IN THE LAST month the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) celebrated the end of two challenges: the miners' strike and the public enquiry into the Sizewell B nuclear power station. Sir Walter Marshall, months.
Marshall the _unaer CEGB has had a clear DOIC Jependence on coal — and the uereov Icalcia ieverage. of the National U'nion of Mineworkers. It is 3 project shared by the covernmcal Sizewell Bisintended to be thetirst of atamilv of tive or six PWR nuclear power stations designed to meet the entire projected in• casc l energy demand berond the end oi tne This would bump century. up the share of nuclear :060 per cent at the end of :he century and 70 percent 3: -U30 Imagine the effect on 1981, ImInO areas dectricity production took 1 per cent of the NCB's a=aduction, concentrated on the seven big coal-fired s¡ations that produce 40 per cent of the CEGB's power autput phased out between 2008 PWRs at a cost aillion a time.
Ifanyonethinksthisisa ong way aneaa, so ills. Bul : showsthat the rulingclass .auDKS LOTunC :erm. If we are to fight Re. so ust we On the face of it, the way :he ruling class plans ahead provides clear evidence of :heir irresponsibility. Con:emed as they are to reduce he power of the NUM and having to deal with the engineers and the EETPU has fewer terrors or them - they downplay ae econonc ano тесопо:ogical dangers of choosing :he PWR Sizewell B is another : ersion of the kind of PWR ¡ation that broke down at Three Mile Island in the US ?. 1978. Only Sizewell will be twice as big!
Since the accident at The worst case A MAJOR accident involving a large release of radioactivity from Sizewell • evacuation of 500,000 people within two days • London for 17 years (GL.C figures)
• a ban on crops produced for 17,000 square kilometers around the plant cent of livestock, and 9 per cent of milk ‹ Figures produced by Oxford Political Ecology Research Uroup) Three Mile Island very few PWRs have been built in the United States F wnICn originated the technology. Indeed, some PWRs have been shut down, and less electricity is produced by nuclear power today than six years ago.
This is a disaster for companies like Babcock and Wilcox, and Westingwhich built nouse, PWRs. They are therefore looking to dump their redundant technology On any mug who'll buy it than Sir ane woo bener Walter Marshall?
The CEGB claims that. on its tigures, a serious accident could onlyhappen once in a million years. Objectors like the OWIl Country Planning Association (that well-known threatto civilisation we know it!) have produced olnel possible figures that increase the danger factor a thousand told When you divide the resulting ratio of accident every sculvus thousand years by the of Hullucl stations, have the of something t scul really nasty happening every 170 years or so. (For iust nasty such an event could be see 'The worst case'.)
Three Mile Island was, of course, a small accident. and so were all those small leaks Windscale (sorry, Sellafield) which seem to occur much more often than once in a million years.
Even without 'accidents" like these, the area around Sizewell already has leukaemia cluster, an area where blood cancer significantly ausae than the national average. The CEGB would nave believe that the preste r the Size well Magnox nuclear power station has nothing to do with this.
They would also have B, with the wind restriction of access to 620 kilometers of A moael of sizewell D us believe that the PWR is cheap. But evidence produced at the enquiry shows that a new version of the Drax Wal-l cu SLauOT would be half the capital cost of Sizewell B.
Converting oil stations to coal. enerev conservation the development combined heat and power projects would be cheaper and safer than going nuke. This is to leave aside the difficulties of long-distance advance forecasting in a capitalist the CEGB itself five ditterent projections for economic development.
even on the CEGB's figures the chances of Sizewell B being, "economic' in their own LC OIOS is denendent being : constructed on time with signiticant • COSI overruns. must efficiently vuclalc InOlC than similar .US stations have : been known to.
Nuclear power stations ora cis for however, notorious significant delavs in construction time and heavy cost overruns.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Sizewell B will be an "uneconomic unit'. It is equally difficult, however, to imagine this government rushing to have it closed with the same eagerness that they show to shut pits.
La heavy responsibility falls on the Labour Party. However, unlike the NUM, the GLC, and Tony Benn personally, the party aid not put its postion at thi enquiry. It refused to state clearly that ally lutur government •will scrap plans for Sizewell and its successor projects - as manently existing nuclear power plants.
Any government worth its salt -prepared to struggle against the entrenched power of the ruling would depend on the miners' and other workers' ability to 'hold the country ransom'. As it is, nuclear power is losing popular support In supported • IL. Today that figure is down to 45 per cent. We need to campaign cut that support still lurtner •For further information see Martin Ince's Sizewell Report, Pluto, £3.95.
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head of the CEGB, gleefully connected the two. The case for the planned pressurised water reactor (PWR), he claimed, had been made by Arthur Scargill in the last 12
blowing towards London, could lead to: • 24,000 fatal cancers
• a ban on all fishing in the North Sea • damage to 22 per cent of UK crop area, 20 per