500 signatures reached
To: The PM of the U.K. and the Leaders of Europe
Shut Dungeness B Nuclear Plant Now
We urge the leaders of Europe to shut down Dungeness B as a matter of urgency.
The people of Europe assume that safety limits are there to keep people safe. Not so in the case of Dungeness B nuclear plant which is now run by Électricité de France (EDF). Graphite bricks in the Dungeness B reactor are cracking and starting to lose weight due to bombardment of radiation.
The graphite is about to breach safety levels and the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) would have had to prosecute or even shut down the plant. But instead, the regulators are considering a request from EDF energy, to simply airbrush away the safety limits.
Why is this important?
Dungeness B has already had a life extension in 2005. The safety of Dungeness B and the safety of Europe is already on borrowed time with regard to potential nuclear catastophe. We understand that a transboundary Environmental Impact Assessment has not been carried out at Dungeness B.
Steve Thomas, professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, said: "It doesn't feel good when we come up against limits and the first thing they [the ONR] do is to move the goalposts."
Safety limits are being scrapped to allow Dungeness B to go on into dangerous old age. This would make Dungeness B the oldest operating nuclear plant in Europe at 45 years. Dungeness B is the son of Windscale, later renamed Sellafield after a fire broke out due to high temperature in the graphite bricks. Had the Windscale fire not been brought under control (by good luck and courage), and the radioactive fallout limited, then the writer of this petition may well have not have been born. The authorities deny that the Windscale fire increased the mortality rate amongst infants in Cumbria, preferring to blame "population mixing" for increased leukemias. But it is undeniable that radioactive fallout added to the routine emissions from the nuclear plant.
People are realising that a large nuclear accident has transboundary impacts and that Environmental Impact Assessments (that the UK is signed up to - Espoo ) must include neighbouring and distant countries. A transboundary EIA has not been carried out at Dungeness.
The leaders of Europe have a real opportunity right now to prevent catastrophe and contain nuclear pollution.
Dungeness B
http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=1033
Previous Life Extension by British Energy
http://www.modernpowersystems.com/news/news10-year-life-extension-at-dungeness-b
Proposed New Life Extension by EDF
http://www.nucpros.com/content/edf-extend-uk-dungeness-b-nuclear-plant-45-years
Safety Scrapped to Accommodate Life Extension /
Office for Nuclear Regulation Defends Dungeness Safety Decision
http://www.imeche.org/news/engineering/nuclear-regulator-defends-dungeness-safety-decision-04061402
WHY IS A CUMBRIAN WRITING THIS PETITION?
The threat from nuclear is not localised.
Waste from Dungeness B travels up to Sellafield by train (through London) to be reprocessed i.e. separation of uranium and plutonium - this involves the waste being expanded x189 times with most of it spewed out into the Irish Sea.
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/solutions/nuclear-terrorism/reprocessing-and-nuclear.html
Windscale Fallout
http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/windscale-fallout-path-scandinavia/
Still FIghting for Gemma
http://www.truemovies.tv/tvguide/film.aspx?mID=472
http://www.robedwards.com/2007/03/still_fighting_.html
240 Greenpeace Activists take action across Europe to highlight the risk of ageing nuclear reactors
http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/09/greenpeace-europes-aging-nuclear/
Windscale - Britain's Biggest Nuclear Disaster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElotW9oKv1s
A Gamble with Safety - No2Nuclear Power
http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo63.pdf
Transboundary Environmental Impact Assessments
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2430353/europes_ageing_nuclear_reactors_will_have_to_undergo_environmental_assessments.html
(this has not happened at Dungeness but is happening in the Ukraine!)
Nuclear Waste Trains
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/PageFiles/25532/7842.pdf
Stop and Contain
http://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/stop-and-contain-reprocessing-at-sellafield-is-insane/
American Perspective on Reprocessing
http://io9.com/failed-nuclear-weapons-recycling-program-could-put-us-a-1586851270
