Green concern at Oldbury land purchases
Published: 16 Nov 2008
Chernobyl-like risk to continuing operations at Oldbury?
German-owned E.on, which has stated an interest in having a £4 billion nuclear plant at Oldbury, are reported to already be purchasing pieces of privately owned land near the station. They will be among organisations bidding to acquire further land that is currently in the hands of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and which is due to be sold next year.
Cllr Ricky Knight, South West Green Party lead candidate for next year's European Elections said:
"A new power station would have to be built on an adjoining site to Oldbury. This is clearly a very misguided move. Both the economic and environmental case for nuclear cannot be made. Amongst other issues, raised cancer levels have been found near Oldbury. It is time those SW MPs, like David Drew, who support nuclear power listened to the Government's own advisors, the Sustainable Development Commission, and put an end to plans to build more nukes at Oldbury and other sites."
Cllr Knight added: "There are additional concerns about developing this site, not least that the neighbouring community of Shepperdine may well be destroyed."
Oldbury will be amongst the first three sites where the NDA is selling the land. E.ON wants to build two nuclear stations in Britain, and Oldbury is one site it is seriously considering. The American-Japanese consortium of Toshiba-Westinghouse is also developing its own scheme for Oldbury.
Ricky Knight said:
"At the recent stakeholder meeting, reassurances were given regarding the current operations at Oldbury, but I cannot see how this 40 year old dinosaur can be allowed to continue operating as they hope. Oldbury has had repeated serious problems from vibrating turbines and an explosive fire in a generator. Most significantly, a badly depleted graphite core was diagnosed, which had lost over a third of its weight in the worst areas. This could produce localised overheating and a nuclear fuel fire. Independent nuclear scientist John Large, talking in Stroud last year, maintained that any accident at Oldbury would have the same outcome as Chernobyl. It is clear that to continue operating Oldbury is a risk too far."
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) are still considering the overall safety case for the site but either one or the other of the two reactors have had to be shut down intermittently for the past five years, due to safety concerns. Any change of opinion now would be inexplicable.
It has been claimed by Oldbury that the change in the closure timetable is down to the requirement timescale to defuel the plant being put back to 2011. The plant still has enough fuel available to allow it to operate for two more years. But this would create more radioactive pollution in the Irish Sea due to the extra reprocessing at Sellafield.
Ricky Knight said: "Simply having the fuel there should not be a reason in itself to continue operating this plant. Ironically if the old plant gets permission to operate longer, it is likely that building a new nuke will be delayed. If there is a delay I am hopeful that our Government will see sense and instead invest in renewables and energy efficiency measures."
