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Will cuts cost lives?
• ON my way to work the other Monday I was highly amused by a group of people in white boilersuits making noise outside an unmarked building in Grosvenor Place, Belgravia. Taking a leaflet, I discovered the offices belonged to EDF Energy, and that they were protesting at EDF’s plans to build nuclear power stations in the UK.
I’m glad I took a leaflet. It disappoints me hugely that in these times of multiple crises our government is still rubbing shoulders with big business instead of looking out for its people. Nuclear energy is not a “renewable” resource – it is mined at various sites around the world and is very, very finite. Why invest in yet another finite resource when we have the technologies available for decentralised, renewable energy generation?
Moreover, nuclear power is very dangerous. Among stories of radioactive leaks in France and the continuing deaths of academics sharing the laboratory Ernest Rutherford used more than 100 years ago, we have yet to resolve the problem of storing radioactive nuclear waste while it decomposes for hundreds of thousands of years – longer than humans have even existed as a species.
Nuclear power stations require massive initial investments, ongoing maintenance (the cutting corners of which can have fatal consequences) and untold decommissioning costs, much of which the taxpayer ends up funding as the companies responsible refuse to foot the bill and the government cannot leave radioactive monstrosities lying around our countryside. We know that companies cut costs to increase profits. What happens when they start cutting costs with nuclear power stations and radioactive waste?
MARIANNE TUDOR
N1
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