Oldbury evacuation zone advert!

Today's Bristol Evening Post apparently has an advert - a map. The Shepperdine Against Nuclear Energy group have created this map (see left) which shows the 30km evacuation zone which might have to be put in place if anything happened at the Oldbury nuclear plant.

Below the map reads: "One million people live within 30kms of the proposed supersized nuclear power station twelve miles outside Bristol. This nuclear power station cannot be designed to be protected against flooding, other natural disasters, terrorist attacks or human error. This is an expensive and dangerous proposal, and highly toxic radioactive waste is likely to be stored on the site for up to 160 years."

Reg Illingworth from the campaign group, is quoted saying (see here): "If we had the same 30km zone around Oldbury as we had around Fukushima; then Newport would have to be evacuated, Bristol would have to be evacuated, the Cotswolds would have to be evacuated going right up to Tewkesbury."

As this blog has shown in the past there is little confidence in authorities being able to evacuate that number of people in the time available - let alone distribute potassium iodate tablets. Indeed in the past I have raised concerns with our emergency planning officers - see for example here issues re nuclear and other concerns. Most of those questions were never answered despite repeated attempts. So well done to the campaign group for highlighting this issue - part of me dislikes using the threat of disaster in such a way but having repeatedly raised concerns and getting few satisfactory answers you can totally understand why it is necessary for campaigns to do this. These risks are real and need to be understood if we and the public are to make informed choices about nuclear power.