A PROTEST against nuclear power was staged against trains carrying nuclear fuel travelling through Gloucestershire.

A group of supporters from Severnside Together Against Nuclear Development (STAND) leafleted people as they used Gloucester railway station last Friday (September 26).

They claim that the country’s railways and the towns and cities they pass through are put at risk by trains carrying radioactive nuclear fuel.

More specifically they raised concerns about trains carrying radioactive material from Hinkley Power Station in Somerset to Sellafield, in Cumbria.

Barbara French, secretary of the group, said "The situation is bad enough now, but it is very worrying to think that when the new Nuclear Power stations at Hinkley and Oldbury are completed there will be a train nearly every day on our railways carrying high level nuclear waste.

“This makes for a huge amount of toxic waste travelling around Gloucestershire and the Severn estuary at any one time, putting our population at risk."

Dennis Hayden, a nuclear test veteran said it was alarming to hear that highly radioactive waste is transported along our railways every day.

He said, "If there was an accident, or possibly an attack by terrorists, the results could be catastrophic.

“Radiation released would seriously damage the health of all those living hundreds of miles around, as well as those servicemen who would have to try to clear up the mess. And it is not impossible there could be such an event.

“The nuclear industry itself admits that the transport of waste is the most vulnerable part of the nuclear cycle regarding terrorist attack. And there have already been three accidents at unmanned level crossings in the UK.

“Luckily these were all empty flasks returning from Sellafield to Nuclear Power Stations. But we all know serious accidents do occur sometimes.

"Whenever such an accident occurs, governments and the nuclear industry dismiss the consequent legacy ill health - which sometimes may not show until 20 years or so after the event - as only a chance occurrence and nothing to do with exposure to radiation.

“This is a bitter lesson nuclear test veterans and their families have learnt over many years. We do not want the public to suffer in the same way."

This protest was part of a national weekend of protest by groups concerned about the dangers of Nuclear Power.