Lewisham Deptford MP Joan Ruddock is being urged to reconsider her support for a new generation of nuclear power stations in Britain, as local campaigners observe the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster next Monday.
"It’s 25 years since the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine and barely 25 days since the breakdown of the plants at Fukushima, but the majority of our politicians still see nuclear as the only solution to the UK’s energy needs," said Roger Sedgely, co-convenor of Lewisham Green Party.
In January of this year Joan Ruddock who is a former minister for climate change, declared her support for nuclear, after calls from Green campaigners to back a parliamentary inquiry into whether a new generation of nuclear facilities is necessary. (1)
Roger continued: "In the UK research goes on into the link between increased level of leukaemia and the proximity to the nuclear generating plants at Sellafield and Dounreay. If the health worries were not enough, the disposal of waste is not fully resolved.
"Let us also not forget the cost of the ten nuclear stations planned in this country for 2020. It is going to cost between £30 and £60 billion to build them. The government has said that they will not subsidize them, so the cost will have to appear on your electricity bill for a very long time to come. They will at the most create 20,000 jobs around the country."
He stressed that the Chernoby anniversary, coupled with the unfolding crisis in Japan, meant that the time was ripe for a major rethink of British nuclear policy – and that local people should not fail to make their voices heard.
"There is an alternative that will cost considerably less money, will create many more jobs and will not put the country at risk", he said.
"We need to create a program of insulating our existing buildings, which could create up to 100,000 jobs. We need to step up considerably our investments in renewable energy generation.
"These alternatives exist. Joan Ruddock supports the proposal to build the new generation of nuclear power stations. Tell her she is wrong and say "No to Nuclear"."
Notes
(1) Joan Ruddock’s full reply to emails asking her to support Early Day Motion 557, which calls for a parliamentary and public inquiry into the need for new nuclear:
"As you may know I always argued that we should promote renewables rather than a new generation of nuclear stations. However successive governments failed to do that and only in the last few years of the last Labour government did we manage to accelerate the programmed and make significant progress on investment and incentives.
However as a minister in the Department of Energy and Climate Change from 2008 to the General Election last year, I became convinced that replacement of decommissioned plants would be necessary. This would not, in my view, result in any more nuclear capacity that which we have had in recent times.
As you may be aware renewables cannot provide all the energy we need in the immediate future because of their intermittency. I therefore reluctantly accepted that some nuclear would be needed but given the relatively short life span of the stations themselves (except the waste). I did not foresee a long term future to this technology.
The possibility of an energy gap is not the only issue of course. I also believe that because nuclear stations do not emit CO2 while in operation they are vital to meeting climate change targets between 2020 and 2030.
You may not agree with me but I hope you can see that have given this matter a great deal of thought."