Long live nuclear power!

Friday May 17, 2002 23:42

by Sellafield Employee - British Nuclear Fuels Limited

I did say watch this space didn't I ????

Well, you silly Irish buggers didn't believe me when I said nuclear power was enjoying a resurgance in popularity did you????? We now have one of Britains most popular newspapers on side! Take a look at the article from 'The Telegraph'. Postcard campaign indeed - what a joke!

Let's really go nuclear
(Date: 11/05/2002)

Environmental menace or friend of the earth? Ross Clark says that, contrary to popular fears, nature loves a reactor.

ON the long list of terrors to have enraged environmental protesters, none causes quite as many sparks as the nuclear power station. Here is a menace capable not just of wiping out a few bunnies, but of visiting genetic mutation upon their three-eyed descendants for thousands of years to come.

Glowing recommendation: Sizewell B helps cut Britain's CO2 emissions

With the Government's recent energy review contemplating a restarting of the stalled nuclear power industry, and with British Energy working on plans to build nine new power stations, the response from environmental pressure groups has been predictable.

"Ministers should rule out the nuclear option for good," said Greenpeace recently. Any new nuclear power stations will be "vigorously opposed", promised Friends of the Earth.

But would more nuclear power stations really be bad for the environment?

For years, anti-nuclear campaigners have painted visions of an Irish Sea aglow with discharge from Sellafield. But for just as long, the irradiated lobsters and mutant shrimps have remained works of imagination.

When Greenpeace was charged with the simple challenge of citing one case of a plant or an animal that has been harmed by radioactive emission from a nuclear plant in western Europe, it could not.

"Lobsters have been found off Sellafield with twice the levels of radioactivity allowed in European food regulations," says nuclear campaigner Peter Roach. "But no one has ever looked at whether the lobsters have suffered as a result."

In fact, the evidence suggests that more birds have been sliced in two by wind farms than creatures have been harmed by British nuclear power stations.

No one is denying that there is radioactive discharge from the nuclear industry. It is just that the level of discharge is feeble compared to the natural background radiation with which, in contravention of Britain's assorted "nuclear-free zones", humans, animals and plants have had to live since life on earth began.

Less than one per cent of the radiation the average European is exposed to comes from nuclear power stations or industrial sources. Fourteen per cent comes from exposure to medical procedures such as X-rays and barium meals, while a whopping 85 per cent comes from natural sources such as radon gas and granite.

The average Briton receives as much radiation from eating one Brazil nut as from exposure to pollution from nuclear power stations.

Of all the sources of drinking water in Britain, the most radioactive is not from near Sellafield but from Derbyshire, where local rocks bear naturally occurring uranium.

The effect of nuclear power stations on shellfish has been of particular concern because their method of feeding - passing large quantities of estuarine mud through their bodies - puts them at risk of accumulating radioactivity in their bodies. As a result, the health of shellfish off Sellafield is constantly monitored by the Environment Agency.

The most radioactive lobsters caught there show radiation levels of 32 micrograys per hour. While this is 30 times higher than the levels lobsters would show were they living in a pristine environment, it is less than one tenth of the radiation levels capable of inflicting harm upon a lobster.

There is no evidence, either, of any harm higher up the food chain. According to the Food Standards Agency, anyone who lives next to Sellafield and has a vast appetite for locally caught shellfish still only exposes himself to 19 per cent of the European Union's recommended safe limit for radiation absorption.

Not unreasonably, environmentalists ask what would happen were there to be an accident. A Chernobyl-style disaster in this country, or anywhere else in western Europe, is deeply improbable because more stringent design standards exist than in the Soviet Union. But even if a Chernobyl did happen here, there is little evidence that wildlife and plantlife would have anything to fear.

Since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, its impact on nature has been carefully studied. Some pine trees died within the six-mile exclusion zone around the plant. Some molluscs also died - but they were living in the cooling ponds attached to the plant, and their numbers have since recovered.

"In no way does it detract from the significance of the disaster, but it has been suggested that biodiversity around Chernobyl has actually increased due to the absence of humans," says Clive Williams of the Environment Agency. "Wolves and black storks are now more abundant within the exclusion zone than outside it. Even in the most contaminated areas, plant diversity is similar to that outside the exclusion zone."

There is a good reason why wildlife has less to fear from radioactive pollution than humans. The biggest terror for us after a nuclear accident would be of developing cancer. Wild animals, however, do not tend to hang around long enough to develop it: they quickly reproduce and die.

There is every reason, on the other hand, why the environment should benefit from a return to the nuclear programme. Nuclear power stations produce negligible quantities of sulphur dioxide, responsible for acid rain, and carbon dioxide, blamed for global warming.

Were it not that 25 per cent of electricity in Britain is already generated by nuclear means, carbon dioxide emissions would be 13 per cent higher than they are now and it would be impossible for us to meet our commitments under the Kyoto agreement.

When it comes to killing wildife, "environmentally friendly" renewable energy sources win hands down.

Abarrage across the Severn Estuary to exploit tidal power has been proposed several times but rejected on environmental grounds: it would destroy the breeding grounds of fish and wading birds. One proposed wind farm off Argyll would have been directly in the migratory path of the rare Greenland white-fronted goose. If lobsters, rabbits and geese had a vote, there is no doubt they would say: "Nuclear power? Yes please."