Plutonium Alert: UK Govt considering export drive!
Friends of the Earth | 24.08.2001 12:14
The UK Government may soon give the green light for the manufacture and world-wide export of plutonium based mixed oxide (or 'MOX') fuel from Sellafield in Cumbria. Please support the online petition below by emailing
UK Environment Secretary Rt Hon Margaret Beckett MP.
Plutonium is used in nuclear weapons and becomes a serious terrorist threat if it were to fall into the wrong hands. Plutonium originates as a waste byproduct of reprocessing spent nulcear fuel. It has no practical economic use.
It's use as a recycled 'fuel' is designed to hide the nuclear industry's embarrasement that it exists.
BNFL however sees MOX as a lifeline to a nuclear powered future. Without it, the company is in serious trouble as its tradtional markets decline and the rationale for reprocessing collapses.
The MOX plant is also a speculative business venture gone wrong. The factory cost more than £400M to build but at best might win contracts for only £200M of "business". This gross unprofitability makes the justification of
plant unlawful. Even so, Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected soon to order that it proceed.
UK Environment Secretary Rt Hon Margaret Beckett MP.
Plutonium is used in nuclear weapons and becomes a serious terrorist threat if it were to fall into the wrong hands. Plutonium originates as a waste byproduct of reprocessing spent nulcear fuel. It has no practical economic use.
It's use as a recycled 'fuel' is designed to hide the nuclear industry's embarrasement that it exists.
BNFL however sees MOX as a lifeline to a nuclear powered future. Without it, the company is in serious trouble as its tradtional markets decline and the rationale for reprocessing collapses.
The MOX plant is also a speculative business venture gone wrong. The factory cost more than £400M to build but at best might win contracts for only £200M of "business". This gross unprofitability makes the justification of
plant unlawful. Even so, Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected soon to order that it proceed.
Friends of the Earth
Homepage:
http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/email_beckett/
Comments
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More bullshit contradictions from our Leaders
24.08.2001 14:30
Let's for argument's sake take seriously the Bush/Blair line that there is a nuclear threat from 'Rogue States' which justifies spending trillions of dollars on the NMD... But then the SAME PEOPLE are putting onto the global market uranium that could be used for such a threat.
Seems to me like the US and UK need a couple of rogue states in order to justify the NMD and that the whole friend/foe international-threat/national-defense thing is being orchestrated and augmented by the arms industry so that they can keep their trade lucrative - no difference between this and drug pushers who try to get their customers hooked...
We have a duty to fight this crap !!!
Alex Windsor