Greens stand firm against nuclear expansion

Written by Pete Goodwin Saturday, 30 January 2010

The Green Party in Bristol remains opposed to plans for new nuclear reactors near the city.

A motion challenging plans to build nuclear power stations at Oldbury and Hinkley Point, proposed by Liberal Democrat councillor Dr Mark Wright, and supported by Green Party councillor Charlie Bolton, was not debated at last week's council meeting owing to a lack of time.

But at the same meeting, council leader Barbara Janke, just returned from her flying visit to the Copenhagen summit,  assured a Conservative questioner that she would not 'waste' council money by joining other local authorities opposed to nuclear expansion.

"This sends out all the wrong signals. Bristol is a creative city that has many companies developing green energy. We should be supporting them, not expensive and dubious nuclear plants that will leave pollution for our great-grandchildren to clean up," said Charlie Bolton, the Greens' parliamentary candidate in Bristol South.

"The council missed a great opportunity to show leadership in the opposition of nuclear power", Bolton said.

"Nuclear power is a red herring. These vast sums could be spent developing more green energy for the Bristol and the surrounding region," said Ricky Knight, Green Party candidate for Bristol West.

Kinight's comments were echoed by Alex Dunn, candidate for Bristol North West, which borders on the site of Oldbury power station.

"Given the plans to burn environmentally destructive palm oil in my constituency, this is yet another stopgap measure that fails to provide clean, green energy for Bristol," Dunn said.

His colleague for Bristol East said it was time to consign dirty nuclear power to the dustbin of history.

"These Cold War technologies need to be phased out. They harm us and they harm the environment. The council needs to state firmly that Bristol is nuclear-free and push forward with green energy production," said Glenn Vowles.

Notes:

The government has identified the expansion of nuclear power as potentially reducing the UK's greenhouse gas emissions.

The Green Party rejects this assessment and remains firmly opposed to nuclear energy.

The present Oldbury nuclear power station is on the shores of the Severn Estuary to the north east of Bristol . It has been operational since 1967 and its ageing Magnox reactors were due to be decommissioned last year, but the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority delayed the process until this year. Last November, German power company E.On (www.eon-uk.com) submitted a formal application to build a brand new reactor at the Oldbury site.

Hinkley Point is to the south west of Bristol, also on the Severn Estuary. It has been operational since 1957. One Magnox power station at the site, known as Hinkley Point A, was decommissioned in 2000. Hinkley Point B is due for decommissioning in 2016. Electricite de France (EDF),(www.edf.com) announced in September 2008 that it wanted to build two new European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs) at Hinkley.