Though very few people know it – and of course it’s not being reported anywhere – the Government’s planned nuclear renaissance cannot go ahead unless it is formally and officially ‘justified’.   This was defined by Defra as “no practice involving exposures to radiation should be adopted unless it produces sufficient benefit to the exposed individuals or to society to offset the radiation detriment it causes”.

Yet the way the Government is handling this is so flawed it invalidates the whole process:

*  the Justification process is going ahead before the new-design AP1000 and EPR reactors have been approved by the UK regulators,

*  the European Committee on Radication Risk has now declared that the official ICRP radiation risk co-efficients are out of date and that using them leads to risks being significantly under-estimated  – which could dramatically affect the justification process,

*  the research programmes on the viability of geological radioactive waste disposal demanded by the Government’s own official COWRM committee have not been undertaken, so no justification can be applied to the methods proposed to deal with the so far unsolved waste disposal problem,

*  there are significant gaps in the nuclear industry association’s application which have still not been remedied,

*  the Government’s attitude to public consultations (as over the Heathrow third runway, Trident replacement, and GM crops) is dismissive, and the Justifying Authority’s responses to the public opposition shown in the first consultation over new nuclear build (11 new nuclear power stations proposed) were token and partial,

*  there is very limited scope for review, and there will be no Parliamentary scrutiny till after the decision has officially been made.

For all these compelling reasons a campaign has been launched, since there is no public confidence in a Government-dominated process, to demand a fully independent inquiry as the only means by which a valid justification process can be undertaken.

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