Caroline Lucas MEP has urged the government to abandon plans for new nuclear reactors in favour of clean energy as yet more evidence emerges that atomic power is dirty, dangerous and expensive.
Residents in the French town of Vaucluse [1] have found their drinking water poisoned with nuclear waste on the same day that a Commons report damned government nuclear spending plans [2].
Dr Lucas, who is Brighton Pavilion constituency's Green parliamentary candidate at the next general election and whose Euro South-East constituency includes a nuclear power facility at Dungeness, said:
"Gordon Brown says he feels peoples' pain on rising energy costs - and yet he's willing to land them with an estimated bill of over £100billion for nuclear power.
"In return for which we are offered a potential terrorist target, as well as the threat of radiation poisoning and an increased risk of cancer.
"We could close the energy gap, slash fuel poverty and create hundreds of jobs by providing free insulation to every home, as Green councillors are doing right now. We could put Britain at the forefront of the zero-carbon economy of the future instead of propping up a discredited, dirty and dangerous technology. But Labour seem unable to see past the nuclear lobbyists."
The Public Accounts Committee report, "Nuclear Decommissioning Authority - Taking forward decommissioning," found the burden of a new generation of nuclear power stations would fall largely on the taxpayer.
"The Committee estimates the clean-up cost of Britain's existing nuclear sites to be in the region of £73 billion. A lack of safeguards looks set to push this cost to the taxpayer past the £100 billion mark in the near future.
Meanwhile, residents of Vaucluse in south-east France recently yesterday their drinking and washing water contamined by waste following a uranium leak from the Tricastine nuclear power centre, and have been banned from using the river. Drinking well-water, eating fish from the river or swimming risk illness.
ENDS
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Notes to editors:
1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/10/nuclearpower.pollution
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