"Attention commuters! The next train to arrive will be a nuclear waste train"

Posted by bex — 26 July 2006 at 8:00am - Comments
Greenpeace activists warn commuters about a nuclear waste train passing through Kensington Olympia

Greenpeace activists warn commuters about a nuclear waste train passing through Kensington Olympia

End of the line for nuclear transports

Megaphone mania has hit stations around London as Greenpeace activists took to giant megaphones to alert commuters to the hidden hazard in their midst: terror targets on wheels.

The activists told commuters at London's Kensington Olympia, Peckham Rye, Wandsworth Road and Denmark Hill to stand back from the yellow line because the next train coming through would be carrying a deadly cargo of radioactive waste.

This isn't unusual; trains carrying nuclear waste pass through the UK's villages, towns and cities every week - and we think the public has a right to know.

That's why we're out on the platforms telling commuters that they - along with hundreds of thousands of other people in the UK - are being unwittingly exposed to the dangers of nuclear waste. And that's why, last week, we published a timetable of nuclear transports in the UK.

"It beggars belief that highly hazardous nuclear waste is allowed to travel freely through London and the rest of the country," said Emma Gibson, Greenpeace nuclear campaigner.

"If a train carrying this dangerous nuclear waste train were involved in a serious accident or terrorist attack, large areas of London would have to be evacuated and thousands could die. Yet Tony Blair wants to build more nuclear power plants and continue to send these nuclear waste trains through London for the next 100 years."

Nuclear trains travel on the UK's outdated rail network, often at peak times and only metres away from ordinary passenger trains. Their movements tend to be regular and along a single route. Tests have shown that the flasks carrying the nuclear waste - unprotected other than by a driver and a single guardsman - could easily be breached by crude "home made" charges, possibly killing thousands and spreading radiation over 100km.

In short, nuclear transports are accidents waiting to happen.

Think we're scare-mongering? Unfortunately we're not. A review by the Greater London Authority (pdf) found that "[T]he thousands of passengers using these stations every day to go to work are at very high risk". The International Atomic Energy Agency recognises the transport of nuclear material as the nuclear operation most vulnerable to terrorist attack or sabotage. Even the government's Environmental Audit Committee has warned of the risks of nuclear fuel transports.

Instead of unnecessarily exposing our homes, workplaces and schools to the risk of terrorist attack, the waste should be stored in flasks or dry stores at the nuclear power stations that created it. But while this is technically feasible, there's no onus on the industry to invest in such a change of practice.

Nuclear power is the most expensive way to boil water ever invented. Decentralising the UK's energy would do far more to tackle climate change than a new generation of nuclear power stations - and cost far less.




 

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