Welsh Nuclear Free Local Authorities are pushing back against calls by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Ynys Mon MP Virginia Crosbie for new nuclear projects at Trawsfynydd and Wylfa.
Welsh NFLA Chair Councillor Ernie Galsworthy said:
“Government funding and focus should be on retrofitting home insulation and renewable energy projects, such as the tidal power projects planned for the North Wales coast and in Swansea Bay, which can be delivered less expensively, more quickly and with proven and available technology, rather than indulging in over-priced, much-delayed and technologically-unsound new nuclear projects.
“Contrast the treatment of the proposed Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon Project, which, being costed at £1.3 billion, was refused UK government funding with that of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset. At current prices this will cost almost twenty times as much to build at £23 billion, construction is currently running nine years behind schedule, and the plant is based around a flawed, and potentially dangerous, reactor design which only last year suffered a serious accident in China.
“Yet for this and other similar nuclear projects, the UK government is only too ready to pay up-front grants, force electricity consumers to pay a surcharge on their energy bills to meet cost overruns, purchase the electricity for a ridiculous sum, and eventually finance the defueling and decommissioning of the plant and the treatment and management of its residual nuclear waste for thousands of years. It is not for nothing that Hinkley Point C has been called the most expensive electricity generation plant in history”.
In addition, contrary to the views of Virginia Crosbie and Boris Johnson, the Welsh NFLA believes strongly that recent tragic events in Ukraine have demonstrated not that Wales needs more civil nuclear power plants, but that it needs none.
Cllr Galsworthy explained:
“It was only down to good fortune that the Russian bombardment of the Ukrainian nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia hit only ancillary buildings, rather than a reactor or a nuclear waste pool. The impact of a high-velocity weapon on such facilities would be devastating and most likely lead to the disbursement of deadly radiation for many miles, contaminating a vast area for decades and causing harm to countless civilians.
“What makes Virginia Crosbie and Boris Johnson so sure that in any future conflict with Russia our Welsh nuclear facilities would not also each be targeted, with all of the resultant carnage, by one of the long-range hypersonic missiles that Putin is so boastful of?”
“Nuclear for Wales is not the answer to climate change or our energy crisis now, nor will it ever be, It is far too costly and takes too long to deliver, there are always risks in its operation, and it leaves a legacy of deadly radioactive waste for countless generations of our descendants to deal with, and now, as Ukraine has proven, we know that in a war it is a tempting target to turn into a dirty bomb!”
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For more information please contact Richard Outram, Secretary, NFLA Email Richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk / Mobile 07583 097793