SDLP leader demands: Sellafield must close
Sellafield nuclear processing plant must be shut down now to prevent a future Chernobyl-style disaster, one of the joint leaders of the Northern Ireland Executive demanded today.
Nationalist SDLP leader Mark Durkan said during a visit to the Rainbow Warrior as it docked in Belfast that the plant put people living in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic at risk.
During a visit to the Greenpeace ship which docked near the city's Odyssey arena, the Deputy First Minister of the Stormont power-sharing government said: "The SDLP believes that it is high time that the British Government shut Sellafield down and for good.
"Sellafield poses a threat to everybody living in Ireland - north and south.
"If there was an accident at the plant the whole of our island would be contaminated - damaging livelihoods and destroying lives.
"We have seen the devastation that the nuclear accident at Chernobyl caused. Even today young children are suffering terribly because of that disaster 18 years ago."
Mr Durkan's call for the closure of Sellafield follows hard on a plea last month for more measured debate on nuclear power by an Ulster Unionist cabinet colleague at Stormont.
Environment Minister Dermot Nesbitt angered environmentalists and nationalist politicians by saying that too often the debate was dominated by emotion and not scientific fact.
Recalling a visit to Sellafield in June, Mr Nesbitt told a Dublin conference on Sellafield: "I also took the opportunity to visit the Pacific Sandpiper ship at Barrow-in-Furness. "This ship is used to transport spent nuclear fuel from overseas to Sellafield.
"I saw and heard much. I am now better informed. My impressions of Sellafield were of a site well run and well managed, by thoroughly professional and dedicated staff."
Greenpeace and environmental campaigners protested vigorously when the ship containing plutonium rejected by Japan offloaded its cargo onto a train at Barrow-in-Furness bound for Sellafield's mixed oxide (MOX) plant.
Mr Nesbitt was also lambasted for saying at the conference that because of climate change there may be a "need to consider further the option of nuclear power".
Environmentalists in July also criticised British Environment Minister Margaret Beckett for continuing to support the plant after she indicated that the Government hoped to cut radioactive emissions from the site.
Mrs Beckett vowed that by 2020 discharges would meet the levels set by European countries under the Ospar (Oslo-Paris) Radioactive Discharges Strategy.
Mr Durkan's intervention in the nuclear debate places him alongside Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's Government and the Norwegians in demanding the closure of Sellafield.
The SDLP leader, who is a member of Greenpeace, said today the British Government must not keep open the possibility of another Chernobyl-style incident happening.
The Foyle MLA insisted: "To protect ourselves and future generations Sellafield must close down. "But far from closing Sellafield down, the British Government is massively expanding its operations. Ships laden with nuclear waste are coming from the four corners of the Earth to its new MOX nuclear reprocessing plant.
"It is just not on to have the world's most hazardous waste being shipped right onto Ireland's doorstep.
"As a long standing member of Greenpeace, I am calling on the British Government to shut Sellafield now."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-141431/SDLP-leader-demands-Sellafield-close.html#ixzz1H87fYZap
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Interesting. Did you know they cant the MOX plant at selleafield down until they have shut down the MOX run Oldbury plant.
ReplyDeleteNo I didn't..........Shut Oldbury Now
ReplyDelete