THIRTY POUNDS. That's nuclear planned by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) with the full support of government. The billion pound cost of the Trident system is small in comparison.
These power stations will employ Pressurised Water Reactors (PWRs) - the type used in the Mile disaster in the United States radioactive core came close to melting through concrete ANDY MILLER BRIAN LAWTON explain why we shouldn't accept a nuclear future.
The first of the PWR reactors is to be sited at Sizewell in Suffolk. The inquiry taking place there is intended to give PWRs a clean bill of health. The CEGB SUCHE an £2½million on the presentation of its case. It is so confident that it will go ahead that it has already bulldozed the site.
If it goes ahead the PWR will increase the nuclear generating capacity by 3½ times. That increase represents the energy equivalent of 35 million tons of coal - the entire annual proof the Scottish, CHELON Midland, Kent and coalfields employing a total of 60,000 miners.
The CEGB is embarking on this programme at a time when there is already a 29 percent excess capacity in England and Wales. This is set to rise to 42 per cent as new plant comes on stream between now and 1983.
It is clear that if the Tories and CEGB get their way the future racing the miners is a grim one; the wholesale destruction of the industry and its reduction to a handful of super-pits, which they no doubt intend to sell off to their business friends.
The PWR programme won't just prevent a massive threat to miners jobs. It will increase the danger to all working people.
nuclear power developed the press talked about electricity beoming 'too cheap to meter' Today the nuclear dream has gone sour - but still the electricity board puts huge sums of money into telling is that nuclear power is safe, cheap and that we can't do without it. All of these claims are untrue.
Is it safe? No form of nuclear power is safe.
greater inbuilt danger Pressurised Water pressurised water as a coolant. Leaks in the cooling system can cause the water to flash to steam and a dramatic rise in the temperature in the reactor's core. Thiss a permanent danger because water at high pressure is extremely corrosive.
In theory back-up systems exist to cope with a loss of coolant pressure. At Three Mile Island these systems failed to work properly. This type of accident had been thought impossible. According to the American satety iocialist Challenge 25 February 1983 the ten authorities Island dent failures occured.
the PWR reactor.
container. corrosion, and tive material over countryside.
estimated steam turbine generators.
months following the power station.
Lancashire only just begun.
radioactive gas and water.
The catastrophe anyway.
its cloak of secrecy.
dustry PWR power was first DECULCAL.
itself out of the market.
pensive than electricity fired make nuclear Some types have a CICADGE than others. from coal.
Reactors use anti-nuclear figures they investment golden rule' only one operating failure could occur within the operating system at any one time. But at Three Mile Island six indepenThree Mile Island (TMI) also revealed another inbuilt hazard in the A metal called zirconium is used as a cladding for the rods of nuclear fuel in the reactor Zirconium is very resistant but it also reacts with steam to produce highly explosive hydrogen gas. This happened at TMI when a large hydrogen bubble formed inside the containment vessel. threatened an explosion which would have led to a massive leak of radioacthe surrounding And if all this wasn't enough, design faults in some PWRs have led to leaks of highly radioactive coolant water into the water used to power No one knows what the final cost of the TMI accident will be. In the six the accident the rate of deaths of babies below the age of one double in a ten mile radius of The two million people who live within a fifty mile radius of the plant have been hit by radiation equivalent to 300,000 chest X-rays. The effects of this could take years to show. These two million people live with the increased danger of cancer hanging over their heads. Four years on, the work of clearing up has The TMI station is filled with hundreds of gallons of Three Mile Island was a lucky escape and not an isolated incident.
US Safety Information
has disclosed that of the 2,000 accidents investigated in 1979, no fewer thatn 32 could have ended in the of the core melting through the containment vessel.
Since 1979 no new PWRs have been built in the USA. The fall in orders for new stations had begun four years before. TMI set the seal on a decline that would have taken place This is not to say that the British safety record has been better - the British nuclear industry has simply been more successful in maintaining The Confederation of British Inenthusiastically backs ed the Board of producing 'appraisals systematically biased in favour of nuclear power' The CEGB is Britain's biggest corporation. Its vast assets are meant to be managed in the interests of working people. The lengths to which the CEĞB have been prepared to go in cooking the books show that nothing could be further from the truth Far from being cheaper than electricity from coal, nuclear power is TONY ADAMS died of acute myeloid leukaemia last month.
He used to work at the Magnox nuclear power station Sizewell. He the third nuclear power worker there to die from Leukaemia.
Dr John Bonnel said that Tony's death was pure chance and that there was no evidence of a direct link between death from cancer and exposure to radioactivity at the plant.
Dr Bonnel will be one of the presenting evidence 'experts to the Sizewell B enquiry.
Oh yes. I nearly forgot to mention it - John Bonnel is the chief medical advisor for the CEGB!
LET'S By the CEGBs Drax A, a coal-fired station built in the 1970's is considerably more cost effective than nuclear stations built at the same time. Yet, CEGB planners, no more coal-fired stations will be built.
Do we need nuclear power? The last fall-back argument from the pro-nuclear lobby is that we need nuclear power to fill the 'energy gap' as our energy needs increase and finite fossil fuels such as oil and gas run out. But this argument rebounds on itself. Firstly because depends on uranium — which is itself in very limited supply. It is estimated that currently known enough to last for forty years. will be prohibitively expensive at just the time when, we are told, we'll be needing nuclear power the most are banking on the development of a SUCW Breeder Reactor (FBR). In theory the type or reacio!
FBR produces more fuel than it consumes. Sounds too good to be true? It The FBR will dangerous reactor yet. It uses as its fuel plutonium which is also what is used in nuclear weapons. The coolant is liquid sodium which explodes on contact with air or water. the main catch is that the plutonium 'bred by the reactors needs to be reprocessed — a highly dangerous and risky proown admission according the reactor.
surance policy close existing nuclear power Uranium will be running out, or The government and the CEGB the Fast be the most falling This was previous year unent.
by Besides this the methods of reprocessing tried at industrial level give rise to large plutonium losses which could exceed the gains made in Far from being the prudent in supporters try to make out, the PWR programme is a reckless gamble. While they plan to mines and halt the development of new ones, the Tories are banking on a technology which may never even work.
Nuclear power can only be used to produce electricity. Electricity itself only produces only 11 percent of energy used — the nuclear contribution currently represents a tiny 1½ per cent. This is what has been achieved after 25 years and at a cost of f20 billion. The PWR programme costing £35 billion will increase the proportion to 7 per cent (based on current levels of consumption). If energy consumption increases as the CEGB planners continue to insist, nuclear power will make a marginal contribution - at a huge cost.
Over the last ten years electricity consumption has been continuously The CEGB planners insist that there is a rising demand. Consumption fell by an average of one pe cent a year between 1973 and 1980 despite continued enomic growth. The recession had caused an even greater fall - in 1980 consump tion was down 5 percent on the How nuclear TOP officials at British Nuclear Fuels Ltd decided from the start cover the facts about redioactive leak frem their Wind scale plant because they feared repercussions moment in the site's develop Even when they were urger officials the GoverTment's Health and Safety tive to make no 1803 they still sald nothing, although by staying silent they contravened the spirit of the Nuclear Inatalia.
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estimated cost of the new generation of ten power stations
around 40 per cent more expensive. Just a coincid- ence?
PUT IT THE OCEAN FLOOR.
Cover-up went wrong