Scientists take on Brown over nuclear plans

A group of scientists and academics today condemns as undemocratic and possibly illegal the government’s plans to force through a new generation of nuclear power stations to meet Britain’s energy needs for the next 30 years.

They warn that questions about the risks from radiation, disposal of nuclear waste and vulnerability to a terrorist attack have not been addressed – even though the government was ordered last February to repeat a public consultation on energy supply, after its exercise was declared unlawful by a high court judge


Today the nuclear consultation group, made up of 17 energy economists and several of the government’s independent advisers on nuclear waste, condemned the methods used in the second attempt to gather public and expert opinion.

“We are profoundly concerned that the government’s approach was designed to provide particular and limiting answers,” said Paul Dorfman, a spokesman for the independent group, which includes professors of Oxford, Sussex, and Lancaster universities, and Rutgers in the US. “Those answers risk locking in UK energy to an inflexible and vulnerable pathway that will prove unsustainable,” he added.

In an 87-page report, the group says: “Significant issues were not consulted on in any meaningful way or resolved in practice. It has left the government vulnerable to legal challenge and may lead to hostility and mistrust of any future energy decision,” the paper warns.

Guardian