A Vigil to REMEMBER WINDSCALE – 10th Oct 2pm Outside Springfields
On the 62nd Anniversary of the UKs first nuclear accident a Vigil will be held outside Springfields Nuclear Fuels, Near Preston.
Radiation Free Lakeland and Close Capenhurst >ask others to join them on the 10th October at 2pm outside Springfields, Salwick. Nr Preston, in remembering the UKs first nuclear accident. The UKs first nuclear accident took place at Windscale in Cumbria. The fuel for this disaster was made at Springfields near Preston.
The Windscale fire caused widespread radioactive pollution including plutonium and the deadly poison polonium over a wide area of the UK and Europe. The health impacts are still being felt now decades later. Campaigners are calling for an end to the manufacture of nuclear fuel at the Springfields site.
Springfields has fuelled nuclear reactors both here in the UK and overseas since the 1940s and is gearing up to produce the uranium fuel for the next generation of nuclear reactors including that of Hinkley Point C.
Marianne Birkby from Radiation Free Lakeland said “Springfields has been fuelling nuclear accidents alongside routine emissions for decades. As with Sellafield there will be jobs at Springfields for many years to come in “clean up” but as for dangerous new uranium based fuels and the growing tsunami of nuclear wastes, there is not enough fossil fuel and steel in the world to make sarcophagus after sarcophagus to protect the public from the nuclear industry’s ambitions enough is enough”.
Radiation Free Lakeland and Close Capenhurst have been lobbying Lancaster City Council and others to include a No New Nuclear clause in their climate emergency planning. At the presentation of an almost 500 signature strong petition, Lancaster City Council were however not minded to include a No New Nuclear clause. Campaigners say that this nuclear complacency is dangerous : “The nuclear industry despite being a ‘mature’ technology is still a bottomless drain on the public purse. Not only does nuclear take money away from genuine solutions but it has, for decades, been actively suppressing renewables and energy efficiencies in order to leave some room in the grid for nuclear. Salters Duck and unlimited wave power was killed off by the nuclear industry. The nuclear industry is now promoting itself as ‘part of the solution’ this is dangerous nonsense and is the reason why we asked on the 25th September that Lancaster City Council include a No New Nuclear Clause in your Climate Emergency Plans. We hope that you reconsider this request as there must be No New Nuclear here or anywhere else if we are to achieve a sustainable future in the UK.”
Another critic of Springfields continued manufacture of uranium nuclear fuel is energy expert Dr Paul Dorfman ‘Given the very significant radiological risk associated with production at Springfields, and the fact that major population centres are down-wind, it’s truly astonishing that more attention hasn’t been paid to this facility. ‘
Dr Paul Dorfman
The Energy Institute
University College London
No New Nuclear in Climate Planning petition to Lancaster City Council