Nuclear power

28 August 2012News in Brief

On 6 August, Hiroshima Day, members of the Atlantic Life Community (ALC) witnessed for peace in a Washington museum by demonstrating next to the refurbished Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the Hiroshima bomb. 

The activists then went to the Pentagon and, wearing sack-cloth and ashes, held a vigil to remember the victims of the nuclear attack.

As ALC members prayed by a Pentagon entrance they were arrested and given a court date of 19 October.

 

13 August 2012Blog

London actions in solidarity with Japanese protests against restarting of nuclear reactors.

Sixteen anti-nuclear protesters - half of them Japanese - gathered outside the Japanese embassy in Piccadilly, London on the morning of Friday 10 August, for the second week running, in a demonstration organised by London-based group Kick Nuclear http://kicknuclear.org. This was in solidarity with weekly demonstrations taking place outside the Prime Minister’s offices in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan against the restarting of nuclear…

31 May 2012Comment

Arguments about nuclear power stations and nuclear waste were prevalent 30 years ago, as now – and PN played a key part. Ex-PN-staffer Paul Wesley tells of a campaign that succeeded.

The government’s abandonment of the nuclear waste burial programme is a fine victory for anti-nuclear campaigners generally and for Welsh groups in particular. For Madryn [Welsh anti-dumping group] it was the unexpectedly early culmination of two years’ campaigning which provides some valuable organisational lessons.

During the early public meetings it became clear that people felt it would be very wrong for any campaign to simply oppose dumping in this area alone, and so a policy of…

9 May 2012Blog

Brief review of the fourth annual camp at Sizewell nuclear power station

The fourth annual camp at Sizewell nuclear power station took place between 20-22 April, the aim of which was to both oppose the building of two planned reactors and a dry fuel storage dump and to provide information about about nuclear power to local people.
The choice of the April date itself was to commemorate the Chernobyl disaster which occurred on April 26, 1986.
The weekend included a demonstration at the gates of the power station attended by between 80-100 people and…

1 April 2012News

Anti-nuclear action in Wales

On 11 March, anti-nuclear activists around the world mobilised against nuclear new-build and uranium-mining, marking the first anniversary of the start of the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Many people surrounded the Hinkley Point site in England, while in Wales these protesters gathered on the Menai Suspension Bridge, making the point that in the event of a major disaster at Wylfa, on the north coast of Anglesey, it would be virtually impossible to evacuate the island.

30 March 2012News in Brief

Around 1,000 people demonstrated against the revival of nuclear power at Hinkley Point nuclear power station on 10-11 March, in the largest such protest for 30 years. There was a ‘surround the power station’ action and a 24-hour blockade by about 100 people.

The protest, on the anniversary of the Fukushima crisis in Japan, was attended by two Fukushima evacuees. There was only one arrest, a man allegedly stole a sign.

The next protest will be the annual Sizewell camp,…

1 March 2012News

Anti-nuclear power activists occupy oak grove

Three anti-nuclear power protesters who had ‘occupied’ a grove of oak trees near Hinkley Point in Somerset were evicted after two days on 9 February by local police and a five-man tree-climbing team hired by power company EDF.

The grove of mature oak trees was scheduled to be cleared in late February to make way for a new nuclear power plant. On 12 February, activists then took possession of an abandoned farm on the development site. On 13 February, they were visited by a civil…

1 March 2012News

From Hinkley Point in Somerset to Wylfa in the far north of Wales, the campaign against a new generation of nuclear power stations is heating up day-by-day.

    Photo: PAWB

About 300 demonstrators braved the rain and gloom of a January Saturday afternoon to march through the streets of the small market town of Llangefni, on the Isle of Anglesey, in order to express their support for the Jones family of Caerdegog. These determined farmers are refusing to allow their land, which has been in their family for about 300 years, to be grabbed by Horizon Nuclear.

The broadening of support shown in the march was significant. As well as local…

1 December 2011Feature

It's too early yet to say post-Fukushima, says Philip Steele.


Dan Viesnik outside the Japanese embassy, London, 2 November. One World, No Nukes delivered a petition to stop the shipping of contaminated rubble from Fukushima to Tokyo. PHOTO: Kick Nuclear

Post-Fukushima, did I hear you say? Eight months later, we should still be speaking of the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster in the present tense. After the earthquakes, after the tsunami, after the explosions, after the triple-meltdown, after the massive…

1 November 2011News

A report from the Hinkley Point blockade.

You wouldn’t think a demo against nuclear new-build would have a problem with solar radiation. But that’s what happened for members of Côr Gobaith (Aberystwyth) who went to the Hinkley Point blockade on 3 October. We spent much of the day flattened against the hedge in a thin shade zone, too hot to protest. However, this unseasonal heat-wave demonstrated both the availability of renewable energy sources and the growing need to shift to their use in the face of climate chaos.

Wales…

1 October 2011News in Brief

During September, 40 participants including “traditional owners” and supporters from France, the US and New Zealand were undertaking a 1,700-km 11-week walk from the town of Wiluna in Western Australia to the state capital of Perth. The walk, due to arrive on 28 October, is in protest at uranium mining in Australia, particularly at proposals to mine uranium near Wiluna, a centre for the local Aboriginal population. www.nuclearfreefuture.com

1 October 2011News

Activists plan major blockade of Hinkley nuclear power station.

On 3 October, over 100 people opposed to new nuclear build will blockade Hinkley Point nuclear power station in Somerset. This is where French energy giant Electricité de France (EDF) wants to build the first new nuclear reactor in the UK for 16 years. Following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in March, Germany, Italy and other countries are turning their backs on nuclear power, or are having a rethink. Not so for the UK, for whom it’s business as usual.

In July, the formerly anti-…

13 August 2011Feature

Despite press speculation, the Government has continued to repeat its official position that, although the nuclear option cannot be ruled out, there are no proposals to build more reactors.

 

Former Energy Minister Mi

13 August 2011Feature

Blair's nuclear madness - is he cracking up or melting down? - prompts Howard Clark to look back to the 1970s anti-nuclear movement and the role PN played in supporting it.

“It is our duty to future generations to build nuclear power stations.”

I think I've heard that before. Perhaps when I was a little boy and the Queen opened a plant producing plutonium for British nuclear weapons at Calder Hall (part of the Windscale complex) and emphasised the contribution of its side-product, electricity. Or perhaps it was in the 1970s when I worked on Peace News and we began to campaign against civil nuclear power.

All my life nuclear power has…

1 June 2011News

Dan Viesnik reports from the Stop Nuclear Power Network's latest action

On Good Friday, I headed down to a sunny Sizewell beach on the picturesque Suffolk coast. The nuclear power station, directly overlooking the beach, was, for the third successive year, the target for the annual spring weekend camp of the Stop Nuclear Power Network.

As usual, it was timed around the anniversary of Chernobyl – the world’s worst ever civil nuclear disaster (prior to Fukushima, at least) – which this year coincided with Easter.

Within a few hours of arriving, a…