Nuclear power

1 February 2023News in Brief

Dozens of international peace activists have volunteered to act as an unarmed civilian protection team at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine, supporting inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (see PN 2663).

John Reuwer, founder of the Zaporizhzhya Protection Proposal project, writes: ‘Among the most immediate of the many threats faced by Ukrainians is the release of a nuclear dirty bomb by an intentional or accidental mishap at the Zaporizhzhya…

1 December 2022News

Twenty-eight activists already recruited for unarmed team

28 peace activists have volunteered to act as an unarmed civilian protection team at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

John Reuwer, founder of the Zaporizhzhya Protection Proposal project, writes: ‘Among the most immediate of the many threats faced by Ukrainians is the release of a nuclear dirty bomb by an intentional or accidental mishap at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant.’

The group plans to send a team of trained unarmed civilians to support inspectors…

1 June 2019News in Brief

Over 50 people wore nuclear waste barrel costumes to protest outside the Springfields nuclear fuel manufacturing plant near Preston, Lancashire, on 27 April.

There was also a live video conference with indigenous people in communities adversely impacted by uranium mining. Speakers included Nikki Clark (South West Against Nuclear), Rowland Dye (Trident Ploughshares), Kate Hudson (CND), and Ruth Owens (anti-fracking Nanas)

1 June 2019News

Move to ban dumping contaminated sediment in sea off Cardiff Bay narrowly defeated

73 councils in Wales have now officially stated that they will not host an underground nuclear waste dump.

The Welsh consultation on a ‘geological disposal facility’ closed in April 2018. In their submission, CND Cymru argued that the Welsh government should follow the Scottish government and adopt an ‘on site, near ground level’ storage policy for nuclear waste.

The group cited the large number of councils which have rejected underground storage as indicative of the opposition…

1 April 2019News

Aberystwyth holds packed meeting US campaigner

US campaigner Linda Pentz Gunter (white scarf) and Welsh peace activists in Aberystwyth, 16 February. Photo: Robat Idris

‘Truth versus Power’ was the theme of a public meeting in Aberystwyth organised by CND Cymru on 16 February.

A packed room was inspired by Linda Pentz Gunter talking about the work of Beyond Nuclear, a US peace group she founded, particularly on a Green New Deal.

She explained how not even the smallest of nuclear reactors is safe or efficient and…

1 April 2019News

Consultation meeting cancelled because of planned protests

1 February 2019News

PAWB (People Against Wylfa B) have welcomed the news that the Japanese conglomerate Hitachi have suspended their project to build a nuclear power station at Wylfa, on the north coast of Anglesey.

PAWB say in a press release: ‘it will be a relief for all of us who worry about the future of our island, our country, our language, our environment and indeed renewable energy.’

Citing huge resources of renewable energy in Wales such as wind, tidal and solar, and great…

1 December 2018News

Anti-nuke power campaign working with Japanese campaigners

The campaign against two new nuclear reactors at Wylfa on the Isle of Anglesey is gathering force on several fronts. In the immediate vicinity of the site, local people are beginning to appreciate the vast scale of the development (about the size of Holyhead, the biggest town on Anglesey), the extent of environmental damage involved, the social and cultural impact of the invasion. They’re also beginning to realise that few of the promised flood of jobs will actually be local.

1 August 2018News

Welsh campaigners travel to Japan to meet Fukushima evacuee

In May–June, a delegation from Welsh anti-nuclear group PAWB (People Against Wylfa B) visited Japan (under pro-nuclear PM Shinzo Abe) at the invitation of Friends of the Earth Japan. PAWB has been fighting a 30-year battle against the building of new nuclear reactors on the beautiful coast of Anglesey, North Wales.

After the Fukushima disaster, German owners pulled out of Horizon Nuclear (formed to build nuclear power in the UK) in 2012, and sold it on to Hitachi – so PAWB decided…

1 August 2018Feature

Jill Sutcliffe reports on two events about low-level radiation and human health

Dr Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina holding a great tit in Chernobyl’s Red Forest. Mousseau has been studying the zone around Chernobyl since 1999, finding that birds have smaller brains, trees grow more slowly, and decomposers (microbes, fungi and insects that break down dead organic matter) are barely working. Photo: Timothy Mousseau

The University of Stirling hosted two events on low level radiation and health in June 2018. The first was an International Union…

1 June 2018News in Brief

Thousands of flasks of radioactive uranium hexafluoride (‘hex’) are transported down country lanes every year from the Springfields nuclear fuel plant near Preston, Lancs. Fuel rods and other nuclear materials are taken to nuclear power plants in the UK and around the world, including Russia.

A new report from the Close Capenhurst Campaign, Kick Nuclear and Radiation Free Lakeland shines a ‘Spotlight on Springfields’:
www.tinyurl…

1 April 2018News in Brief

In late February, hundreds of French police in riot gear, equipped with bulldozers, helicopters and drones, evicted dozens of occupiers from a proposed burial site for France’s civil and military nuclear waste. The protest camp in the Bois Lejuc, north-eastern France, had been set up 18 months ago on the spot planned for ventilation shafts.

Police also surrounded and forced their way into ‘the House of Resistance’ in nearby Bure, where local opposition to the planned waste dump…

1 February 2018News in Brief

On 28 November, 22 Greenpeace activists broke into the French four-reactor nuclear power plant, Cruas-Meysse. Four scaled the walls of a building containing pools used to cool highly-radioactive spent fuel rods, and set off flares.

Greenpeace claimed that this incursion highlighted security shortcomings at the facility, proving that security around spent nuclear fuel pools is particularly lacking and that France’s 58 nuclear reactors are vulnerable to attack.

In October…

1 December 2017News

Nuke power research sparks national debate

Photo: Brian Jones

Tim Deere-Jones has created quite a stir by researching a scheme by French power company EDF to dredge up more than 300,000 tonnes of mud from the Bristol Channel and dump it off Cardiff Bay.

The sediment in Bridgewater Bay is potentially contaminated by radionuclides and other toxins released from the nuclear power stations at Hinkley Point A and B. The mud is being dredged in preparation for the construction of another nuclear power station, Hinkley Point…

1 August 2017News

Rolling month of action comes to Lancashire

You never actually own a lock-on....

Local families, councillors and anti-nuclear power activists joined the first days of the ‘Rolling Resistance’ month of anti-fracking action in Lancashire organised by local groups and national climate activist network Reclaim the Power.

As PN went to press, we were half-way through the month of action, which aimed to disrupt work every single day in July at the Preston New Road site near Preston, owned by oil and gas company Cuadrilla.…