UK nuclear industry gets green light from government inspector

Britain is safe from natural events similar to those that damaged the Fukushima plant, says report The UK does not need to curtail the operation of nuclear power stations after the crisis at the Fukushima plant in Japan , the nuclear chief inspector, Mike Weightman, said today. In an interim report on the lessons that could be learned from the disaster, which followed a 9-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami that battered the Japanese coast, Weightman said similar natural events would not happen in the UK. He also said existing and planned nuclear power stations in this country were of a different design from those at Fukushima, which were rocked by explosions and damage to the reactors after the tsunami shut down power to the plants, knocking out their cooling facilities. Also, flooding risks were unlikely to prevent the construction of new nuclear power stations at potential development sites in the UK, all of which are on the coast, he said. The government is planning a new suite of nuclear reactors on existing sites to maintain electricity supplies and cut greenhouse gas emissions as power stations of an older generation are shut down. Weightman said there was no need to change the current strategy for siting new nuclear power plants. But he said lessons could still be learned from the nuclear accident in Japan. The executive head of the Office for Nuclear Regulation was asked by the energy secretary, Chris Huhne, to prepare a report into the implications of the nuclear crisis in

Posted by on May 18, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.