EDF Energy bought British Energy to gain access to sites for nuclear new
build. It subsequently sold a 20% stake to Centrica, better known to the public as Scottish Gas or British Gas. They aim to build new nuclear at Hinkley Point, Somerset plus other sites around the UK.
The Nuclear
Companies
EDF Energy bought British Energy to gain access to sites for nuclear new
build. It subsequently sold a 20% stake to Centrica, better known to the public as Scottish Gas or British Gas. They aim to build new nuclear at Hinkley Point, Sizewell, Heysham,
Hartlepool, and Bradwell. German RWE, in Britain better known as RWE npower, bought sites at Kirksanton and Braystones in Cumbria for new nuclear. In addition, RWE formed a joint venture with another German utility company, E.on, under the name Horizon
Nuclear Power, to develop nuclear power atWylfa and Oldbury. Spanish Iberdrola, which bought Scottish Power in 2007, formed a joint venture with French GDF Suez and Scottish and Southern Energy (trading as SWALEC, Southern Electric, Scottish Hydro Electric and
Atlantic Electric and Gas) to build a new nuclear power station at Sellafield.

Two reactor designs are presently on the table. Areva's EPR and Westinghouse's AP1000.
Sheffield Forgemasters has recently been in the media, because it received an 80million loan from the government to enable it to install the UK’s first 15,000 tonne forging press,
making it one of only five companies worldwide capable of producing safety critical forgings for nuclear power reactors.

Nuclear power: low-level
radiation is not harmless
The government and the nuclear industry claim that the low level of radiation emitted by nuclear power stations during their normal operation is not harmful. Radiation also occurs
naturally, they argue, and the small amount of radiation added by nuclear power stations is insignificant.

However, no dose of radiation is safe. Radiation damage is cumulative.

Each dose received adds to the risk of
developing cancer, or mutating genes
in the reproductive cells. The radioactive elements “routinely” emitted from nuclear power plants into the air can be inhaled, or ingested when they concentrate in the food chain – in vegetables and fruit – and are then further concentrated in various internal organs in humans.
Similarly, the millions of gallons of cooling water flushed daily from a nuclear reactor into the always adjoining water source (lake, river or sea) contaminate it with radioactive materials
which bioconcentrate hundreds of times in the aquatic food chain.

In 2008, a major German study found large increases in infant cancers near all German nuclear power stations. This socalled KiKK study (Childhood cancers in the vicinity of nuclear
power stations) reported a 2.2fold increase in leukaemia risks and a 1.6fold increase in embryonal cancer risks among children under five living within five kilometers of
all German nuclear power stations. The KiKK study examined all cancers at all 16 nuclear reactor locations in Germany between 1980 and 2003, and was commissioned by the German Government's Federal Office for Radiation Protection.

However, the KiKK study does not stand on its own. A 2007 study by
researchers at the University of South Carolina analysing 17 research papers
covering 136 nuclear sites in the UK, Canada, France, USA, Germany,
Japan and Spain, also “show[ed] an increase in childhood leukaemia near
nuclear facilities”. They found that death rates for children up to the age
of nine were elevated by between five and 24 per cent, depending on their
proximity to nuclear facilities, and by two to 18 per cent in children and
young people up to the age of 25. Incidence rates were increased by 14
to 21 per cent in zero to nineyearolds and seven to ten percent in zero
to 25yearolds. A French survey from 2008 of 26 multisite studies of childhood
cancers near nuclear facilities came to a similar conclusion.
Although the evidence is overwhelming, pronuclear scientists and the
government still deny that there is a link between nuclear power and
cancer. Instead, they want to build new nuclear power stations, thus
increasing our exposure to radiation.

More information:
http://www.ippnweurope.
org/en/
nuclearenergyandsecurity.
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