More nuclear nonsense

The government's public consultation on the future of nuclear power in this country - part of its shambolic energy review - was held on Saturday. Stroud District Green party withdrew from it - we have in the past made effort at our own expense to attend these consultations on nuclear power and submit detailed reports. However this consultation is about promoting the arguments for nuclear power. See our news release here. Local press sadly didn't see this issue important enough to cover.

Photo: Climate Change march

Our view seems to have been confirmed by the Greenpeace website where they quote Meg - 35 and a sales assistant from Cardiff - who posted a comment re the meetings: "We were told numerous times that we didn't need to know anything before we came to the event. It became quickly clear that the intention was to provide us with very limited, biased information in order to lead the participants to a predetermined conclusion".

The consultation documents are themselves misleading saying for example, that the nuclear waste problem is solved. It clearly is not (see Guardian letter here - and House of Lords brands policy as 'incoherent' and 'flawed'). They also say nuclear power is cheaper than wind even though the government's own published documents show the exact opposite is true.

On top of all that we hear today that Tories are now to support nuclear as long as it doesn't get subsidies - that policy in my view has clearly been shown to fail - each time nuclear companies get into difficulties who bails them out? No insurance company will touch them with a barge poll - yet another example of double standards with renewables which have to obtain insurance for all sorts of risks.

Meanwhile yesterday the latest radioactive fragment found on Sandside Beach near the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness is among the "hottest" yet detected.