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Nuclear liabilities rise
4 July 2002
Friends of the Earth today called on the National Audit Office (NAO) and the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee to investigate the huge rise in the estimated cost of tackling Britain’s nuclear waste legacy. A White Paper published today show these to have risen to almost £48bn – a rise of around £6bn since November last year. Friends of the Earth said the figures show how uneconomic nuclear power is. They called on the nuclear industry to refocus on decommissioning and clean-up, rather than building more nuclear plants and creating more waste.
Today’s White Paper outlines proposals for the creation of a Liabilities Management Authority (LMA) - which will bear the costs of the nuclear industry’s liabilities at the taxpayer’s expense. BNFL will continue to run its waste-producing reprocessing operations, while lobbying for new nuclear power stations.
Roger Higman, Nuclear Campaigner at Friends of the Earth said:
"Today’s revelation of the staggering cost of cleaning up Britain’s civil nuclear waste legacy highlights once again that nuclear power is completely uneconomic. The Government must address this issue seriously by ruling out the building of new nuclear power stations and concentrating on the development of renewable energy instead. The nuclear industry’s future is in decommissioning and safely dealing with the waste it has already created. That’s where public acceptability and market opportunities lie.
“We don’t oppose the establishment of the Liabilities Management Authority. But freeing BNFL from the cost of dealing with nuclear waste must not be the green light for it to help create even more. And the National Audit Office must investigate the DTI's handling of BNFL to ensure the taxpayer is getting value for money."
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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust
Last modified: Jun 2008
