power stations should have a role to play in this country’s future energy mix alongside other low-carbon sources, that it would be in the public interest to allow energy companies the option of investing in new nuclear power stations and that the government should take active steps to open up the way to the construction of new nuclear power stations,” he said.

“It will be for energy companies to fund, develop and build new nuclear power stations in the UK, including meeting the full costs of decommissioning and their full share of waste management costs.”