South Down Green Party Councillor Cadogan Enright and the Green Party in the Republic has raised concern at plans by the Department of Energy in the UK to build a string of new nuclear power stations, after claims that the proposed plants have ‘fundamental design faults’. Seven of these stations are to be located opposite Ireland on Britain’s west coast.
A campaign group in France says leaked confidential documents show tests on the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) present a potentially catastrophic scenario. This issue was raised in the Irish Seanad yesterday by the Green Party and the representative body for Local Authorities in Britain and Ireland had also raised concerned at the plans.
Cllr Enright said, “Nuclear Free Local Authorities, a highly regarded organisation of Local Authorities representing major cities in the UK and eleven Local Authorities in Ireland, has asked the UK’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate to investigate reports that the new European Pressurised Water Reactor contains fundamental design faults that could in the words of one campaign group, cause ‘another Chernobyl’, should a reactor core become unstable.”
“Northern Ireland has always rejected nuclear power, especially in South Down. Some DUP and UUP elected representitives have called for one of these stations to be sited at St John’s Point in this constituency – and even for nuclear waste to be stored here. It is ludiicrous for the government to be ringing the Irish Sea with new nuclear power stations when it does not know what to do with the waste from the old ones. We do not want a nuclear power station in Northern Ireland, or the seven proposed for the coast opposite us, and we certainly don’t want to be the UK’s nuclear waste dump,” concluded Cadogan Enright.
Newcastle Green Party Co-ordinator John Hardy has called for all local political party’s to oppose the dumping of nuclear waste in South Down following a call to local councils, by the UK Environment Minister Hillary Benn to offer nuclear burial sites.
