The Shut Sellafield campaign aims to swamp Tony Blair with postcards. Kathy Sheridan reports.
If Ali Hewson fails to stir the natives with her postcard campaign, then Sir Bernard Ingham ought to do it for her.
Sellafield is a problem of perception, born of ignorance, prejudice and hysteria, Margaret Thatcher's former spinner told RTE yesterday. Radioactivity is "not the great killer people try to make out"; so far "only" 45 deaths and about 2000 thyroid cancers have been directly attributed to Chernoyl.
And the postcard campaign? "Futile."
Campaign leader Ali Hewson shrugs: "I'm sanguine enough to know that this campaign won't shut Sellafield down tomorrow." The objective is to make the three targets stop and think about the risks versus the economics.
So Norman Askew, CEO of British Nuclear Fuels, is challenged to "tell us the truth". Prince Charles, environmentalist and sometime Irish tourist, will see a radioactive shamrock with the rhetorical question, "Wish you were here?" And the British Prime Minister, gets the direct, nice-guy-next-door, treatment: "Tony, look me in the eye and tell me I'm safe..."
The Tony card will be sent free to all households, to be signed and sent off (post free thanks to An Post) by April 19th. The hope is however, that everyone will also pay up for the other two - available at a euro each from post offices, banks, supermarkets and the web at www.shutsellafield.com - and send them off as well. Four million are being printed and once An Post has gathered them all, they will be delivered en masse on April 26th, the 16th anniversary of Chernobyl.
The beauty of the campaign, says Hewson, is its simplicity.
"It's a two-pronged approach. The first is that you voice your concern and send the card. The second is that proceeds go to the Chernobyl Children's Project".
There are reasons for concern, 38 of which are described by British Nuclear Fuels Limited, the company that runs Sellafield, as "nuclear accidents at British nuclear installations" and occurred between January, 1997 and June, 2000.
And thanks to the Observer, we know that in January, 2001, 2,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste almost exploded after Sellafield staff had ignored alarms for two and a half hours.
"Those 21 tanks of waste contain huge quantities of the most hazardous materials on the nuclear site, if not the planet", said John Large, a nuclear engineer.
Yesterday, the Minister for Social Welfare, Dermot Ahern, coolly reminded Bernard Ingham that BNFL admits, inter alia, that it "has no answer" to the possibility of an air strike into Sellafield, although such an attack would unleash 100 times the radioactivity of Chernobyl.
This is what puts the grit into Ali Hewson's soul and forces her out of her natural reserve. She has been tilting at the nuclear industry since her first child was born nearly 13 years ago. She now has four, the youngest aged 10 only months.
For much of the time, she's a single mother. What she calls Bono's "day job" allied to his Drop the Debt campaigning are "all consuming", she says. One minute, George Bush is announcing a $5 billion hike in US aid, with Bono by his side; the next, the US Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, is telling us that he and and same Bono are off on an 11-day trip to Africa.
So Bono is on a roll, but, she says deliberately, the anti-nuclear gig is hers.
"Bono is completely supportive but this is my project... Though we do have a joke at home that the reason I'm so comfortable with Chernobyl and Sellafield is because I married a nuclear reactor..."