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Nuclear bailout won't work

stuart | 05.11.2002 18:42

Neither the UK government's illegal loan to British Energy, nor Innogy's proposal to buy nuclear electricity for the next ten years, are likely to work. Nuclear power is a dead duck, and the mess it has left behind will cost over a thousand pounds per taxpayer.

The European Commission has declared that the government's emergency loan to British Energy is illegal. (See  http://www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk) Now, the Times has reported that rival electricity company Innogy has offered to buy British Energy's nuclear electricity for the next ten years. As well as trapping consumers in a nuclear treadmill, this plan takes no account of the increasing unreliability of nuclear reactors as they get older, and so is doomed to failure when the reactors get too old.

As pro-nuclear energy minister Brian Wilson mulls whether or not to extend the already illegal loan to British Energy after 29 November, he is faced with a lose-lose decision. Whatever he decides, taxpayers' money will be flushed down what Friends of the Earth ( http://www.foe.org.uk) calls the "radioactive toilet".

When the cleanup costs of military nuclear sites, BNFL's Sellafield, and all the UK's nuclear reactors are added together, the cost is more than a thousand pounds per taxpayer.

Many of Britain's nuclear reactors are amongst the most dangerous and uneconomic in Western Europe. And as for Sellafield, one issue that unites all parties in Northern Ireland, loyalist and republican, is that Sellafield should close. ( http://www.nirs.org/mononline/FULLSTEAMAHEAD.htm)

stuart