On Good Friday, I headed down to a sunny Sizewell Beach on the picturesque Suffolk coast. The nuclear power station, directly overlooking the beach, was, for the third successive year, the target for the annual spring weekend camp of the Stop Nuclear Power Network.
As usual, it was timed around the anniversary of Chernobyl – the world’s worst ever civil nuclear disaster (prior to Fukushima, at least) – which this year coincided with Easter…
Chorus:
We will rise, we will rise
We will not accept those politicians’ lies
So come on get out and fight, unite against the right
We will rise, we will rise!
“Cut it all”, cries Cameron; “cut them off”, cries Clegg
“If you lose your livelihood, well, just go out and beg!
One and all must share the pain, ’cause we have done the sums
We’re all in this together - oh, but not our banker chums!”
The government goes on about this Big…
On 18 April, police shots killed one person, Tabrez Sejkar, and injured several others at a protest against a nuclear power plant in Jaitapur, India. According to the authorities, around 700 to 800 local fishermen marched to a police station near the power plant, and pelted it with stones for nearly two hours. The police used lathis (long truncheons) and then plastic bullets, before opening fire with live ammunition.
If ever there was a reason to stop the proposed Hinkley Point nuclear power station – just 15 miles from the South Wales coast and the capital – it is the threatened meltdown of Japan's nuclear power plants crippled after the earthquake and tsunami. If these nuclear plants get out of control, it will threaten the lives of millions of people in a thousand mile radius. Even today, many farmers in Wales cannot market their livestock because of radiation contamination from the Chernobyl nuclear…
On 8 February, Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG) handed in a 10,000-name petition against a nuclear power station at Bradwell, Essex, to energy minister Charles Hendry. BANNG chair Andy Blowers expressed particular concern about the dangers of high-level wastes on a site at sea-level liable to serious flooding and coastal damage over the next 100 years.
Stop Nuclear Power protesters, disguised as fish, locked themselves together across the entrance to Sizewell nuclear power station on 2 February. They were graphically illustrating their concern that nuclear operators and the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate have not taken the possibility of flooding and coastal erosion at Sizewell into account when considering plans for the site, particularly those for building a new nuclear reactor and storing radioactive waste there until at least 2130.…
Sizewell error
On 4 January, Andreas Speck and Ian Mills walked free from Lowes- toft magistrates court after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) failed to persuade a judge to change the charge at the last minute. The pair were arrested on 22 February 2010 after locking themselves together outside Sizewell B nuclear power station. The CPS said a computer error had led to the two being charged under the wrong law.
Over 50,000 protesters mobilised to delay the twelfth annual transport of highly-radioactive material (123 tonnes in 11 carriages) from La Hague, France, to storage at Gorleben, Germany, in early November.
In France, five activists locked-on with arm tubes under the rails, stopping the train for 3½ hours. Police cut them free so carelessly that three required surgery. In southern Germany, a blockade by over 1,500 forced the train to change route. People dangling from bridges also…
At the last general election, the only parties opposing nuclear new build on Anglesey were the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru. We all know what happened to Chris Huhne and the Lib Dems, but anti-nuclear campaigners have been keen to see how Plaid’s policy would shape up, as Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones (assembly member for the island) had long been ambivalent on the nuclear issue in contravention of his own party’s policy.
At Plaid’s annual conference in Aberystwyth in September, a…
As part of an action weekend, protesters blocked the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant's main gates for almost an hour at lunchtime on 12 September. The protest was at the planned destruction of some 435 acres of open land and wildlife habitats before two giant reactors proposed by EdF are given the go-ahead.
On 3 August, a fire broke out in the explosives area at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Aldermaston. Despite there officially being “no radiological implications” to the fire, a number of local residents were evacuated from their homes.
The Nuclear Information Service (NIS) warned of the risk of a “domino effect” of explosives igniting each other, and raised questions about regulatory standards at AWE, where a number of operations are not regulated by the Health and…
On 14 June, dozens of Greenpeace activists were arrested after they broke into the Forsmark nuclear power plant, north of Stockholm, before a planned vote this week on whether to replace or refurbish the country’s existing reactors, many built in the 1970s.
Wade Allison is an academic physicist who writes about the science and safety of radiation. His main thrust is that radiation safety limits have been set irrationally high due to unrealistic fears and misunderstandings of the dangers of ionising radiation. He claims that recent evidence confirms that the dangers of low level radiation are much less than was thought earlier, and may even be beneficial in some circumstances.
Even if you disagree with where Allison takes his arguments,…
A new anti-nuclear movement, “Stop Nuclear Power”, has organised two protest camps at Sizewell, the intended site for one of the first of a new wave of UK nuclear power plants. The second camp took place on 23-26 April, around the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
Over 50 protesters and a nuclear white elephant camped on power station property near existing reactors. There were workshops, a tour of the proposed new reactor site, and a blockade using tape labelled “nuclear…
At 6.40am on 22 February, anti-nuclear power activists from the recently-formed “People Power not Nuclear Power Coalition” began a blockade of Sizewell nuclear power station. They said they were demonstrating against the flawed government consultation on nuclear new build, which ended that day, and the dumping of local democracy.
Under the 2008 Planning Act a new unelected quango, the Infrastructure Planning Commission, will make decisions on “nationally significant…
