British-French nuclear plans lack sense of reality:
On the occasion of the state visit of the French president Nicolas Sarkozy to Britain, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a massive expansion of Britain's nuclear power. Rebecca Harms, Greens spokeswoman for nuclear energy in the European parliament and Caroline Lucas, British Green MEP comment:
"Today's UK government call for the renewal and vast expansion of the British nuclear program is like a message from outer space. The UK will have to deal with a bill to manage past and current nuclear wastes that officially approaches €100 billion (73 billion pounds). The financing scheme has entirely fallen apart since the facilities that were supposed to generate income don't work (in particular the reprocessing plant THORP and the plutonium fuel plant SMP at Sellafield). There is absolutely no industrial infrastructure left in the country to build the main components for nuclear plants.
The French nuclear 'partners' are doing hardly better. After two and a half years of construction, their flagship new build project, the European Pressurized Water Reactor (third generation) at Olkiluoto in Finland, is over two years behind schedule and 50% or €1.5 billion over budget. The Finnish project manager declared at the end of February 2008 that AREVA had still submitted only half of the plans to them. 'Nuclear reactors are not built without plans, at least not in Finland.' he stated.
Construction capacity bottleneck, skilled workforce shortage, repeated delays and excessive cost overruns characterise the current situation of the international nuclear industry. In each area, the situation in the UK is even worse than in other nuclear countries. The plans announced by the British government show a remarkable lack of sense of reality.
The suggestion that nuclear energy is a solution to dwindling gas and other carbon-based reserves is therefore clearly ill-judged. Investing the same money into efficiency and renewable sources would be cleaner, more efficient and create more jobs."
