Brown lets the nuclear cat out of the bag

Posted by bex — 6 July 2007 at 4:06pm - Comments

Gordon Brown"We have made the decision to continue with nuclear power."

With those ten words, Gordon Brown managed to break the law, sabotage an ongoing public consultation and do a U-turn on his promise to listen to the people - all during his first Prime Minister's Question Time.

As head of government, Brown's meant to be abiding by a high court ruling that says the government can't legally make a decision on whether to build new nuclear power stations before a proper public consultation has been carried out.

The last consultation, said Justice Sullivan, was "seriously flawed"; the process was "manifestly inadequate and unfair" because insufficient information had been made available by the government for consultees to make an "intelligent response".

It now looks like this consultation is as much of a sham as the last one; the government seems to have already made up its mind on nukes, before the consultation's even really underway.

Here's a pdf of the letter our lawyers sent Brown this morning.

Article tagged as: gordon brown, judicial review, legal, nuclear power, public consultations
Comments Commenting is now closed

Hi Cliff

I don't think we need to do much to make nuclear power difficult, expensive and inefficient to build - nuclear power does all that quite capably on its own :0)

[Nuclear power does nothing to contribute to our heating needs, so like all of our archaic power stations, it's incredible inefficient (the average centralised power station is 38 per cent efficient, whereas combined heat and power plants reach efficiency levels of up to 95 per cent). And the average nuclear power station is finished four years late and 300 per cent over budget - never mind the costs of dealing with waste for generations and generations. Without the subsidies and guarantees the government (ie tax payer) gives the nukes industry, no sane investor would go near nuclear power. See our new film about nuclear power and the real answer to climate change for more.]

But you're right - we do need to communicate just how much of an inefficient, expensive and dangerous distraction it is to the government pretty damn quickly, and get the message across about the real solution...

Cheers,

Bex
gpuk

By bex - 17 July 2007 at 12:05pm

Hi Cliff I don't think we need to do much to make nuclear power difficult, expensive and inefficient to build - nuclear power does all that quite capably on its own :0) [Nuclear power does nothing to contribute to our heating needs, so like all of our archaic power stations, it's incredible inefficient (the average centralised power station is 38 per cent efficient, whereas combined heat and power plants reach efficiency levels of up to 95 per cent). And the average nuclear power station is finished four years late and 300 per cent over budget - never mind the costs of dealing with waste for generations and generations. Without the subsidies and guarantees the government (ie tax payer) gives the nukes industry, no sane investor would go near nuclear power. See our new film about nuclear power and the real answer to climate change for more.] But you're right - we do need to communicate just how much of an inefficient, expensive and dangerous distraction it is to the government pretty damn quickly, and get the message across about the real solution... Cheers, Bex gpuk

By bex - 17 July 2007 at 12:05pm

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