BRITAIN: The British government's decision to back the construction of new nuclear power stations by 2020 will be "vigorously opposed at every turn", the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche said yesterday.
Describing the long-awaited British energy review as "disappointing, but not surprising", Mr Roche rejected the emphasis placed on nuclear power in the document.
The safety record at Sellafield's nuclear reprocessing plant, he said, has been "very slipshod", as was highlighted recently when 84,000 litres of plutonium and uranium in a nitrous oxide mix leaked.
"The liquid, the most deadly liquor in the world, did not get out of the holding area, admittedly, but they don't have any idea about what to do with it," the Minister declared.
Yesterday, the British Government was at pains to emphasise that nuclear power would be one minor element of the UK's energy strategy in the decades ahead, with renewable energy supplying 20 per cent of its needs.
The energy review, the British insist, has a number of aims: to cut the UK's carbon dioxide emissions; to ensure secure supplies and to ensure that every UK home has affordable electricity.
Though Minister Roche accepted the British have a sovereign right to look after their own energy needs, he insisted that the Government "equally has the sovereign right and duty to look after the health of its own people".
Labour TD Tommy Broughan said the British review "highlighted the continued lethargy by the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat government on critical energy issues".
The British document is the third in five years, while the Government has produced none: "The last major energy document in Ireland was the 1978 Energy White Paper that came on the back of the oil spikes and energy crises that rocked the world economy during the 1970s."
Though the UK's nuclear plans are significant, he welcomed the plans to increase five-fold wind, solar, tidal and biomass-generated electricity sources and extra grants for offshore windfarms.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, had railed against nuclear power, he said, but he had done "absolutely nothing" to promote such options when he was Minister for Marine and Natural Resources.
Green Party leader Trevor Sargent said the British would build six more nuclear plants, even though it has shown that those in command are "incapable of maintaining what they already have.
"Only last week there were reports of unexplained cracks in nuclear reactor cores in Somerset and on Friday, a case against British Nuclear Group over radioactive leaks in Sellafield was adjourned," he said.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said yesterday the Irish Government would oppose the proposed new generation of nuclear power plants in Britain by political and diplomatic means. However, he stopped-short of signalling any new legal challenge in addition to that already under way in respect of Sellafield.
Speaking in London, Mr Ahern confirmed the Government was "implacably opposed to the increase in nuclear generation in the UK." He had already signalled this to Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain when seeking assurance that no nuclear facility would be built on the island of Ireland.
"We get no benefit at all from these," said the Minister: "And yet we have to put up with all the potential dangers, whether it is into the atmosphere, discharges into the sea, whether it is potential human error, explosions as we've seen before, or the new terrorist threat in the post 9/11 situation." Mr Ahern said he and other Ministers had made the case, which was well known to London. When asked if the reality was that London had simply ignored them, Mr Ahern replied in his view the Labour government "has done a complete 180- degree turn" from its 2003 review in support of renewables.
