Nuclear power is the only answer (From Gazette Series)

Nuclear power is the only answer

SIR - I was very disappointed that the Gazette resorted to sensational journalism by reporting the scaremongering pronouncements of a minor politician from a fringe party seeking publicity by playing on people's fears of cancer and radiation.

As an Oldbury parish councillor, and living within two kilometres of Oldbury Power Station for a quarter of a century, I am not aware of any demand for iodine tablets to be distributed. The issue is not whether tablets would prevent cancer, but whether a cancer causing radiation leak is likely.

Oldbury and neighbouring Berkeley nuclear power stations were designed in the middle of the last century without the aid of computers and modern technology and yet they have operated safely and efficiently for nearly half a century and nobody has needed tablets.

They are controlled and monitored by a, now, very experienced staff utilising the computer control and technology that has been incorporated in the light of experience during their lifetime.

There are detailed emergency plans that have recently been tested by full-scale exercises at Oldbury and Berkeley. These are regularly revised by the Emergency Planning Committee to take account of changing circumstances.

There is also a Local Community Liaison Council that is currently being revised by a sub group of which I am the independent lay chairman, to take account of the circumstances brought about by approaching decommissioning.

One criticism that we are addressing is the need for the council to publicise its activities more. It is a group of concerned representatives from parish, town and district councils on both sides of the Severn in a radius of about 50 kilometres. The intention is to ensure that best practice is applied and complacency is avoided in performing safely the complex operations at the site.

Local residents should remember that the operators and managers are not distant, remote, cavalier controllers, but fellow residents who are working on the site, in the reactor hall, under the strictest safety conditions and are unlikely to do anything to jeopardise our and their own safety and lives.

How can the increasing demand for electricity in the future be met reliably without new modern nuclear power station? I would hate a forest of wind turbines whirring over Oldbury-on-Severn.

Malcolm Lynden, Church Road, Oldbury-on-Severn